-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueSilicon to Systems: From Soup to Nuts
This month, we asked our expert contributors to weigh in on silicon to systems—what it means to PCB designers and design engineers, EDA companies, and the rest of the PCB supply chain... from soup to nuts.
Cost Drivers
In this month’s issue of Design007 Magazine, our expert contributors explain the impact of cost drivers on PCB designs and the need to consider a design budget. They discuss the myriad design cycle cost adders—hidden and not so hidden—and ways to add value.
Mechatronics
Our expert contributors discuss the advent of mechatronics in PCB design, the challenges and opportunities this creates for circuit board designers, and the benefits—to the employee and the company—of becoming a mechatronics engineer.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Bay Area Circuits Updates InstantDFM Tool
November 29, 2017 | Andy Shaughnessy, PCB Design007Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Bay Area Circuits is on a quest to help PCB designers and design engineers. For the past few years, the company has been holding facility tours and open house events to help designers understand more about the fabrication process. Now, Bay Area Circuits has upgraded its free design tool, InstantDFM.com, which allows customers and non-customers alike to check manufacturability and request pricing of their jobs.
At PCB West, I spoke with President Stephen Garcia and COO Brian Paper about the new tool update, and some of the other services they offer for PCB designers.
Andy Shaughnessy: I'm here at PCB West with Stephen Garcia and Brian Paper from Bay Area Circuits. Stephen, why don't you start off telling us a little bit about the company and then about your latest tool upgrade?
Stephen Garcia: Our company was founded in 1975 but we’re now entering the fourth year since we relocated to a larger facility in Fremont, California. Being located in the heart of Silicon Valley surrounded by product development companies, our real focus has become quick-turn prototype manufacturing. Since the move, we’ve made significant investments in technology to not only keep pace with customer requirements, but also to reduce processing time and speed delivery. Most recently, we took delivery of a second Excellon Intelli-Drill system, which really strengthens our drilling capacity and capability.
Shaughnessy: So, tell me a little bit about this DFM tool upgrade. It's been out for a little while.
Garcia: InstantDFM.com launched in 2014, and allows users to upload their PCB design data and receive a free design for manufacturability report. Of all the free design tools and educational resources we offer on our website, InstantDFM is by far the most popular. That said, some users found that the DFM feedback provided was too cryptic; the information made sense to us, the manufacturer, but wasn’t always understood by the user. So, we set out to improve the feedback mechanism and just prior to PCB West, we released the first major update to the tool, providing easier-to-understand, actionable design intelligence.
Additionally, we’ve added functionality that displays for the user how their design lines up with our standard and advanced capabilities. This becomes helpful during the design process because users are now aware of the capabilities needed to fabricate their design, providing them the opportunity to make cost-saving design adjustments wherever possible. We’ve also added the ability for the user to view each layer of the design, which can really help identify any design software-to-manufacturing software translation issues.
Ultimately, we’re trying to put more information in the hands of the designer, and the fact that InstantDFM is free and completely automated means that users aren’t beholden to normal business hours to receive a design for manufacturability report.
Shaughnessy: It's nice that people who aren't necessarily customers get to use it.
Brian Paper: Providing free design tools and resources to the designer community has become part of our company’s DNA. As a manufacturer, we have so much pent up knowledge that it seems unfair to keep it to ourselves. We do our best to share this knowledge by distributing design tools, white papers, blog posts, and, by offering frequent facility tours that give designers a chance to better understand the fabrication process. Ultimately, our hope is that these resources help us establish ourselves as industry experts and attract a growing customer base.
Shaughnessy: That's a great idea. A good facility tour helps establish you all as experts in their minds.
Paper: The company has been in operation for more than 40 years so we’ve obviously acquired a lot of PCB manufacturing expertise. But, we’ve also found that many experienced PCB designers have never taken the time to tour a manufacturing facility. By offering tours to designers, we’re able to better explain the fabrication process and provide them with valuable design feedback and cost-saving advice. We always find tours to be a win-win scenario for both parties.
Garcia: Tours are also helpful in terms of educating customers about recent equipment investments and what those additions mean to them in terms of technology and capability improvements. After all, customer demand really drives our technology investments. And as a quick-turn manufacturer, it’s really important for us to have redundancy throughout the process. As you might imagine, building a PCB in 24 hours doesn’t leave much room for equipment downtime.
And, based on customer deadlines, these types of turn times are not abnormal. Just last week, a customer contacted us on a Monday and said they needed a fully assembled board in hand by Friday. They literally sent us a scan of a napkin, and in three days we handled the design, PCB fabrication and assembly, delivering the project to them by the Friday deadline. So that’s the world we now live in and we’re going to continue to support that speed of innovation.
Shaughnessy: Sounds good. Thanks for your time today.
Garcia: Thank you.
Sponsored Links:
Suggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor's Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
09/06/2024 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007This week’s Top 5 starts with steps you can take to cultivate a culture of thriving. We also have bullish news from the global semiconductor sector, advice on how to tease out hidden cost drivers during the PCB design cycle, how the Altium-Ansys collaboration will affect design, and Happy Holden’s version of Occam’s Razor—three simple tools to keep your wet processes in line.
Impact of the Altium-Ansys Partnership on PCB Design
09/05/2024 | Josh Moore, AltiumThere’s a saying in electronics hardware design: “There are two types of electronics designers: those who have signal integrity problems and those who will.” This adage emphasizes the inevitability of encountering and the need to address signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) issues.
Hidden Cost Drivers in PCB Design
09/05/2024 | Cherie Litson, CID+, Litson1 ConsultingI recently taught a CID+ course, and if you’ve ever taken a CID or CID+ course, you know that we discuss cost adders quite a bit. When I asked the class of 15 design engineers their ideas on the biggest cost adders, the first and strongest response: the project manager. Are you surprised by their answer? After over 40 years in the industry, I wasn’t. If you step back and look at the process of product development, you’ll see that many decisions that affect costs down the line really do take root with the project manager.
Altium, Mouser Team Up to Advance Electronics Education and Careers Worldwide
09/05/2024 | AltiumAltium LLC, a global leader in software and solutions for the electronics industry, and Mouser Electronics, a global authorized distributor of semiconductors and electronic components, are excited to announce a strategic partnership aimed at advancing electronics education and careers worldwide.
Young Professionals Spotlight: Process Engineer Kevin Dial, American Standard Circuits
09/05/2024 | Dan Beaulieu, D.B. Management GroupWhen I heard that my friends at American Standard Circuits had hired a new, fresh-out-of-college process engineer, I was anxious to meet him. Now, you get to read this interview. It’s a rare perspective of a young man new to our industry.