OnTrack: The PCB Design Podcast

Let’s walk down memory lane and discover how circuit boards are being manufactured back in the 50s. In this episode, we have the pleasure to have Gene Weiner, a true gem in the industry! This is a rare opportunity to learn from an expert who has helped shape the electronics industry for more than 60 years now. Watch through the end, and make sure to check out the show notes and additional resources below. Watch this Episode. Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE   Introduction to Gene Weiner and a glimpse of his illustrious career in the electronics industry beginning in 1956 Gene retrospects vividly how they used to do 3D printing and additive back in the 50s What would interest a young man to go down the path of electronics manufacturing back in the 50’s? Gene shares his career experience and what sparked his interest in electronics 1975 marked the beginning of electronic manufacturing automation development outside the US Captive operations versus outsourcing — a lot of electronics companies chose cost reduction over maintaining their own manufacturing operations Gene gives his insight about moving some manufacturing facilities to Latin American countries  like Mexico and Columbia What does it take to bring manufacturing back to the US? Just building chips in America without building the rest of the supply chain here just lengthen the supply chain. Gene stresses that volume, demand, incentives, and continuous government programs are necessary to make anchoring a success Gene suggests that partnering is better than hiring. Partner with talents who share a mutual vision with the company, and share benefits together Links and Resources: Connect with Gene Weiner on LinkedIn Visit Weiner International Associates' website Watch the related OnTrack episodes A Lookback to the Evolution of the PCB Industry with Happy Holde Achieving Diversified Electronics Supply Chain Overcoming Technological Challenges in the PCB Industry   Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

Pierce Design’s Ethan Pierce will share his insight into reverse engineering with printed circuit assemblies. We will also discuss firmware reverse engineering. Watch this episode. Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Show Highlights: Introduction to Ethan Pierce and a quick preview of his upcoming webinar with the PCEA regarding reverse-engineering How to acquire reverse-engineering skill sets? Retrofitting a system versus creating a net new ecosystem of products Is reverse engineering cost-effective? Ethan advises designers to keep records and documentation as much as possible. “take as many pictures, take as many pictures, photos, notes.” Links and Resources: Connect with Ethan Pierce on LinkedIn Visit Pierce Design's website Register for Ethan Pierce's Webinar: Reverse Engineering PCBs: How to Recreate a Lost Design   Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

In this OnTrack episode, we are very excited to bring you Tim Wang Lee, a Signal Integrity Application Scientist and the High-Speed Digital Application Product Manager at Keysight. Tim will share his early days as a prodigy with Dr. Eric Bogatin. We will also discuss the importance of simulation and measurement to achieve signal integrity for your PCB design. Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Watch this episode here Show Highlights: Tim Wang Lee Introduction Tim talks about Dr. Eric Bogatin as his mentor, the knowledge about simulation and signal integrity especially rule number nine A favorite phrase GIGO (garbage in garbage out) according to Tim is his way of understanding his intentions and asking questions before diving into a project Tim with Mike Russo, initiated simulation and measurement workflow seminars and webinars to help educate the importance of measurements and simulation to back it up What is a Virtual Prototype? Where to start with a system-level qualification in simulation? Tim explains what an EP Scan (Electrical Performance Scan) does Keysight is also now focusing on Power Integrity and Heidi Barnes is one of the leading experts in the Power Integrity ecosystem Next step for Keysight is to aid PCB designers in not only generating results but also fixing the issues Links and Resources: Connect with Tim Wang Lee on LinkedIn Visit the Keysight Website Read Tim Wang Lee’s articles on SI Journal Watch Related Podcast Episode: Pathological Design Features: Eric Bogatin on PCB Design Power Integrity and Simulations with Heidi Barnes Picotest’s Water-Cooled Probe with Steve Sandler Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

IPC continues to develop resources to bring awareness about the electronics industry to the young generation. In this episode, we are very fortunate to have Charlene Gunther, the Senior Director of the IPC Education Foundation. We will talk about IPC’s efforts to involve students in engaging activities that will introduce the electronic industry to them as early as high school. Join us and watch through the end. We added some great resources below so be sure to check them out. Watch this episode here Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Episode Highlights: Charlene Gunther introduction and a brief overview of her role as the Senior Director of the IPC Foundation Charlene talks about the IPC three pillars: awareness, engagement, and connections The IPC launched the website www.careersinelectronics.com which aims to attract students and job seekers within the electronics industry The IPC student chapter plays a big role to attract and involving students in skill development training and networking IPC is hosting annual STEM outreach and partners with Title I schools and private institutions to expose high school students to hands-on activities, connecting them with industry, allowing them to solder, to design, to learn about assembly Other departments of the IPC that work towards improving accessible education are the Education Department led by Vice President David Hernandez and Chris Mitchell the VP of Advocacy and Government Relations The universities’ response to IPC programs has been very positive and they have become more proactive in integrating electronics and manufacturing-related courses into their curriculum Be in the loop with the latest IPC Education Foundation announcements, visit www.careersinelectronics.com , subscribe to their newsletter, and follow their social media pages. Students, parents, and employers are encouraged to visit the website Links and Resources: Connect with Charlene Gunter on LinkedIn Visit the IPC website Visit the Careers in Electronics website Learn more about IPC Education Foundation Watch related episodes: The Challenging Role of a Process Engineer IPC CEO John Mitchell on the Supporting American Printed Circuit Boards Act Hands-on Learning for PCB Design Students with Sid Deliwala Learn Printed Circuit Board Design   Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE  

