Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1337116
92 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2021 to know the world which they control. It is all here and ready to explode. As a side note, I used an AI feature to prop- erly spell "autonomous." Now my computer is sending data because I used Word's Smart Look-up feature to find the word "autono- mous" and my Google pages will be filled with ads for AI. It's pinpoint sniper advertising, only aimed at me. All the advanced AI electronics on PCBs allows them to identify my inquiries and target only me with those ads. I found this out a few weeks ago. I checked Word to get the correct capitalization for a Raspberry Pi com- puter. e same day, I was suddenly getting four to six ads per page on Google for Rasp- berry Pi computers. Coincidence? I think not. I was specifically targeted. e ads were sent to only me out of billions of internet users, and this part scares me the most. e point is that a huge number of PCBs were involved in allowing them to target an ad to only me. From my home PC and the internet router box, to a box outside my home and the 20 or more routing computers on the internet, all that information is sent back to some adver- tising company. en, the data goes through a computer that "knows" to send me the ads they wanted me to see. It took a few hundred PCBs with powerful computers to achieve the feat. Our industry is only too happy to sell all the PCBs needed to make this targeted ad pro- paganda work. e average size of a PCB has decreased greatly. A few years ago, a small PCB was 50 square inches. Today, most PCBs measure only a few square inches, and many are much smaller. In one reality, we are using much more laminate, but we are making many smaller PCBs. ese small PCBs are in smart watches, small RF radar units for your car, and every one of the billions of LED light bulbs; if you look carefully enough, you will find the tiny PCBs everywhere. However, many PCB shops are not specifically set up to manufacture very small PCBs with large spaces between indi- vidual PCB parts to allow for router bits to cut them. A smart move would be to design your shop panels to use every little bit of space and use laser or die cutters to increase the number of PCBs that you can squeeze onto a panel. Conductive silver or tin on glass is a spe- cialty market. With every one of the billions of phones utilizing this technology, it is a massive market all to itself. It utilizes specific plating baths and special imaging and etching equip- ment. Many of the tiny, overlapping traces are actually screen-printed silver and clear insula- tive inks. It is expensive to set up, however, the volumes are tremendous. Ultra-thin multilayer is a quickly grow- ing technology, utilizing thin glue sheets and very thin laminates to produce eight layers, under 20 mils thick. e thin circuits are in cellphones, computers, and a lot of other very small devices. A surprising amount of technol- ogy fits on these little circuits, such as hearing aids controlled by your smartphone. 3D printing will be the big disrupter to change the PCB business. ey are now quickly print- ing stainless steel, titanium, copper, and other metals as well as dielectric bases. e 3D print- ers are already making FR-4 type laminates. Once the technology is sorted out, 3D print- ing of a PCB will be upon us quickly. Recent changes in the technology have improved speed by 20 times and lowered cost by 10 times. Soon we will see real 3D-printed circuit boards. Two other technologies that are quickly growing are heavy copper and high voltage I was specifically targeted. The ads were sent to only me out of billions of internet users, and this part scares me the most.