Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/393082
10 The PCB Magazine • October 2014 They're working to topple (they don't realize it, yet) an industry worth a couple hundred billion dollars. If they have some success, they're going to pique the interest of the VC community. These new circuit makers are in a great posi- tion, too, because the large materials companies working to advance the potential of the PE mar- ket are doing all the heavy lifting. Those ma- terials and technologies are opening the door for the creative minds fresh out of college. For a few thousand crowd-funding dollars, these next-generation technology entrepreneurs are working to create the systems to build multilay- er PCBs and assemblies. There is no doubt they will succeed as the materials and systems they need are being developed at lightning pace by R&D labs from academia, industry and govern- ments around the world, all striving to capture a share of this huge new market. This stuff is happening all around us, right now. Some of it is making the news, which I've shared with you in this column in the past and more, today. To add more fuel to this revolu- tion, I recently read that the U.S. government is buying 20,000 3D printers to give to high schools. I'm sure they're doing the same in Eu- rope and Asia. Exponential change in under- way. I'm not freightened by all of this; I'm in- trigued and excited. All of those young people we've been unable to attract into conventional PCBs and EMS are now coming. They're doing it in their own unique ways with their own tim- ing. The timing is what we have to keep an eye on. The thing about exponential change is that it tends to blindside most of us. We hear the hype, don't see much happening, then, over- night, we're staring it, whatever it is, right in the face. That's where we are, today. We're exit- ing the hype cycle, mostly, and entering into a real, new phase of manufacturing based on 3D-PE. NEW YOUNG VOICES FINDING THE RIGHT TUNE TO SING continues figure 1.