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14 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2024 Designing for Cost to Manufacture Feature Interview by Marcy LaRont • I-CONNECT007 ICAPE's Richard Koensgen, a seasoned field application engineer with a rich background in PCB technology, shares his journey of working with customers and manufacturers through the intricacies of circuit board development and emphasizes the importance of early-stage col- laboration with PCB designers. With a focus on tackling the most challenging aspects of PCB design and manufacturing, he discusses everything from layout considerations to the thermal challenges of today's technology when it comes to designing for cost. Marcy LaRont: Richard, please tell me about your background and your role at ICAPE. Richard Koensgen: I work for ICAPE Group in Germany as a field application engineer. Essen- tially, if you're doing something really tricky with your PCB or your project—maybe you run the danger of nobody being able to manufacture it in the first place—that's when I get involved. How long have you been working in the PCB industry? I started working in this industry in 2016 for a company that was later acquired by the ICAPE Group. At that time, I was mostly handling cus- tomer complaints. So, I essentially learned my trade by aligning customer expectations with reality, or the other way around. How do we learn best? Usually, it's when something is bro- ken and you need to understand what's going on. Fixing a symptom can be easy. Fixing the root cause is a little bit harder. You are helping your customers resolve manufac- turing issues causing defects by performing root cause analysis. Yes, and sometimes a customer doesn't even know where to start. I saw a board once that had the copper traces nearly burned away. ey weren't dimensioned properly, and there was too much current flowing through. e