Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1525004
38 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2024 ers must become familiar with the following equipment and their respective capabilities and design requirements: • Drilling machines • Photoimaging equipment • Plating and etching tanks • Wet coating machines • Laser direct imaging machines • Printing machines • Flying probe test equipment • Solder printing machines • Pick-and-place equipment • Conveyers and pallets • Reflow ovens, wave and selective soldering equipment • Optical inspection equipment • Routing, nibbling, and v-scoring equipment • Functional and in-circuit test equipment Know Your Cost Adder Species As PCB designers, we cannot wander blindly and naively within our PCB design layout tools—clicking buttons and assigning values— without the ability to count the cost of such actions. Whenever we guess what is needed to form a PCB feature without understand- ing, we are, in effect, sticking our appendages into the cost adder's den. If you're like me, you are a PCB designer who learns in person. You need to get a tactile understanding of the subject matter at hand. To educate yourself with the excitement of a kid in a snake farm, you need to make every effort to tour a PCB manufacturing facility and/or attend a trade show displaying lots of materials, processes, and equipment. ere, you can safely wander the aisles and view many PCB manufacturing cost equivalents to rattlesnakes, water mocca- sins, vipers, and all the various types of adders safely behind the glass or yellow lines painted on the concrete floors. Before it's too late, slowly and cautiously step away from your PCB design laptops. Do not make any sudden moves. Turn and run to the closest PCB manufacturer or trade show to learn more about what it takes to keep PCB project costs low. DESIGN007 Kelly Dack, CIT, CID+, provides DFx centered PCB design and manufacturing liaison expertise for a dynamic EMS provider in the Pacific Northwest while also serving as an IPC design certifi- cation instructor (CID) for EPTAC. To read past columns, click here.