Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/773715
8 The PCB Design Magazine • January 2017 When I first started covering PCB design, it didn't take long for me to realize that I had a lot to learn. In addition to learning all I could about PCB design, fabrication, assembly, and the many technical and international chal- lenges facing the industry, I needed to get up to speed, and pronto, on dozens of abbreviations. I'd been down the abbreviation road before as a newspaper reporter. I used to believe that no one could top law enforcement's incessant use of abbreviations. But the PCB industry out- abbreviates the police, hands down. It's not even a close contest. Besides the usual suspects such as PCB, EDA, CAM and CAD (the last two are also acro- nyms, incidentally, since they spell pronounce- able words), I was faced with HATS, HASL, QFP, PQFP, SMOGB, and LCCC, just to name a few. You know all of these…you have to in order to do your job. Then there were all of the "design fors," like DFM, DFA, DFT, DFE, and DFX. I have to ad- mit, DFM seemed a little bit superfluous at first. Wouldn't every board you design be designed for manufacturing? So began my introduction to DFM. The PCB industry isn't the only one to embrace DFM; tooling, sheet metal stamping and fabrication, and a variety of other manufacturing segments have adopted DFM guidelines for exactly the same reason: Their designers were creating products that were difficult and/or expensive to manufacture, often using custom parts when commercial off-the-shelf parts would suffice. Interesting fact: According to some esti- mates, up to 70% of an end-product's manufac- by Andy Shaughnessy I-CONNECT007 True DFM: We're Not There Yet THE SHAUGHNESSY REPORT