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APRIL 2025 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 59 worked with RF materials your entire life, that's how you think. ere are standard building blocks available. But when you get into ther- mosets typically used in high-speed digital applications, that isn't always the right answer because the lami- nate family is not a controlled Dk. You need to start thinking, "What is this material? What are the electrical characteristics of the available con- structions?" You work your design back to that. We have all these differ- ent part numbers, and we're working to educate designers: Stop thinking solely about dielectric spacing. Let's take what's available and what's right for your application and work on the design to make that work. It can be hard to do when you're redesigning some- thing, but it's much easier to do when you're starting from scratch. Talk to your laminate supplier, and let's see how we get as controlled as possible. How do we limit the range of resin content for the dif- ferent products you're choosing? You have to be very specific. You cannot just say, "We will use the Meteorwave 4000 product." ere are many different constructions. Which one do you want? You have to specify the exact con- struction. And that's not what traditional RF materials were like. It's oen easier when we're working with some of the newer, young RF engineers. Speaking of which, are you seeing more young design engineers coming into the RF side now? We're seeing a ton of new RF engineers. ere was a pretty big exodus from the RF segment, but it's definitely turned around in the last three or four years aer COVID. at could probably be said of the industry in general. ese younger people are interested in learn- ing more. ey're not just looking to reuse what was done on the last spin or the one before. ey want to see how they can apply things differently. It makes the job exciting, because we have an opportunity to do applica- tions engineering with these designers. That's good to hear. What advice do you have for RF engineers designing boards early in their careers? One thing that doesn't happen enough is bringing your laminate supplier and fabricator together in the discussion. We all have our own experiences. e fabricator has to build it in the end, so you can't just talk to the laminator. For- tunately, many of us on the laminate side also used to build boards, so we can engage on both sides and make sure that you have something that is manufacturable right out the gate. We can guide you toward something that a broad range of fabricators should be able to run. But you also have the fabricators that your com- pany has approved to work with, so you need to make sure that they're on board. It sounds like a good time to be in RF. Thanks for speaking with me, Brent. It is a great time for RF. I appreciate your time, Andy. DESIGN007