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Marcy’s Musings: Attaining Superior Wet Process Control

The overarching truths of process control and quality management are immutable. We often rely on philosophies such as Total Quality Management, Lean Manufacturing, and Six Sigma, which focus on continuous improvement in manufacturing and management and illustrate the time and thought put into controlling and improving processes. These ultimately lead to better products and higher customer satisfaction, and underscore that controlling processes and product quality is a necessary pathway to business success.

With that in mind, our focus in the August 2024 issue of PCB007 Magazine is on wet process control as a way to improve product quality, customer satisfaction, and ROI. “We all need to be laser-focused on precision,” says expert Mike Carano in this issue. “We need to be better at what we do. Perfection may not be attainable, but we should strive for it and get as close as we can.”

Our goal is to help you obtain a better degree of control over wet processes, especially in ways that provide good, usable data that can guide your decisions and produce consistently higher-quality products. We spend time discussing ROI because nothing is undertaken on the shop floor where ROI is not evident and hopefully soon realized. Mike complements our interview with his monthly column, where he breaks down the wet process and offers relatively simple ways in which fabricators can begin to achieve greater precision. He ends with a cautionary note: “Ignore these best practices at one’s peril.”

Barry Matties discusses control and consistency in his interview with Mark Skaer of Omron, particularly automation and “cobots,” or collaborative robots, as one solution manufacturers are considering today. In another interview, Mike Brask of IPS discusses the significant added value of automated chemical dosing control, as well as the barriers that many fabricators face when looking to add this technology to their shop floors.

In his column, Happy Holden provides a detailed outline of achieving the best possible process control in your wet process area. He provides many DIY sensor alternatives to costly or hard-to-find sensors for PCB wet processes. To wrap up our wet process discussion, IPC’s Randy Cherry explains the critical importance of the process audit, starting with an internal process verification audit. “Process auditing can be simple and easy to maintain if you create a repeatable, impartial auditing process,” he says. He offers some simple approaches to help fabricators and the many benefits of putting your employees through that process.

In other columns, Don Ball continues discussing how much control is needed for high-density circuits regarding wet processes, such as developing and stripping. Hannah Grace takes the signal and power integrity and electromagnetic interference discussion a step further with, “The Impact of Parasitics on PCB Layout.” PCBAA Chair Shane Whiteside reminds fabricators that it’s never too late to invite a member of Congress into your facility for a tour, and Alex Girardot of Precision Point provides a detailed analysis of why carbon-coated drill bits have become the superior solution for PCB manufacturers. Our focus on young professionals showcases an interview by Dan Beaulieu with process engineer Kevin Dial of American Standard Circuits. We also feature an excerpt from a Maarten Cauwe of imec’s award-winning white paper presented at IPC APEX EXPO 2024 on the parametric approach to understanding the total environmental impact of PCB fabrication.

There is a lot in this month’s issue, so buckle up and enjoy the ride.

This column originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of PCB007 Magazine.