Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1116895
MAY 2019 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 17 tomobile. Please give me a list of materials and properties that would fit that kind of applica- tion," or, "I have a hostile environment. What can I use?" Meanwhile, someone else in aero- space says, "I'm going to send a satellite up into low orbit. Please let me know what kind of materials work for that." Matties: That makes a strong case for appli- cation-specific status sheets or specifications. What will drive that? Morgan: Groups are doing it now, such as HD- PUG, which I mentioned earlier. They're large- ly a group of OEMs in the data communica- tions space. They've been doing this for years and are up to phase six now. I ran the last two projects for them. They asked each other, "What do we need for the next generation of our products and in terms of material proper- ties?" Then, they put a list down and said, "We need this kind of property, etc." Next, they ap- proach the manufacturer and ask, "We have these requirements. Do you have any products that would fit that requirement? Is there some- thing new coming along?" The manufacturers give them a list of products and respond, "Yes, we have this product we're just developing. Would you like to look at it?" HDPUG then narrows that list down to be- tween 10–20 products and goes through a rigorous testing regime on a test board. It's called the MRT-6 board, which is developed by Nokia—a very challenging board with many difficult structures for reliability and signal in- tegrity. We put all of the boards through this test vehicle in the same process with the same board shop and then analyze the results. They produce a table for their members of how the materials perform. Then, you can use this da- ta and say, "I see all of these products, and that one matches what I want," and that gives you a shortlist. There are companies that will not use any product unless it has already been through the HDPUG screening process. You really can't trust all the data on the data sheet of the manufacturers because some of these might be desirable properties, but they don't even reach final production. Many of these products that we talk about are newly re- leased, so this is part of the development pro- cess. You can't be sure, and you need to test them. I've been trying for years to try to get some commonality, but they have their own test methods and coupons, and they don't use any material until it has passed all of their tests; they don't rely on standards like IPC's, but that's not very efficient for the industry. That's something that some companies might like to do, but it would be far better if the sec- tor said, "We're in automotive and would like to have a set of standards that work for our sector." That's how I would like to see things going, and the same for data communications and hand-held mobile devices, but I don't know how we get there. Matties: Well, it's the high end that you have to pay attention to. Morgan: Yes, but the same problem exists else- where as well. The high end is driven by per- formance, and the low end is driven far more by cost, which is also important. I'm most interested in high-end performance, so that's where I'm always working. Johnson: You laid out a nice list of resources for practical information about materials. How would you recommend that a design team get acclimated as they move into these high-per- formance materials? Where should they start? Ventec Pasquato TE 15 prepreg slittersheeter.