74 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2023
As signal speeds continue to increase and feature sizes decrease, PCB
designers are beginning to pay greater attention to test and design for
test (DFT) strategies. Bert Horner, president of The Test Connection in
Hunt Valley, Maryland, is spearheading this drive to show designers the
benefits of a solid DFT plan, as well as the downside of not having a test
strategy.
Most resin systems in use today are extremely complex products with
elaborate chemical formulations. Process characteristics and final prop-
erties are usually adjusted by the manufacturer to suit the customer's
requirements, yet resin technology is often overlooked.
Ralph Morrison was a physicist who promoted
the belief that electromagnetic energy flows
in spaces, not the traces. That energy does
not flow in the copper traces of a PCB, but
rather the energy follows the traces acting
as a waveguide and propagates through the
dielectric material.
I see digital
automation
as the sim-
plification
of manual
tasks that
have been
optimized
in the digi-
tal world to
a point where they require the least amount
of effort to successfully do what they are
required to do in the real world.
TOP TEN
Sensible Design: Encapsulation Resins—PU vs. Epoxy
Beyond Design: Forget What
You Were Taught
The Test Connection: Spreading the Word About DFT
Bert Horner
EDITOR'S
PICKS
Digital Transformation:
Leveraging Digital Automation
to Accelerate PCB Design
