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A Practical Approach to Material Selection for High Power PCBs
With AI server architectures demanding high-power converter solutions to improve power efficiency and affordability, PCB design can challenge engineers who treat material selection as a single-variable problem. Pick a laminate for thermal conductivity, and you may experience a CTE mismatch that cracks vias after 50 thermal cycles. Optimize for dielectric loss, and you might sacrifice the isolation margin your certification depends on. High-power boards require consideration of multiple variables, including electrical, thermal, mechanical, reliability, and manufacturability, which cannot be optimized alone.
Catching up with FUJI PCB and FS Quality’s President, Mr. Tianming Liu
I recently interviewed Mr. Tianming Liu, founder of FUJI PCB and FS Quality. His company is built by blending Japanese manufacturing discipline, Chinese execution speed, and an unwavering commitment to quality and customer service. His story is anything but ordinary. From studying and working in Japan for more than a decade to transforming a struggling PCB factory into a profitable operation before launching FUJI PCB, he has shown vision, determination, and continuous innovation.
Your AI Doesn't Know Your Process (Here's How to Teach It)
Last month, I made the case that you should not buy AI in the hope that it will fix the business. You need to learn it yourself first. If your AI is failing, it’s not because it is lazy or broken. It is failing because it does not know your plant. It does not know your quoting rules, how material gets released to the floor, what your customer expects in an 8D1, or which spec outranks another. It certainly does not know where your team hides the real answer once the formal procedure and reality have drifted apart.
I-Connect007 Welcomes New Columnists from Flexible Circuit Technologies
In an exciting new column for I-Connect007 Magazine, a team of application engineers from Flexible Circuit Technologies will draw on decades of experience designing and manufacturing flex and rigid-flex circuits to offer practical guidance to help PCB designers make better engineering decisions. Mark Finstad, Chris Clark, Terrill Schmidt, Dan Skweres, and Zack Schaner will rotate authoring the new column, called Flex Connections, which begins in the August issue, with Dan drawing on his many years of experience to explain why just because you can do something in PCB design, doesn’t mean you should.
EIPC Summer Conference 2026: Technical Presentations Tell the Rest of the Story
In early June, the EIPC Summer Conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, featured an impressive group of speakers ranging from PCB suppliers and technical experts to startups and robotics OEMs, the latter of which added a “cool factor” to the meeting’s ambiance with a fully operational, interactive humanoid. After some early coverage of the event, I’m now following up with key takeaways from many of the technical presentations. I regret that I could not cover all speakers in detail, but this will give you a good taste of what you missed in Lithuania in June.
Inside Europe’s Push for Electronics Resilience: Five Questions with… Alison James
In the latest installment of Five Questions With…, Alison James, senior director for European Government Relations, discusses how geopolitics, defense demand, data center growth, and EU policy initiatives are reshaping Europe’s electronics industry and creating new opportunities to strengthen regional manufacturing across the value chain.
Advanced Packaging, Materials Characterization, and System Integration: What’s Ahead in the Advanced Electronics Packaging Digest
The August issue of Advanced Electronics Packaging Digest explores how advanced packaging is reshaping semiconductor innovation through better materials characterization, heterogeneous integration (HI), workforce education, and system-level design. Together, these features examine the technologies and engineering decisions driving the next generation of electronic systems.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
Are you familiar with the “locus of control," which describes how much we believe our actions can change the outcome of our lives? Internal locus of control, for example, is the belief that our actions greatly shape our outcomes; external locus of control holds that external forces have a greater influence than our actions on how our lives play out. How we view our own locus of control can strongly influence how we respond to the world, perhaps even creating a self-fulfilling prophecy situation. The news has taken a more languid pace this week. Not so, however, for our intrepid band of I-Connect007 columnists, who thoughtfully tackle some chunky locus of control topics.
