Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1509257
38 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2023 at's where it's going to be tough for smaller operations. If you can use the data, knowledge, and intelligence about what will work and not work, you can find out that you never should have gone through Death Valley with that design because it was just going to crash and burn. If we have information and data that tells us a certain outcome, then we can make intelli- gent decisions during the quoting process and the collaboration process. is is what we can do to make it work. e most fun part for us is being approached by and working with PCB design tool suppli- ers. ey're very active, but their worldview is a little further upstream. ey have tools that take DFM rules and apply them to a design. But they'll have like 50 rules on a ledger, and they're killing me trying to set it up. I think the PCB design tool companies need to have a better under- standing that there are dif- ferent rules for a class 2 board and a class 3 board. ere are rules for half-ounce copper, one-ounce copper, and two-ounce copper. You can't use one rule for all of them. is is because they're not seeing how the board is actually manufactured, and it becomes a very huge attribute list. Matties: What do you think is the preferred design data transfer format? Gerber is old and archaic, dating back to 1973. e ODB++ format is a good solution that the industry has been using for at least three decades. We're in the third revision of using IPC-2581, which is an open format. ere have been two other attempts at a standard not owned by anybody. People seem to want to use 2581 for stackups, outlines, and CMM downloading. From my experience as a CAM application engineer, when there's an open format, people have different interpretations of the protocols. Different implementations can interpret things differently, and when that happens, we create scrap. We're now in rev C of IPC-2581. Every time a new revision comes out, it takes a year or two before everybody updates their tools. Matties: It's my understanding, from a small survey that we did a few years back, that manufacturers prefer 2581 over any of those other formats. To my knowledge, out of our seven factories, I don't think we've built one board with 2581. Yes, the designers still primarily use Gerber or ODB++. Matties: I've really enjoyed this conversation. Is there anything else you'd like to add? is is my 39th year in the industry, and I've never had as much fun as I'm having right now. It's fun and it's a challenge. Every day, I use everything I've ever learned, starting with my first electronics job in cable TV amplifiers, where you had to make amplifiers that went from 50 to 550 megahertz, which is low frequency now. But try- ing to get circuitry to behave the same way between that range of frequency was not easy. Now we're into gigahertz, and your RF signals are all over the map. It's challenging, but it's fun every day. Matties: Gerry, thank you. Any time. I enjoyed it. DESIGN007 The most fun part for us is being approached by and working with PCB design tool suppliers.