Serving Up Fresh and Hot: PCB007 Magazine's November 2023 Issue

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

The Registration Sweet Spot

Registration is underrated and underappreciated. You can try to argue with us about this, but after diving into the current state of registration, we're convinced. What’s key here is ensuring proper registration from layer to layer across the entire printed circuit board. It’s a holistic process requiring anticipation, prediction, precise attention at each step, and detailed data tracking and monitoring, because a slight error up front will only snowball as the process continues.

In IC fabrication, working with crystalline silicon, the IC engineers have the luxury of a remarkably stable foundation. Study the challenges in obtaining consistent, high-quality printed circuit registrations at today’s PCB geometries, and it starts to feel like a moonshot: when the coefficient of thermal expansion in your substrate can be larger than the features you are fabricating, getting all of them to line up across multiple layers is an exercise in managing multiple moving targets.

In this issue of PCB007 Magazine, we talked to industry experts about getting it right with registration, with an overarching theme on how to keep all your steps in their respective sweet spots. Features include Alex Stepinski sharing his from-the-field lessons on how to design fabrication processes for improved registration, and some of his signature “hacks.” Happy Holden returns to the value of coupons, and XACTPCB’s Andrew Kelley discusses the use of planning software tools to anticipate misregistration and compensate. We also visited with Aidan Salvi from Amitron, a PCB fabricator committed to improving registration—to the tune of 60+ pieces of new equipment and development of a Factory 5.0 model.

So, pour yourself a coffee or a tea, grab one of your favorite donuts, and see how your registration processes stack up.

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