Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1011746
AUGUST 2018 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 19 al knowledge as to being be able to build this stuff. But it's hands-on by everybody in the building to get it through with kid gloves. It's not just throwing it to the floor and go. Osborn: And the bottom line is that the R&D is being done in-house now at our expense. Patty Goldman: And it only works for that job? Krick: That is correct. Usually you're right. What you learn on one part may not necessarily apply on another. Osborn: But I still go back to com- munication. As a matter of fact, I was told this morning we have an engineering group that wants to come down and tour our facility next week. And the reason that they want to come down is that they are experiencing some of these problems with some of their other sup- pliers, and since we are their closest board shop, they want to visit to discuss the likes and dislikes of their supplied data. This bit of open- ness unfortunately is not common across the customer base. Krick: I think we're hitting some degree of lim- itation of equipment and materials. We've seen that this week doing sub-three and three re- peatedly and robustly with good yields. We've got reasonably state-of-the-art drills. We've got state-of-the-art printers. We've got state-of-the- art etchers. We've got what I certainly consider state-of-the-art capability and yet, you sit here and go through the art and data Mark was allud - ing to and it's a failure and a failure and a failure. At some point, you must go back to you suppli- ers and say, "Two-mil resist ain't cutting it any- more" or again, the designers don't understand. Knapp: We're also trying to run state-of-the-art work with materials that are the same materi- als that we were using 10 years ago to do what was state-of-the-art then. Osborn: And we're always looking for state-of- the-art employees. Feinberg: That's true. If you think about it, back in the day there were 25 circuit board compa- nies within 100 miles of you. How many are there now? Osborn: Within 100 miles? Maybe four. It's a changing world, and it's still a lot of fun, but it is a challenge. Feinberg: One of the definitions of fun is meet- ing a challenge. Osborn: Right. That sense of satisfaction that you get at the end of the week after shipping good product on time. The customers are hap- py, and one thing you can count on is that this cycle will repeat intself the following Mon- day. When things go south, the customers will let you know. That's where the communica- tion comes in. Feinberg: Before we wrap up a little bit on re- liability, reliability combined with quality are kind of different. You can meet the quality spec. Quality is meeting the requirements of the cus- tomer, but it still may not give you a reliable product. So how do you see the quality speci- Figure 2: Colonial's new Miva Quad wave LED direct imager is capable of imaging down to 1 mil (25 µm) with conventional or LDI photoresists. Throughput has been greatly enhanced with innerlayers, outer layers and solder mask without sacrificing printing quality.