Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1475604
14 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2022 Holden: Yes. Matties: at's substantial. en you start look- ing at your power planes; what did you call that technology, Happy? Holden: Power mesh. When you eliminate power planes, you drop a number of layers too, as well as improve your electrical performance, because each power rail is tightly coupled to ground. Matties: While everybody is busy looking for parts, it seems like equal effort is made to look at alternate technologies and design meth- odology. Holden: Yes. But how many OEMs emp lo y anyb o dy who e ven under stand s what you' ve ju st li sted there, much less the power to say to the boss, "Hey, let me re-design this a differ- ent way"? Matties: I think we need to highlight these alternatives, because the designers can be the heroes if they come in and say, "Listen, we can save you X dollars if we utilize this, and we can eliminate 30% of the component usage or whatever it happens to be." Holden: Like the adage says, we never seem to change until we have an emergency or a crisis. If everything that we think might happen actu- ally happens and you have to start and you can't get material, then this thing says, "All right, fig- ure out how to do it, less material or make the board smaller." e material you have provides more boards, so you can ship a product. Matties: We've been talking about the design side of this, but what about on the solder mask? For example, can we eliminate cost by going to inkjet solder mask? e designer has to account for that. Holden: I think there is a savings there. Espe- cially with an inkjet solder mask, you don't cover the whole board with solder mask any- more. You can put it just around the traces and save 50% of the cost of the solder mask. at's a material cost savings. You get twice as many boards out of the same amount of solder mask material you purchased. Matties: A huge labor savings too, and you can ask for this when you're designing a board and you're saying, "I'm going to use inkjet solder mask. What's the labor or what's the reduction?" I think you have to ask for that cost reduction because if you don't ask for it, they may charge you the standard solder mask fee. Johnson: Ri g h t . B e c a u s e that's been the traditional pricing structure; you're actually, as a customer, forcing them to do a new kind of pricing around solder masks. Matties: Who decides the final finish? Is it the designer? Holden: I just finished an upcoming Tech Talk column where I discuss palladium on copper, which is especially suitable for additive and fine line. It costs significantly less than ENIG and yet it's suitable for harsh environments and things like that; OSP, immersion silver, and immersion tin don't work well in harsh envi- ronments. Matties: It may be time to rethink final finishes, to add in some cost of material conservation.