In this episode, we will learn so much about embedded CAN bus, for automobile security and performance straight from the water host, Ken Tindell the CTO of Canis Labs. A lot of interesting facts about cyber security and automobile hacking that you would not want to miss! Watch through the end and make sure to check the additional resources below. Watch this episode Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Show Highlights: Ken Tindell’s background and how he got started with CAN bus and CAN security Ken worked with Motorola on designing the MS CAN—the first CAN controller that did all the buffer scheduling correctly Ethernet and CAN coexist in autonomous vehicles’ architecture, Ken explains how There are two types of major attacks on the CAN bus: attacking the physical wiring and attacking the computer that has access to the wiring. Zac and Ken talk about the mind-blowing advanced techniques of hacking automobiles Story of irony. A friend of Ken in automobile cybersecurity had his car stolen The biggest car-hacking horror would be through the cloud — cloud-based APIs to phone and at the same time CAN bus protocol hacking on the transceiver pins CAN HD, an augmentation for high speed and guarding the CAN bus Canis Labs is in the works to provide real solutions for security on CAN bus Links and Resources: Connect with Ken Tindell on LinkedIn Visit Canis Automotive Labs' website Check out Ken’s Github Page Watch related podcast episodes: Better Performance and Enhanced Reliability in the Automotive Electronics industry Electronics Manufacturability and Reliability with QA Guru Cheryl Tulkoff   Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE  

In this episode, we continue the discussion on diversifying the electronic supply chain. Our guest Case Engelen the CEO of Titoma shares his insight about moving some of the manufacturing to other Southeast Asian countries and South America.  Watch this episode now and check out the show notes and additional resources below. Show Highlights: Case Engelen introduces himself and his company Titoma Offshoring, onshoring, and diversifying supply chain, why do the majority of components manufacturing may stay in China for 5 more years? Building prototypes and optimizing your design following the factory’s specifications Case talks about the importance of component architecture early during the design phase The difference between how US and Chinese market their product and their selling strategies Diversifying manufacturing in Southeast Asia and South America, Taiwan is a little more expensive than China, but Columbia is more competitive when it comes to cost The advanced manufacturing capabilities in China are quite hard to beat What is “bifurcation”? What does the future of electronics production and sourcing and procurement look like? Links and Resources: Connect with Case Engelen on LinkedIn Visit Titoma Website Watch the Previous Related Episodes: Mastering Your PCB Design Tool as the Industry Evolves with Stephen Chavez Mitigating Risk Factors for PCB Manufacturing Lead Times Data Security, 5G and Onshore PCB Manufacturing with Dr. Rob Spalding Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE

Happy Holden, a legend in the PCB Industry and one of our favorite Altium Industry Expert contributors gives us a trip to his 53 years of experience in the industry. From a chemical engineer, and PCB manufacturing expert to an educator with his countless contribution to the PCB industry’s wealth of knowledge through his books, column, and keynote presentations. Watch this episode now Show Highlights: Introduction to Happy Holden and an overview of his career in the PCB Industry What drove the PCB manufacturing off-shore? The printed circuit industry has been all over the map, to begin with Happy shares his early years in printed circuit manufacturing Comparing CAD tools from the 80s and the present – computers, calculators, and software Happy talks about photonic circuits back in 1998 and how it is a hundred thousand times more capable than electronic communication and have no signal integrity issue HP’s first notebook computer Happy retired from HP and moved to Taiwan Happy started working at Gentex Michigan The beginning of offshoring the PCB manufacturing and fabrication In Asia, the printing circuit board is like printing money. It is the most profitable industry in the region Globalization took over the industry – emphasis on profit versus jobs Diversifying the supply chain. How to bring some of the manufacturing sides of the industry back to the US? The $52 Billion budget (CHIPS Act 2022) is just a downpayment to bring the 30 years that were lost Would companies start manufacturing their own products? How did HDI technology come about? Links and Resources: Connect with Happy Holden on LinkedIn Read Happy Holden’s Articles on Altium’s Resource Page Read Happy Holden’s Biography on HPMuseum.org Buy Happy Holden’s Printed Circuits Handbook, Seventh Edition Download FREE Ebook I-Connect007 Publishes Automation eBook by Happy Holden Watch the Previous Episode with Happy Holden: The Father of HDI PCBs

