Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1398328
24 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2021 may be. If you're really open and you're really sharing what you're capable of, that's the way you should portray it. Not as Kelly said, where some guys are just going to overhype it, over- market it, and say, "We do two mil lines and spaces." You don't do it in every instance. Matties: Right, and you don't do it with high yield either. Dack: And you don't do it with three-ounce copper. Vaughan: at's correct. All of the above. Matties: ere are so many variables, it's got to be incredibly difficult to have a smooth pro- cess. Vaughan: Yes, it's changed in recent years. But going back not that long ago, it oen surprised me how oen a printed circuit board designer had never been inside a printed circuit board fabrication operation. Matties: We hear that all the time as well. Vaughan: I think that's changing somewhat. Obviously, absent the COVID environment, but pre-COVID and certainly as we exit that, I'm hopeful that trend will continue because I don't think there's anything more valuable than the person that's entrusted with develop- ing leading edge technology designs to come spend the day or two days in a fabrication operation, meet with the engineers, and really understand what the real world is on the other side of the equation. Andy Shaughnessy: Kelly, I was at DesignCon a couple of years ago and you kept getting calls about a design problem that just wouldn't go away. It was going overseas for volume, and you said designers sometimes don't under- stand how things are different when you're designing for high volume vs. designing for Vaughan: Absolutely not. at really becomes prescriptive. Commoditized might not be the right word but close to commoditized is abso- lutely the right word. It has become such a race to the bottom from a price perspective in the EMS sector that really the only way you can differentiate is to develop techniques and processes in your assembly instructions and in your test methodology that sets you apart from your competitors. It's pretty routine on the EMS side of the equation that even if a DoD prime comes back to the EMS guy and says, "We need you to share all your process methodology, all your assembly instructions, all that information about how you developed the stencil, and what your methodology was there," you'll find most EMS providers will be very reluctant to give up that information. at is the form of IP at the EMS level. Matties: Is that a barrier to communication, though? Dack: What they publish is part of the problem. What EMS providers or bare board suppliers commonly publish are their capabilities in the form of maximum producibility capabilities. ey will publish the smallest-sized lines and spacing that they can achieve. is is where the problem starts because the second half of the problem is designers interpreting that as a free license to go ahead and design to those num- bers without any regard to, "Wait a second, those are bleeding edge numbers which may have some hype involved to pull in business." Matties: Are EMS companies doing the same? Vaughan: We have seen it once or twice, but it's not routine in the EMS sector. It is a little more routine in the fabrication side of the indus- try. To clarify, most people would say stan- dard process, advanced, and emerging. You might get three different answers for that line width. One might be four mils, and then three mils, and then two mils or whatever the case