Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/798021
24 The PCB Design Magazine • March 2017 say, "OK, we'll go back and we'll fix what didn't work. And we'll do it again." Shaughnessy: That's wild. It's funny it's been such a sea change over the last 10 years or so. Woznicki: Oh yeah, very much so. The other interesting thing, especially in materials, you're seeing materials from the Far East that you can't necessarily get here in the United States, and that concerns me a little bit. Shaughnessy: What kind of materials, for ex- ample? Woznicki: I was doing a design for a telecommu- nications product. It was a pretty intricate flex circuit that had to fold over a couple times and it was a four layer in the flex sections because you had a ground plane, two signal planes, and a ground plane and it was all Faraday caged because it was an RF product. This one cusp, I had specified adhesive-less base materials, 1 mil polyimide with 9-micron copper on either side. This company from Korea came back and said they had this product that's a half-mil polyimide with 9-micron copper on either side. Half-mil polyimide base material. You can't get that from DuPont. I touched base with my friend Robert John over at Altaflex and he says, "Yeah we can get that from several manufacturers, it's not un - common." So we designed it in and it solved a stiffness problem. And shielding films, for ex- ample. Remember the article we did a couple, I guess about a year ago, ninja flex circuits? Where we were talking about shielding films. I was looking around and those are only available from Asian suppliers. They're wonder- ful products because you can add a layer of EMI shielding or you can have a reference plane for controlled impedance without adding another copper layer. I'm looking at an application right now where we need that. I've got a customer who wants a flex circuit to last 100,000 cycles and they want controlled impedance too. So just slapping a piece of shielding film, which is like 5-6 microns, on there and you've got your refer - ence plane for controlled impedance, but you've still got your copper in the neutral axis. So it preser ves all the dynamic qualities you want. So those products are not available from U.S. man - ufacturers either. It's a little disconcerting. Shaughnessy: Interesting. There's an article right there. Woznicki: There you go. Shaughnessy: So, have you been following what Trump has planned for the military? You think he's going to beef up NASA again? Woznicki: I hope so. Shaughnessy: Seems like it. I know NASA kind of changed their mission and said they weren't go- ing to worry about the delivery system. They were only going to worry about the payload, and let other entities build the rockets. There's no upside in rockets for NASA anymore. Woznicki: Well there's certainly a number of people pursuing rockets between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. If they're successful, yeah, let NASA worry about the payload or what's going to be on the other end. It'd be nice to go back "FLEXDUDE" TOM WOZNICKI CELEBRATES COMPANY'S 25 TH ANNIVERSARY