Learning With Leo

August 05, 2026

Learning With Leo: Where Reliability Actually Hides

In my many years of training, it’s funny to see what still surprises people. For example, they’re surprised that by the time the solder melts, most of what decides whether that joint survives has already happened before the iron and even before inspection. In fact, it’s even earlier than that. In my column last month, I argued that most soldering problems are really problems of interpretation, which leads to the materials themselves, and where reliability is won or lost. So, let’s talk about what we’re actually soldering today.

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June 30, 2026

Learning With Leo: Soldering—The Interpretation Problem

At EPTAC, we operate the largest electronics training facility in the United States, and that gives us a vantage point few others have. I’ve spent most of my career on the training floor and in the rooms where IPC standards get written and revised. Every week, engineers, operators, inspectors, and quality teams come to us from across the country and across industries for help, and they bring their toughest questions. On the surface, they’re asking about toe fillets, gold plating, or rework limits. But underneath those questions is something more important: uncertainty about reliability.

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June 03, 2026

Learning with Leo: The Cost of Cleaning and Protecting the Ozone Layer

I share this perspective based on my experience as a member of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Solvent, Coatings and Adhesives Technical Options Committee, which developed the report “Protecting the Ozone Layer” to inform policy decisions at the 1995 Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol in Nairobi. My involvement in this work dates back to 1976, when I joined Digital Equipment as an engineer supporting manufacturing operations, focusing on soldering and cleaning processes across global facilities.

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May 06, 2026

Learning with Leo: Drones—Meeting Demand Without Compromise

With drones used in a wide range of applications today, particularly in modern military conflicts, domestic manufacturers are feeling pressure to produce at high volume and low cost, particularly within an NDAA supply chain ecosystem with differing needs and expectations. Two issues must be considered. First is the manufacturers’ and customers’ need for quality, reliability, and functionality of the product. Second is the manufacturing volume needed to support demand, whether for military, industrial, or commercial applications. Each segment requires verification that the product meets the customer's requirements. 

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April 01, 2026

Learning with Leo: Why Risk-based Auditing Is Reshaping Cable Assembly Quality

Effective product development requires early and active participation from all stakeholders. The design process must include input from supply chain, manufacturing engineering, purchasing, quality, and production. A design cannot be considered complete until it has been evaluated against the full manufacturing process, whether executed by an OEM or a subcontractor. Without this collaboration, designs are often released that are not manufacturable in real-world conditions.

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March 11, 2026

Learning with Leo: Interpreting IPC Soldering Requirements and Acceptance Criteria

This month, I’m writing about IPC soldering standards and, specifically, structured linguistic conventions used to define mandatory requirements and conditional acceptance criteria for materials, processes, and workmanship. I selected this topic because of the high volume of questions requesting clarification and examples of bracketed criteria in IPC J-STD-001.

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February 04, 2026

Learning With Leo: The Disappearing Manufacturing Engineer

Manufacturing engineers are the firefighters of the manufacturing process, but as the industry changes the roles of the manufacturing engineer and manufacturing facilities export their manufacturing offshore, what happens to the function, viability, and knowledge of the manufacturing engineer? Where design engineering was known as a profession, manufacturing engineering was known as a job, not a career path. Although I was disappointed about that at the time, now I look back and wonder about the truth of that statement.

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January 07, 2026

Learning with Leo: The Cost of Training on Skills and Knowledge Development

The ability to manufacture electronic products requires specific skills and knowledge, which have traditionally been developed through on-the-job experience and training. These experiences and training programs are expensive to implement, yet they are necessary to meet customer demands and remain competitive in the marketplace. Today, manufacturers, including government contractors, rely on industrial specifications in the design, fabrication, and assembly of electronic products.

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December 03, 2025

Learning With Leo: What Is the Cost of Quality Brought About by Training?

In electronics manufacturing, conversations about training often revolve around one narrow question: What does it cost? Training requires time, materials, instructor fees, and occasionally travel. Under tight budget constraints, it is understandable that organizations scrutinize these expenses. However, this perspective misses a far more important and financially meaningful point: What is the cost of quality brought about by training? Framed differently: What does it cost when training does not occur?

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November 05, 2025

Learning With Leo: UHDI—The Next Leap in PCB Manufacturing

High density interconnect (HDI) technology has been a cornerstone of miniaturized electronics since Hewlett-Packard introduced the first chip-scale implementation in 1982. Over time, HDI processes became central to organic flip-chip packaging in the semiconductor industry. Today, the convergence of IC substrates and system-level PCBs has accelerated the adoption of UHDI.

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