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From Single-sided to HDI: The "Three Phone Call Method" Works
July 9, 2014 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
One experiences both extreme joy and anxiety when watching a prototype PCB being powered up for the first time. The test bench surrounding the new board resembles an operating room, with probes attached everywhere to an array of oscilloscopes, multimeters, and other indicators. All eyes of the project team surrounding the test bench watch the darting eyes of the main electrical engineer, frantically reading each monitor/display for its analysis. More times than not, the silence is broken by this electrical engineer when he erupts with the exclamation, “Wow! The circuit works!”
To all PCB fabrication process engineers who are not present at that moment, but whose skills and knowledge base over the years have made those words possible, I want to begin by thanking you for all that you have done to advance the quality and integrity of the electronics industry. Your dedication to continue to fabricate high-quality boards and panels ever since Paul Eisler (the father of PCB fabrication) made his first radio with a PCB needs to be recognized by all in our industry.
In my first score of years in electronics, I had the good fortune of learning PCB fabrication in creating single and double-sided prototype boards as an R&D technician in a crude, but effective PCB fab lab. I learned first-hand about raw materials, photo-imaging, etching, plating and drilling by fabricating prototypes for new design concepts to address our customer’s product needs. Although I was never able to add the soldermask or silkscreen layers to these boards because we only did the proof-of-concept, I did come to better understand the materials’ characteristics and design challenges when I changed careers from being a technician to a PCB designer.
Early in my design career, every time I had the chance to tour a local fabrication shop, I would somehow find out who the main process engineer was, and then spend time with that person at the end of the tour. I would question him relentlessly about everything I saw that I did not understand. To my amazement, every fabrication process engineer understood my quest for knowledge, and succinctly answered every question about fabrication I posed to them. To this day, I cherish those meetings, and now share all of that information I have assimilated when I teach the PCB design process.Read the full article here.Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of The PCB Magazine.