80 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2025
TOP TEN
EDITOR'S
PICKS
Kelly Davidson, vice president of NCAB
Group USA, discusses the company's
stable performance in 2024 and posi-
tive outlook for 2025. She highlights
NCAB's strategy of organic growth and
strategic acquisitions amidst tariff con-
cerns and global political uncertainty.
Kelly emphasizes the importance of
supply chain diversification, strong
supplier relationships, and customer education, and notes
NCAB's focus on defense production and maintaining a reli-
able supply chain.
Ensuring a Strong and Reliable Supply Chain
Happy's Tech Talk
#38: Novel Metallization
for UHDI
I have been involved in high-
density electronics substrates
since 1970 when I joined
Hewlett-Packard's RF semicon-
ductor group after college. My
projects involved sapphire cir-
cuits for RF devices, but the fig-
ure displays the state of PCBs
and integrated CMOS circuits
and their packaging, not dis-
creet RF devices. Even then,
semiconductors were 50X
higher density. I started in HP's
advanced semiconductor group.
Navigating Change, Mitigating
Risk: We've Been Here Before
Tom Edman, president and CEO of TTM
Technologies, and chair of the IPC Board
of Directors, candidly shares his insights
into the implications of changes on the
defense sector and the broader elec-
tronics manufacturing industry, especially
concerning PCB manufacturing. With half of TTM's business
tied to defense, Tom discusses the potential opportunities
and challenges arising from government initiatives, tariffs,
and supply chain complexities.
Growth Depends on Developing
Next-gen Products
Maurizio Bonati, vice president of sales at
Pluritec, says a new generation of prod-
ucts has driven strong business perfor-
mance and a significant backlog. How-
ever, there's a concern about the potential
negative impact of tariffs. Pluritec is taking
proactive measures to minimize these effects by focusing on
enhancing equipment capabilities, automating processes,
and expanding customer support.
UHDI Fundamentals:
UHDI Drives Unique IoT
Innovation in Farming
The combination of UHDI's
high-bandwidth capabili-
ties and IoT's real-time data pro-
cessing can lead to more effi-
cient, immersive, and smarter
IoT systems. This convergence
of two revolutionary technol-
ogies is enabling quantum
advancements in some very
"unconventional" applications.
The combination of UHDI and
IoT is now exploding outside
the electronics manufacturing
industry, and the following two
examples illustrate unexpected
applications in farming.
