Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1083315
128 I-CONNECT007 I REAL TIME WITH... IPC APEX EXPO 2019 SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE by Kelly Dack IPC APEX EXPO 2019 fea- tured new products and materials and the latest tech- nologies and solutions aimed at improving PCB design, fabrication, and assembly processes. The I-Connect007 team roamed the show floor, recorders in hand, and asked various attendees to tell us their impressions of the show and what caught their attention. Here are the highlights. Editor's note: Responses have been edited slightly for clarity. Dan Beaulieu President, D.B. Management Group I've seen a lot of optimism at this show. If you watch the booths, for example, every- body is much more active. Sometimes you go to shows, and people are sitting back waiting for something to happen. Here, people are coming in and buy- ing. There is a lot of activity. Also, the smart machines are incredible with CFX, machine- to-machine communication, and data collec- tion. That's the future. Automation and AI are everywhere and very significant this year. It all feels new. I can't wait for two years from now to see where we are going to be. I just spoke with somebody from Koh Young about smart automation. I asked him, "What happens when we are all sharing this informa- tion?" I read that if a self-driving car has an accident in Tokyo, the AI in every self-driving car in the world learns from it. So what are we going to do with competing companies learn- ing all of this? Peter Chen Sales manager, DediProg Technology Co. Ltd. This is my third time at the show, and as a vendor, there has been a lot of traf- fic and people coming from all over. Today's the last day, so I think people are coming slowly, but the past two days have been going well. The automatic IC pro- gramming machine also stood out. It's pretty exciting to help smooth the manufacturing production line. Cary Chiu Manufacturing engineer, Northrop Grumman There are a lot of great vendors in the area with things to offer. It's interest- ing to see how technology is progressing such as lots of metrology inspection stuff, which is really nice. But a lot of things don't apply to what we do, which is mainly assembly. I'm in elec - tronic assembly manufacturing. With CFX, we're seeing a lot of things that we weren't expecting and potential solutions. Plus, the Tesla car at the conference was a complete hit. Love it. Joe Clark Principal, Downstream Technologies This has been a great show for us. We've generated a lot of leads. We're relatively new to this show, and it's a big show for us, so it takes some time to get your footprint here. A lot of my involve - Attendees Speak!