Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1276973
AUGUST 2020 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 45 Almeida: Somebody has to figure out how to make it correct. Especially in PCB fabrication; it happens in assembly but not as much. You have two distinct groups: one dealing with the design, creating the manufacturing data, and the fabricator, trying to use it. And they're under a lot of time pressures, so they're try- ing to fix it as quickly as possible. As long as they're not rearranging the circuitry and the connections, they'll make the change on the manufacturing floor, and may not even notify the designer. The worst-case is when you have boards that are built, got messed up, and have to be scrapped. And that can be very expen- sive, depending on the type of design that was submitted. Fugitt: And just to take that a lit- tle further, when they get in self- intersecting polygons, instead of using their high-end CAM tool to fix them, they are required to manually fix self-intersecting polygons because of the risk. They are risk-averse, as are most fabricators. Again, manually fix- ing your data is something no designer ever wants to hear. Shaughnessy: Why do OEMs still let this hap- pen, knowing that it impacts them, and they still end up spending more time on the design, but I know that they're already done with it and moving on to the next design. Matties: But who's really spending the time? Is it the fabricator spending the time or the designer? Because if it's the fabricator, how does that really impact the designer? Almeida: Yes, it always comes back to the fabri- cator. There are a lot fewer of them, they have small margins, and it's a very competitive market for them. Their view is if they don't service their customer, the customer is going to go somewhere else. They try to minimize any perceived problems with design data; if they can fix it themselves, they'll try to fix it, pass it back, and hope for the best. Matties: How can you help remedy this or tran- sition this thought process? What's your com- pany's impact on this? Almeida: The way we look at it, we're trying to provide knowledge to the end-users. The first way we provide it is CAM350, for exam- ple, and BluePrint; they go hand in hand. BluePrint provides PCB documentation, and CAM350 provides the manufacturing verifi- cation of the outputs from the CAD system. Using these types of tools in the design pro- cess can help alleviate some of the prob- lems you're going to find downstream. But it also requires a bit of progressiveness on the OEM to adopt these tools into their flow. And when you start adding new tools and pro- cesses, it tends to lengthen the design process. Even though it may keep the overall prod- uct development process at pretty much the same length, the design itself is getting lon- ger because you're performing more steps in it—but every- body's trying to shorten the design process. Matties: The case could be made that the slow road is the best. Almeida: But still, when you're the one there, sitting with the time clock going, and you have to get this off your plate, you're trying to get it as correct and as complete in the short- est amount of time as possible. And it's just a human condition. If I'm done, and I ship it out, a few days later, a package arrives; if those boards are right and working, nobody seems to worry about what happened along the way between those two steps. It's only when another problem arises that companies get really squirrelly—like if they do another revision, or even the same revision— with a different manufacturer who doesn't correct the errors. Then they're stymied as to why one set of boards worked, and the others didn't. Ray Fugitt