Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1417991
66 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 at brought back memories of my time as a student technician at MIT Lincoln Labs in the mid-1950s. Designers would lay out a pattern on a large sheet of plastic. We would then apply black tape to the pattern, trimming with an X-Acto knife when needed. is was then placed into a large vacuum frame, photo- graphed with a large Brown camera on a track, and photo-reduced tenfold to produce the art- work (negatives) used to image our circuit pat- terns with KPR (Kodak photoresist). In 1957, my supervisor, E.A. (Al) Guditz addressed this tortuous procedure and created what I firmly believe was the predecessor of today's imag- ing systems. He converted a programmable- head milling machine to directly write, in a "dark room," a pattern onto Kodak film using a xenon point light source collimated through a hypodermic needle to expose the film. A lot has changed since then. More modern intelligent systems such as ODB++ and IPC- 2581 record and transfer everything. ey can help users to build databases. e latter can compile unique features. ey can be used as archival tools for pricing. eir AI systems check comparable test specifications. ey retain everything—even the designer's name— in a single file. Today's technology is moving fast. Lines and spaces continue to shrink. Special features and properties, as well as manufacturing proce- dures and materials, are advancing rapidly. A simple unintelligent data transfer system is not sufficiently capable for relatively trouble-free use when DFM becomes even more important. One more caveat is worth noting. Some design specialists and instructors state that it takes twice as long to produce a circuit with Gerber (with errors or problems to fix) as it does to generate one with an intelligent sys- tem. Yet, most PCB designers and fabricators still use CAD layouts that are converted to Gerber and CAM as their primary design tool and fab- rication systems. e fabrication shops appear to depend upon some level of tribal knowledge by experienced operators to solve the issues that arise, especially with mixed technologies, different substrates, and RF circuits. All this points out the need for significant training and continual upgrades of designers (and their tools), especially in today's world of miniscule electronic packages and their shrinking substrates. Education and upskill- ing of all workers are necessary as part of con- tinuing improvement. Designers should not be omitted from this. Management has oen given short shri to this idea. We must also remember, as one fabricator noted in PCB007 Magazine, that automation will reduce errors and costs but not totally eliminate them as long as humans are involved. And humans will be part of the equation for some time to come as providers of CAM so- ware are not likely to update their products (to be automatically uploaded, including design rules) in the near future. How do we move forward? One must deter- mine the causes of the apparent deterrent to advances in PCB design, and then translate this to a working device. It appears evident that many designers are working in a vacuum, in virtual isolation as far as understanding the total manufacturing process of an electronic device. Most are unaware of the materials and processes used to manufacture their devices. ey are unaware of the physical and chemi- cal environments endured as well as some of the electrical properties of various substrates Education and upskilling of all workers are necessary as part of continuing improvement. Designers should not be omitted from this.