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68 The PCB Design Magazine • July 2016 by Barry Matties John Bushie, applications engineering man- ager at ASC, explained to me recently about how designers can avoid over-materializing. He also outlined the benefits of designing for prof- itability. Barry Matties: John, what does it mean to be an applications engineering manager for American Standard? John Bushie: I work with customers to select the correct materials and structures for realizing their circuit board designs. Matties: For context, tell me about American Stan- dard and what the company does. Bushie: We spe- cialize in a wide variety of cir- cuit board ap- plications. We deal in the DC to 100 gigahertz range, and that means we work with conven- tional materials like FR4, but we also get into the more exotic and e x t r a o r d i n a r y materials, like the very low-loss PTFEs, poly- imide materials, Megtron 6, as well as materials that are designed specifically for more commer- cial LED products, like IMS or MCPCB applica- tions. Matties: In your position as the application engi- neering manager, you must see a lot of interesting challenges. Bushie: We do, and a lot of our expertise is brought to bear on bringing solutions to our customers. Examples are mixed dielectric metal core boards for Locomotive fuel injection to sat- ellite based telecommunications using hybrid aluminum backed materials. Matties: What's the most interesting challenge that you've come across, that you can recall? Bushie: We deal with so many on a regular basis that it's difficult to answer that question. The hybrid aluminum-backed PCB was extremely challenging. Matties: Is there one that is a repeating challenge? Bushie: I can answer that question quite simply. While this sample board I'm holding is com- monplace for us nowadays, it was quite chal- lenging developing the process and control procedures that allow this unusual board to be readily manufactured. This is a vehicular colli- sion-avoidance board, which is a 24 gigahertz ARTICLE John Bushie