Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1011746
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2018 Knapp: I've been here almost 25 years and I'd like some of that stuff. If you think back to the days where we got into this business, there were some older folks up at the top. They had supervisory engineering positions, process po- sitions, and that was something that a lot of us aspired to. There was always a young crop of hungry, in Roddy's terms, engineers, just good people wanting to move up. Suddenly, there's not that crop any more waiting to come right in behind folks like us that are getting toward the end of the train ride. There's a problem with all the tribal knowledge walking out the door and there aren't any people to convey that knowl- edge to, that are all that interested. Osborn: I would like to add to that. One of the things I've been a real proponent of is training. As you're aware, at the fed- eral and state level now they have programs for training, improving your skills. But un- fortunately to get some of this grant money they want to fun- nel it through the communi- ty colleges and then the col- leges will train the student. I've been fighting to have that grant money go directly to the company that's hiring these newbies and use that to facili- tate their salary for a trial pe- riod, whether it's 90 days, six months or a year. And then once that trial pe- riod is over, if they cut the mustard, then the company takes on the total financial obligation and even gives a raise!. Krick: When I was climbing up through the ranks there were so many opportunities to go up the ladder, and that's how you did it. It was time and tenure. The more you learnt, if you kind of hit a top ceiling at the place you were at, pull your resume around and throw a dart at a state. There were places you could go that you never even would have thought about. It's so limited now and trying to encourage kids to look at this as a career, certainly a 35-40-year career, that's a hard sell. Knapp: They begin to equate manufacturing to their dad and granddad who worked in the fac- tory, or in the coal mine, and there's a differ- ence. Krick: There's just not a hunger there, not for this type of an environment, and I don't if any- body could really change it. I've told many people coming in here for interviews that to build boards you don't need to be a road schol- ar. You need to get it, take it in and if you un- derstand it you can have a very good career doing it whether it's here at Colonial, TTM, or any of the other ones that are out there. But a lot of younger people don't get it. They look at it as just kind of a medial task, maybe one notch above cleaning restrooms but not much more than that. Knapp: There is such a wealth of knowledge and information and just creativity that's avail- able in this business if you want to just reach out and grab it. We still do things here that we're told can't be done, even when people are watch- ing us do it and it's not like that everywhere. Holden: Well, that's great. I've got a couple questions before we run out of time. I was just at the IPC reliability forum for milaero and automotive in Baltimore. One of the things that came out is the new reliability test that they put in place last September. The TM 650 2.6.27A in which the boards must pass six re- flows at a peak temperature 260°C but being monitored by a four-wire Kelvin bridge while the thing reflowed. Are you doing that test, or have you seen that requirement? Osborn: No, but I was also at that conference and heard the same discussion. Knapp: This takes us almost full circle to where we began this. How does that test line up with the capabilities of that material to begin with? Rodney Krick