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October 2014 • The PCB Magazine 37 PCBs for AutomoBiles: WhAt to WeAr to the PArty? continues Performance Supplying to the automotive market is not an easy path. Your work isn't even over after you establish quality systems and technical ca- pabilities. After all this, these darned customers actually expect your boards to work for a long time and not just past final test. Even compo- nent manufacturers have been driven to in- crease their products' performance in thermal cycling environments. For some reason, we North American PCB fabricators get pounded on even harder. To summarize this, you would need to meet different performance criteria for each end application. Figure 2 displays one au- tomotive supplier's requirements. Meeting these requirements is not an easy feat, but not impossible either. It means devot- ing engineering and process development re- sources to your critical processes such as multi- layer lamination, drilling, and plating. It could also mean a change to your supply base to switch from "what's on sale this week" to more robust raw materials and consumables such as copper clad laminate, drill bits, and copper plating chemistry. Conclusion The automotive electronics market is en- sured to generate growth for the rest of this de- cade. Just because the Chinese have the lion's share of this mature market doesn't mean there is no room for a North American PCB fabrica- tor. You just have to be more discerning and offer a value-added solution to the customer, which can take investment in education, pro- cesses, and people. Not an easy road, but one with potential riches at the end. PCB Yash Sutariya is president of Alpha Circuit Corportion. For more information, or to contact Sutariya, ysutariya@alphacircuit.com. New standards on embedding Actives and Passives by Real Time with...SMTAI 2014 Vern Solberg, of Solberg Technical Consulting, speaks with Ray Rasmussen on new standards, including newly approved IPC-7092, which ad- dresses embedding passive and active devices. realtimewith.com CliCk To View vIdeo InTeRvIew