Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1498723
MAY 2023 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 31 I used to tell them to visit their board fabri- cation shop, but I've readjusted. You need to visit a volume EMS provider who is processing boards down conveyor belts, because you can learn so much, not just about slash sheets and materials, but you'll know what the require- ments are. You'll find out what the require- ments are for panelization, flexi boards, and un-panelizable boards. Every designer should visit the bare board manufacturing stakeholder—EMS, the assem- bler, and the bare board supplier—and then become involved in IPC education. is helps new designers tie it all together. Shaughnessy: Kelly, any closing comments? With the hundreds of designs I see, I suspect that at least 85% of the boards are normal mul- tilayers that can use just about any glass epoxy FR-4 material. e rest of the designs will be high-performance boards. In other words, there are not many designs that require super specification and exotic materials. We're talking about creating a new guide- line or index for specifying materials that will really only help 10–15% of PCB design- ers. ere are bigger fish to fry just in helping the designers who are designing the 85% of boards that are FR-4 boards, because we can't get these FR-4 boards to run down our line due to bad DFM. Shaughnessy: Good stuff, as usual. Thanks for speaking with us, Kelly. Any time. Designers: "Know where to care." DESIGN007 In a past issue of Design007 Magazine, the I-Con- nect007 team spoke with Ventec's COO Mark Good- win and Technology Ambassador Alun Morgan about material standards. In this interview, they describe how they feel current standards do not sufficiently recognize the needs of end customers today with new processes and materials being shoehorned into old standards based on dated ideas of classifica- tions, and how this makes choosing the right material challenging for designers. They suggest implement- ing a simpler system that is based on performance. Barry Matties: Mark, please start with what you see as issues around the standards. Mark Goodwin: There are two particular areas: one is very product-specific, and the other is standard-specific. I'll start with the product-specific one. We have an increasing global market for thermal management products, insulated metal substrates, thermally conductive laminates, and prepregs, and we have no industry standards for comparing test methods to allow an end user to adequately compare the thermal per- formance of those materials. It's the Wild West out there on those products. The other area for me is IPC-4101—the slash sheets—where there is a hang- up on resin chemistry rather than functionality; there's a whole history to that. And the world has moved so far forward, the specification has not kept up, and it needs an industry effort to reconfigure and realign that specification. Those are the starting points for me. Alun Morgan: We consider stan- dards from two perspectives. One is a mandatory side, so that means both fire and electrical safety, which are pretty clear and there's very little compro- mise. The other is performance standards or classification standards, which Mark alluded to, such as IPC-4101 or IEC series, where the intention is to define a standard or specifica- tion that gives designers a choice within a range of performance for materials; that's somewhat bro- ken now. To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the September 2019 issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here. Is It Time to Shake Up Materials Standards?