IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1542698
118 I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2026 jected on an elevated screen over the glass table. The table was moved from hole to hole with two hand wheels for the X and Y axes, and when a hole was centered in the bullseye target on the screen, a foot pedal was tapped, and the X-Y hole location was punched onto a paper tape that would become the drill program. Later versions of the Opic had servo motors to move the table with the hand wheels, increasing the efficiency of the process 10X. Drill path optimi- zation was fully dependent on how the programmer laid out the path manually. My next promotion was to plant supervisor, where I was mostly responsible for order scheduling and moving product through the plant. Moving On After five years at Electro-Tek, I moved to a com- petitor, Basic Electronics, which is now Midwest Printed Circuit Services (MPCS) where I served as mechanical process supervisor, overseeing pro- Steve Williams in his office at Basic Electronics, circa 1984. gramming, drill/routing, and multi- layer lamination. MPCS is a client, and a few of the key folks I worked with during the Basic years are still with the company. This was my first quantum leap in technology, going from one Excellon to four, plus a dedicated router, and learning to build multi- layer PCBs. My lamination team developed some of the first metal core PCBs for a military contractor customer, learning the process as we went. We started by drilling the clearance holes in the copper core and filling them with nonconductive via fill powder using a flower sifter (yes, really!), pressing and curing the filled holes, and manually planarizing the copper core. I briefly left Basic to become a mechanical engineer for Motorola's PCB operations, but quickly realized I was not a good fit with the bureaucracy and the "small fish/big pond" syndrome that comes with a large company, and returned to Basic. My boss must have predicted this, as my old posi- tion was not filled in my absence, and a few years later, I was offered a promotion to Quality Manager, my first exposure to the world of quality. I had to quickly get up to speed on managing the compa- ny's Mil-Spec compliance and certification (MIL-P- 55110). Mil-Spec was the only certification available Image source: CNC paper tape, Wikimedia Commons, Ted Coles T H E R I G H T A PPROAC H