Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1267313
74 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2020 Interview by the I-Connect007 Editorial Team Schmartboard has a surprisingly simple patented process to improve solder joint reli- ability; founders Neal Greenberg and Andrew Yaung talk in detail about it, as well as their hopes of finding a go-to-market partner. Dan Feinberg: We are joined by the founders of Schmartboard, who have come up with a process that appears to significantly improve reliability. I'm going to let them talk a little bit about Schmartboard first and then about this process. I have to state ahead of time that they are a client of mine, but with all the issues we've been talking about at IPC regarding improving reliability for areas such as autonomous trans- portation, medical devices, military, etc., this is a very interesting and timely topic. Neal, tell our readers about Schmartboard. Neal Greenberg: We started as an engineering service company designing circuits, doing lay- outs for companies like Analog Devices, Intel, Texas Instruments, and a lot of smaller com- panies. In that process, we found a problem. These companies were going through many iterations of prototyping boards. We would start with revision A and go through the alpha- bet sometimes. We started thinking about how we could improve that from a prototyping standpoint. Back then, if you were going to use an IC from Analog Devices, for example, you'd get a reference board for it from them. This reference board would have the main core and all the bells and whistles—every type of I/O that you could imagine—and you would have to dissect it down to what you needed for your development. That's what you were doing as an engi- neer, taking this reference board and dissect- ing it down. We thought that was kind of silly. Wouldn't it make more sense if you have the core functionality—what it is that you're buy- ing—and then have a way to add different things that you need, different I/O, etc.? Our first patent was what we called circuit board building blocks, and they were two-inch by two-inch boards that you take the core technol- ogy and then physically connect it to needed I/O. Here's an SOIC chip—0.5 millimeters in New Solder Joint Technology From Schmartboard QFP unsoldered QFP soldered