Removing the Bottleneck: ZOT's Transition to Direct Imaging
For many PCB fabricators, solder mask imaging can become one of the biggest constraints on production. Traditional exposure methods often involve lengthy setup times, multiple process steps, and opportunities for registration errors, leading to costly rework. ZOT Engineering Ltd., a UK-based contract electronics manufacturer specializing in PCB fabrication and assembly, recently modernized this part of its process by partnering with Schmoll Maschinen to deploy a maskless direct imaging (MDI) system.
Diversification: Where Do You Grow From Here?
Our industry has long operated on a relatively straightforward formula: invest in equipment, build a solid production team, develop reliable manufacturing processes, and compete for business based on quality, delivery, and price. If a shop maintained strong relationships with customers and consistently delivered dependable work, there was every reason to believe the business would continue growing steadily for years. In many ways, this model built the modern PCB industry. But the environment surrounding electronics manufacturing has changed dramatically, and I am concerned that many U.S. domestic fabricators have not fully adjusted to these changes.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
When I first came to the electronics industry, I was coming from the outside. Over time, I learned that this is not an industry that can be understood from just one angle. What happens in design affects manufacturing. Material choices affect reliability. Supply chain decisions influence business strategy, and advances in technology create new challenges and opportunities throughout the entire ecosystem. That complexity is one of the things I appreciate most about covering this industry. Each week, I’m reminded that there is always another layer to explore.
Summit Interconnect Celebrates 10 Years
Ten years ago, Shane Whiteside had a vision for the dwindling North American PCB industry: to develop a company at scale that would put North American PCB manufacturing back on the map. The result was the combination of six PCB organizations and complementary businesses to create Summit Interconnect, now the second-largest PCB manufacturer in North America. In this interview, Summit CEO Shane Whiteside and Vice President of Technology Gerry Partida reflect on Summit's 10th anniversary, the pride they take in what they've built, and the enthusiasm they still bring to the business as they celebrate this milestone.
Beyond PDFs: The Next Generation of Electronics Compliance
Why should electronics manufacturers care about the new IPC Supplier Declaration Standards? Because compliance with global government regulations means manufacturers are expected to collect, verify, and exchange unprecedented amounts of supply chain data, often across hundreds of suppliers and thousands of components. Even more, it must be managed and exchanged efficiently, accurately, and at scale. Yet many engineers, supply chain professionals, compliance managers, and purchasing teams still rely on spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual processes that were never designed to operate at today's scale.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
In this week’s top five must-reads, I chose articles that go from big business questions (to diversify or not), to important technical issues such as DFM errors made in creating HDI designs using ELIC and design for test, to a discussion around some of the power and thermal considerations in advanced packaging, and the fact that they are now, firmly, performance enablers, not after-the-fact elements to be managed in fabrication.
Circularity for a Resilient Supply Chain, PFAS, and More
As governments around the world take a closer look at PFAS and other sustainability issues, electronics manufacturers face an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. In part 2 of this interview, Dr. Diana Radovan, sustainability policy director at the Global Electronics Association, shares insights on emerging PFAS policies, circularity efforts, and the global conversations shaping the industry's future.
Beyond Recycling: A Circularity Approach for a Truly Resilient Electronics Supply Chain
Dr. Diana Radovan, director of sustainability policy and sustainability advocacy lead at the Global Electronics Association, has been at the center of some of the electronics industry's most consequential policy discussions, from the European Parliament in Brussels to sustainability summits in Germany and circularity conferences across Europe. With the European Union's landmark Circular Economy Act moving closer to reality and updates to PFAS regulations, she has been ensuring that the voice of the electronics industry is heard. In this interview, she discusses what's coming, why it matters, why true circularity extends far beyond recycling, and what policymakers still need to do to enable it.
From Prototype to Product: Why E-Textile Standards Matter
Imagine a neonatal monitoring wrap used in a hospital to track an infant’s vital signs during transport between units. It looks and feels like a soft textile. But embedded within it are conductive pathways, sensors, interconnections and electronics that must perform in a critical moment. If the product fails, the issue is not simply a garment defect or an electronics defect. It could affect clinical decision-making. That is what makes e-textiles so promising and so challenging.
