Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1494936
16 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2023 building blocks; you can't solve it all on day one. at said, there seems to be a lot of inertia, but Summit is committed to the task. We're ready for CMMC Level 2 certification; all we need is an audit body and for those to be appointed through the DoD. All we can do is manage our piece of the infrastructure. If enough people across the supply chain take on that mentality, then we can get there a lot sooner. e other challenge now is capital expendi- tures. e boards I've been doing over 40 years have changed dramatically—even more dra- matically in the last five years, particularly with layer counts and the sequential lamination cycles you go through to accomplish the via structures and hybrid material builds. It might be one board with 24 layers in the customer's eyes, but we see maybe three or four sequential laminations required to manufacture it. at one board is multiple different boards when it moves through a factory prior to final lamina- tion, so you need more press cycle capability, your drill sizes are smaller and performed by million-dollar laser machines, drill hit counts are extraordinarily high, and there's the laser-driven fine line resolution that is required. It's not my dad's old circuit shop any- more. It's quite costly to stay on the leading edge. For the military market, the deliverables are significant. When you look at the complexity of the coupons on the perimeter of the panels that we process, they're incorporating RF measurement features, controlled impedance, drill registration, image registra- tion, and plating thicknesses. And that's just the coupons. ere is the cross-sectioning that accom- panies that, and all the engineer- ing resources required to sup- port a purchase order. It's signifi- cant in terms of manpower, so we spend a lot of time building out world class labs to support cross-section and deliverable activi- ties. I'm not sure our OEM customers are truly cognizant of the amount of effort—and there is a cost associated with all that activity. ere are some challenges in all of that, and you must look at it like that's the ante to play in the space. For smaller fabricators who have a couple of military program positions, pricing to achieve margin, however they're structured, becomes more challenging as the deliverables increase. Moore's Law for PCBs: Staff and Automation The support infrastructure for that is huge because it's thinking about those designs that will be manufactured; are we reaching a point where it's time to change how we fab to simplify that? One would think we're at the bounds of phys- ics, and we can't do any more. I've heard that my whole career, but somehow the innovators and the printed circuit board industry cra away and develop innovative solutions. Electroless copper developing system.