Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1517130
MARCH 2024 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 37 It's not just the designer who needs to check their design for compliance; it could be an EMS company using this before they send a design off to fabrication. It's benefiting both sides of the equation in this case. Do designers and manufacturers have to pay for this? Kayesar: ere is a 30-day free trial when start- ing. Beyond that, we are all about making infor- mation available. Manufacturers can upload and maintain their profiles free of charge. For DFM, this is a consumption-based, pay-per- use model. Designers, or anyone who wants to employ the DFM checks, can run the analysis on a pay-per-use basis. is opens up a lot of possibilities for small- and medium-sized busi- nesses. is sort of thing was completely out of reach for them, but now they can consume the service on an as-needed basis, and it's a much more budget-friendly option. That's good. How many manufacturers are involved in this? Kayesar: ere are hundreds of companies and dozens of manufacturers already involved directly in the platform, and you can certainly log in and look at the network to get a good idea of who's involved in it. Not everybody who joins wants to share their presence. We have a public network, and you have to submit your company to the network if you want to enable others to see you. So, we enable our custom- ers to maintain their privacy and the privacy of their data, obviously, to any level that they want. Does this include assembly providers and fabricators? Kayesar: Yes, it's open to both. We support analysis for fabrication and assembly. e IPC profiles include information on both fabrica- tion and assembly processes, so the standards that are being set may look at solderability, or pin-to-pad compliance, for example. e IPC- 7351 standard is represented there. IPC did market research with their preferred suppli- ers and came up with trace width and spacing constraints that represent typical values in the industry and allow you to check for compliance with manufacturability standards. PCBflow allows you to organize all the accompanying files that you might need within a project, and these files can be passed between the designer and the manufacturer freely if they want to. Peter, this sounds like a great partnership with Siemens. Peter Tranitz: Yes, we're very happy with this collaboration. IPC and Siemens joined forces in mid-2023. We had meetings with experts from IPC like Kris Moyer, Patrick Crawford, Susan, Paul Carpine, and some other peo- ple from Siemens. Out of that joint ini- tiative, we have set up these DFM profiles and put them into the PCBflow environ- ment. We began mar- keting this campaign in January 2024. IPC already has approximately 30 to 40 companies connected in our network, with a very global footprint. We have a couple of very intensive users, and Nistec is one of them. Will you all be discussing this at IPC APEX EXPO? Tranitz: Yes. On Wednesday, April 10, we're hosting a Designer's Community Town Hall, and I will introduce IPC's design initiative, including PCBflow. We want to share this news because we believe it will help designers and manufacturers. For more information, check out our landing page. I look forward to seeing you all at the show. Thanks for speaking with me, folks. Kayesar: ank you, Andy. DESIGN007