Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1197000
48 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2020 tor that has a coplanarity of 0.15 mm, and we recommend a 6-mm stencil, the customer may not be able to use our component due to other component requirements on the PCBA. We try to stress to our internal design engineers that there's a bigger world than connectors. And when we're designing connectors, we have to account for other components on the board and how our connector design impacts that. Ruffino: And being a user of our own products gives us a good feedback loop on those critical characteristics. Hines: A design engineer might make a connec- tor, you have a coplanarity of 0.15 mm, and one of the things that we like to emphasize to our design engineers is that coplanarity matters not only as it leaves our manufacturing plant or as it's received at the customer, but copla- narity during reflow is even more important. How does the connector react as temperatures peak during reflow oven soldering? Ruffino: It's warpage, and, at times, the co- planarity, degrades during the reflow process itself versus the as-received product. This could impact solder joint yield and reliability. That's one of the major advantages of having a complete SMT process line in the Molex Corpo- rate Reliability Lab is that you can evaluate. That SMT process is not only here to help us evaluate, tweak, and help our manufacturing organiza- tions with their problems with building PCBAs, but it also gives us the ability to run our connec- tors through a true manufacturing process and run our reliability testing after they've been exposed to what our customers will expose our products to. If typical SMT processing impacts the performance of a new connector under development, we will measure and address its effects early in the development cycle. Hines: It even gives us the ability to translate that back into design guidelines while putting controls and limits on things that we might not have in the past because we have insights we didn't have before. Johnson: What sort of design team, product, customer, company is a good fit for you to do design services with? Hines: It's pretty broad, but Frank mentioned our industry segments earlier. I'll highlight the ones that we're focused on, Nolan. We catego- rize a 5G data center network. So, when you think about providers of data center servers and equipment that is critical to running the network and the design engineers that are designing the next generation of data center hardware, those are folks that we would want to engage as early as possible in the design process. Automotive and medical are also big areas for us. In terms of what we call "big bets" in the industrial space, we call it industrial automa- tion. As you look at the industrial internet of things (IIoT) where you have manufactur- ing for equipment, robotics, and AI that are connected to the manufacturing process and data systems, all of those require connectivity. All of those would be very good customers and prospects for us to engage in. Rickett: Which we get with Phillips-Medis- ize's long history in drug delivery; the synergy between its long history in that space and Molex's history in connectors and electron- ics helps to deliver more value to the medical consumer in terms of even networking your drug delivery device to the internet. And that includes wearables and monitoring devices. Johnson: What are the challenges in getting from design to getting something successfully manufactured and out the door? That's one of the major advantages of having a complete SMT process line in the Molex Corporate Reliability Lab is that you can evaluate.