Beyond the Board: Diversification as Strategy
Are the days of simply building boards and shipping them out the door coming to an end? For PCB fabricators and electronics manufacturers alike, diversification is moving from a growth strategy to one of survival. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, tariff fluctuations, and accelerating technology cycles are forcing companies to rethink how they create value for customers. At Flexible Circuit Technologies (FCT), that has meant expanding beyond world-class flex circuit manufacturing into assembly, vertical integration, and a growing global footprint.
Electronics Hiring Is a Precision Problem
Manufacturers across the electronics industry continue to report the same challenge: How do I find qualified people? At first glance, this appears to be a labor shortage, but the data reveals a more nuanced story. According to Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, the U.S. manufacturing sector will need approximately 3.8 million new workers between 2024 and 2033. Without significant improvements in workforce development and recruitment, an estimated 1.9 million of those positions could go unfilled.
DFM Mistakes Designers Make When Moving to ELIC
The transition from HDI to every layer interconnect (ELIC) is where the DFM gap between design intent and fabrication reality is most visible. Several common misconceptions appear consistently in the data packages we review at ASC. The most common ELIC design mistake mirrors what we generally see in first-time UHDI builds: using process minimums everywhere because they appear on a capability chart. In ELIC, this is especially consequential. If only one region truly requires aggressive geometry, say, a fine-pitch BGA escape, the rest of the design should preserve margin. Relaxing non-critical areas makes the overall build more manufacturable without sacrificing the dense region that drives the stackup.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
The Pentagon’s announcement on Tuesday that CMMC certification is being immediately suspended is the big news of the week. We’ve been covering the CMMC journey since the beginning, and we’ll stick with the story for the duration. If you’ve followed my list of must-reads, you know that I’m always interested in semiconductor news, and this week had a few good ones. I’ll mention them here, and urge you to read the entire stories: Apple adds to the recent Intel fab agreement by adding to its U.S.-based design and manufacturing agreement with Broadcom; Micron is investing $3 billion to the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem; and Intel announces a 5 billion euro investment in European infrastructure.
Why Principal Mineral Bought Isola: The Vision Behind the Acquisition
With a mission focused on strengthening domestic capacity for strategic minerals and materials critical to national security, energy, AI, defense, and next-generation manufacturing, Principal Mineral is working to address some of the most urgent vulnerabilities in today’s supply chain. Its recent acquisition of Isola Group adds a major electronics materials platform to that portfolio. In this interview, Principal Mineral cofounders Adam Johnson, CEO, and Wes Spurlock, COO, discuss why Isola matters and what it will take to rebuild resilient U.S. supply chains at an industrial scale.
Book Excerpt: The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to... UV Curable Conformal Coatings, Chapter 4
Sustainability and reliability in electronics mean efficient manufacturing and durable devices that reduce waste and the need for frequent replacements. Choosing energy-efficient, low-solvent, fast-processing materials supports these goals. Case studies are presented in Chapter 4 of "The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to... UV Curable Conformal Coatings" that evaluate costs, energy use, materials, space, time, and overall savings.
July I-Connect007 Magazine: Business Diversification and Display Electronics
This month's I-Connect007 Magazine explores two critical challenges facing today's electronics industry: how PCB fabricators can build more resilient businesses through strategic diversification, and how PCB designers can successfully tackle the unique demands of modern display electronics.
An Update on the Printed Circuit Board and Substrates Act
Momentum continues to build in Washington for legislation aimed at strengthening America's PCB industry. With companion House and Senate bills now in play, growing bipartisan support for domestic manufacturing, and key defense-related regulations advancing, the policy landscape remains active for the U.S. electronics manufacturing base. The Printed Circuit Board Association of America has been heavily involved in those advocacy efforts. In this exclusive audio interview, Executive Director David Schild discusses the latest developments surrounding the Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act, the significance of recent progress on Capitol Hill, and how he’s keeping the industry involved in the advocacy process.
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