Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1060280
DECEMBER 2018 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 51 facturing side and what your design will go through, particularly in the wet process area where you create the trace, space, and plated through-holes. Matties: We all agree it helps, but we still know that there's a deficiency in that communica- tion. How do we change that? Is their pain not high enough yet? Dunn: That's a great question. I have been thinking about it a lot while at this confer- ence. Not to date myself, but 10–15 years ago, it was very common to have site visits. De- signers would come into the manufacturing fa- cility, tour the plant, sit down, talk, and have lunch. We all got to understand each other's problems, viewpoints, and processes a little bit better. Over time, everybody got busy, and we became more narrowly focused. Matties: Digital. Dunn: Exactly. We don't have to have conver- sations. We don't send you out to see your board shop because you can go online, search "PCBs," and look at sites, but it's not the same thing. Matties: Not to just cast millennials into one basket, but I talked to a fabricator who invited a millennial to tour their facility, and the mil- lennial's response was, "Why would I waste my time doing that when I can see it online?" Is that a generational thing, or is that just the data or internet world that we live in? Dunn: I think it's probably both. It's not just millennials who have that response, but it's certainly not people in my generation. That gap in between is where I think it started. May- be it goes back to digital, that's when email started and ordering online. Matties: When you look back 20 years ago, where were we then? We were still in relation- ships. We didn't have webcams inside of facto- ries or virtual reality tours and things like that. I'm trying to think back 20 years ago and re- member what life was like. Dunn: It's hard to remember. I feel bad because if you never tour a fabricator or see a wet pro- cess, how do you even understand that smell— the PCB smell? Matties: Quite truthfully, you might be better off not knowing it ever existed (laughs). When we look at tours, the tour is not really about understanding manufacturing because a lot of what people say is that they need to manufac- ture boards to actually understand it. At Alti- umLive, they're introducing 365 and say the feedback that you are going to get and the re- al-time collaborative environment that they are creating with their new tool is a partial re- placement—maybe not 100%—but certainly a replacement to accelerate that knowledge that a designer needs. Dunn: I'm really excited about what they rolled out today. I think that's going to have a big im- pact on the industry. Matties: It will be interesting to see what im- provements come out of a tool like that. What advice would you give somebody buying a board today? Dunn: Pay attention to more than just the price of the board you're going to purchase. Look at capabilities and make sure that you fit the fab- ricator that you're looking at with your long- range technology plans.