May 2017 • The PCB Design Magazine 75
5
Obsessing over Conductor
Surface Roughness:
What's the Effect on DK?
You know you have an ob-
session when you are flying
six miles over Colorado and
you look out the window at
the beautiful scenery, and all
you can think about is how
the rocky mountain topol-
ogy reminds you of conduc-
tor surface roughness! Well, call me obsessed, be-
cause that's exactly what I thought on my way to
DesignCon 2017
6
European PCB Designer Day to
Focus on Critical Layout Factors
The European Insti-
tute of Printed Circuits
(EIPC) and FED will
be holding European
PCB Designer Day at
the Marivaux Hotel
Congress & Seminar
Center in Brussels, Belgium on June 21, 2017. De-
signer Day focuses on some of the more critical
design factors including base material selection,
performance modelling and testing, signal integri-
ty, component layout tools and 3D structures, and
embedded components.
7
DesignCon Announces 2017
Awards for Best Papers
The 2017 DesignCon Best Pa-
per Award winners have been
selected. The first-round final-
ists were judged based on at-
tendee feedback, collected
at DesignCon 2017, on the
impact of their presentation.
Winners include I-Connect007 contributors Istvan
Novak and Yuriy Shlepnev.
8
Bruce Mahler Discusses Ohmega's
Resistive Material Technology
Bruce Mahler, vice president
of Ohmega Technologies,
sat down for an interview
with Andy Shaughnessy at
DesignCon 2017. He dis-
cussed the company's latest
embedded resistive materi-
als, as well as some of the
drivers and challenges in
that segment of the materials industry.
9
Wanted: Industry Input
on Next Rev of IPC-2581
The IPC 2-16 tech-
nical committee is
actively soliciting
input from industry
for the next major
revision of the IPC-
2581 standard. Re-
gardless of your present IPC-2581 adoption status,
we want to hear from each of vou. The objective
of this next round of enhancements is to eliminate
risk and inefficiency in your day-to-day operations,
and streamline your production processes.
J
TTM Shines a Light on
Optical Interconnect
Are embedded optics on PCBs
set to make a breakthrough in
the upcoming years? Accord-
ing to Dr. Craig Davidson, VP
of Corporate Technology at
TTM, it might be closer than
you'd expect. Craig outlines
TTM's current pursuit of high-volume manufac-
turing lines able to deliver embedded optical in-
terconnect, what that would mean for the PCB
industry, and why he thinks there will be optical
manufacturing production capability by 2020.
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