Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1481876
16 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2022 350-mil panel. My ultimate goal as an engineer is not to ever get called, because that means my process is working perfectly. But in 38 years, that hasn't happened. Shaughnessy: Do you have any experience with dual-wave dry film? Davidson: Yes. Many of the new dry films are being created because Orbotech went with two wavelengths: 375 nanometers and 405 nanome- ters. e film companies are responding and building specifically to those wavelengths so we tested a few. Why did Orbotech pick 375 and 405? Well, 405 made sense to me; 375 I'm not quite so sure about. But more resists are coming out with the direct image designator, and they react well to the 375 or 405. at's been the big help. Shaughnessy: Interesting. What are your big- gest challenges, whether it's technological, the market, or something else? Davidson: For us, it's reacting and meeting the customer expectations, especially when they're requesting an exotic material because it has a great dielectric property, but it might not be the greatest for manufacturability. ey don't necessarily need to see or know that when they first look at a design because they're looking at the numbers. ey need to ask, "Will I get better signal integrity? Will it do this or that for me? Is it thin?" Matching what the customer wants and doing it quickly are probably the biggest chal- lenges. I see rebuilds come through and I try to fix those. It's really about getting it pushed through the first time the right way, and then I'll see what I need to change in my process so I don't have to physically stand there. Shaughnessy: It sounds like you guys do a cer- tain amount of educating the customer. Davidson: Yes, our inside sales and field engi- neers will say to customers, "We know you want this because of the dielectric, but it's really difficult to process." Ultimately the cus- tomer might just say, "I need to have that mate- rial and then we must figure out how to do it." We'll invest the time and energy to do that, because you must make a product they can use. Our customers listen. ey won't necessar- ily follow our advice, but they'll listen to it. Sometimes, they'll look at it and say, "Oh, OK, I can go with this material instead." ere are new materials constantly coming out, so the same design that might be hard to manufac- ture with product X flows well and etches well for product Y, and the customer is more than happy. We do have good feedback loops. But when you're trying to do the high-tech prod- ucts, oen you're getting fresh off the drawing board, so to speak. Shaughnessy: As far as technology, where would you like to see more innovation in imaging? Davidson: Automation for LDI would be awe- some. Get it to where it's a very consistently known commodity. Shaughnessy: How do you work with the other TTM facilities? I imagine you share informa- tion to keep on top of technology. Davidson: We share information on things that work, and if we hit a technology snag, we can talk about it. We have our other facilities with their specialities, and we organize "engineer- ing summits" to discuss a topic, what works and what doesn't, and look for best practices. We recently had one on solder mask process- ing, for example. We don't want to be a "little silo TTM." Oen, we coordinate it so that I'll get resist X, our Logan (Utah) facility will get Y, and For- est Grove (Oregon) will get the Z. We'll each run an independent test, compare, then say, "Do we want to swap out or follow up with one of these guys to see if there's a benefit?" e advantage is that if you can leverage corpo-