Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/937683
28 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2018 who don't want to talk so much. So, depend- ing on where they fall in the technology scale, you could be in a place where they need to reach out, we need to reach out; there needs to be plenty of conversations and plenty of work behind there that is basically commodity work. Not everybody necessarily needs to go work directly with their board shop on every project but that is on the increase, I will agree with that. Beaulieu: I'll tell a story here I've run across. I'm helping a company out of Brooklyn, New YorK, NYU guys, who are building boards with 3D printers. And the interesting thing is I asked them why they're doing this. These are NYU graduate students who won a technology con- test by building a neat device, which is con- trolling a keyboard with your eyes, if you can believe that. I asked, "Okay, you went off in that direction, why did you get involved in 3D printing of circuit boards?" And they said be- cause while they were building their project, it was so darn hard to find circuit boards, and so hard to get good circuit boards, they decid- ed there's got to be a better way. This, as you know, is a long way from 28-layer blind and buried via boards, but on the same token that was the perception of smart graduate students coming into an industry where they would make boards. Believe it or not, their education- al gap was such that they're graduate students. I asked them what their biggest problem is, and they said the ink. They were using statio- nery ink and I introduced them to Taiyo. They didn't even know about Taiyo. And I talked to my friend John Fix at Taiyo and he said he'd be there tomorrow. Because they're looking for that too, and you've got to realize, noth- ing against anybody here, it's just that people are working in a vacuum, in terms of circuit boards. I have a friend who's an instructor at British Columbia Institute of Technology and he uses Bob Tarzwell's PCB 101 handbook for his students, saying since he has a whole two- year course, these students might spend a day on circuit boards and then move on. So we've got to all work on that. Las Marias: In some of our conversations with contract manufacturers, they're also saying that designers should also consider speaking with them because sometimes, what these de- signers are designing are just not manufactur- able, and quite difficult to adapt to whatev- er SMT system they have set up in place. So, they're saying that it's also important for them to talk to the assemblers. In fact, when we ask some people, they're saying that in their 12−20 years, they've had only one design- er that came to them and talk to them about the design that they're going to do. Just one in that many years. But it turned out that the final output of the product is quite good. So they're saying that's also important. Beaulieu: Absolutely. I was at one last week and it was the same thing. Everything from ba- sically ease of production to one of the impor- tant ones, which is component selection. Be- cause there are certain parts that have longer lead times, that are more expensive, and they can be substituted with another part. And that drives the price up, it drives the lead time up, and it's much better when they coordinate. When I said they talk to each other, that's one of the things they're talking about. If you look at my friends who have quick- turn production manufacturing shops, that's what they're doing. They get trusted for com- ponent substitution, even have little matrices that point out this part can do the same as this part and they figure it out that way. But if you These are NYU graduate students who won a technology contest by building a neat device, which is controlling a keyboard with your eyes, if you can believe that.