Functional testing is when you power up an electronic device for the first time and then perform voltage rail checks and programming of processors, and more. And this is exactly what FixturFab offers their customer. In this episode, Zach is talking with the co-founders of FixturFab, Duncan Lowder and Joe Selvik. They will have a chat about automated test fixtures and turnkey systems that aid low to medium electronic production to deliver successful devices. Watch this episode here. Show Highlights: Jow Selvic and Duncan Lowder introduction and engineering backgrounds What is FixturFab’s test fixture? Duncan briefly explains how it works – the mechanical, electrical, and software aspects of it A turnkey test system designs and delivers specific test cases and dives into detail about how a circuit board was designed and gathers reports Bolina an IIOT device deployment engine allows the management of Test Fixtures remotely An ideal customer for FixturFab is anyone who designs or manufactures their hardware, the best time to initiate the testing is before finalizing the board layout or during the prototyping phase Currently, FixturFab caters to low to medium-volume production, but they definitely are looking forward to eventually being in an automated SMT (Surface Mount Technology) line Coming next is the Test System in a Box, the IKEA or the “protolab” for test fixtures Links and Resources: Connect with Joe Selvik on LinkedIn Connect with Duncan Lowder on LinkedIn Visit FixturFab website Read: Generating an Altium Test Point Report Watch related episodes: Electronics Manufacturability and Reliability with QA Guru Cheryl Tulkoff Mitigating Risk Factors for PCB Manufacturing Lead Times

In this episode, we are fortunate to have two key personalities at Luxonis, a hardware, firmware, software, AI, and simulation company. Erik Kokalj, director of application engineering at Luxonis, and Bradley Dillon, CEO of Luxonis discuss how and who can benefit from AI technology. Tune in and make sure to check out the show notes and additional resources below. Show Highlights: Introduction to Luxonis and its founding on April 2019 The liDAR and radar as an imaging technology, Erik briefly explains the technology behind it Bradley shares why they decided to open-source some aspects of their platform and design Luxonis’s AI training, AI conversion, and AI deployment onto hardware are all open-source, for their customers can quickly develop their own model and then deploy it on the device itself Future design updates, miniaturization, and thermal management What are some of the industrial applications that are utilizing the Luxonis imaging technology? Beekeeping was unexpected! Robotic applications on robotic cars, Zach and Erik talk about action recognition on top of object recognition Bradley talks about series 3 products and what’s coming in terms of capabilities – processing power, more AI inference Resources and Links: Connect with Bradley Dillon on LinkedIn Connect with Erik Kokalj on LinkedIn Checkout Luxonis Website Watch Luxonis featured on Altium Story: How Luxonis uses Altium 365 to innovate AI Vision systems faster Connect with Zach Peterson on LinkedIn

In this episode, we are very excited to have Jesus Zozaya, CEO of Voltera, and Matt Ewertowski, product manager at Voltera. We will discuss pushing the boundaries in electronics design through printed electronics. Join us and together let’s discover the many benefits of printed electronics from expedited prototyping, proof of concept, and academic research. Show Highlights: Introduction to Jesus Zozaya, CEO of Voltera, and Matt Ewertowski, product manager at Voltera Jesus takes the lead in explaining what Voltera does, and introduced their first product – V-one Matt explains the difference between Printed Electronics and additive manufacturing process Electronics printer pushes the limits and welcomes new possibilities and opportunities for new materials in the electronic design space Voltera designed NOVA (their second product) with users in mind, they created a tool that all electrical engineers can utilize regardless of their skills in material science Can you do stack-ups using printed electronics? Jesus talks about a customer who created heaters directly on the drone’s wings to melt the ice when flying in cold temperature A Voltera customer printed electronics directly on a textile (face mask) that will allow a smartphone app to track the level of CO2 on the face mask Mark dives deep into the capabilities of NOVA Who is the target market for V-one and how does it differentiate from NOVAThe V-one is seen to be utilize more for prototyping, meanwhile NOVA is popular with academic and R and D research Printed electronics do not replace traditional marketing, but it aids to expedite the process of getting the proof of concept done Links and Resources: Connect with Jesus Zezoya on LinkedIn Connect with Matt Ewertowski on LinkedIn Visit Voletra’s website Related Podcast Episodes:3D Printed Circuit Boards for Fast Prototyping The Promising and Challenging Future of 3D Printed Electronics Materials Science and Manufacturing of Better PCB Connect with Zach Peterson on LinkedIn   Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE