Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Features

Features

I was invited to keynote the two-day conference of Printable & Flexible Electronics held at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan.

Our Jan. 27 newsletter spoke about a decline from Taiwanese PWB manufacturers: “The barometer for the Taiwanese electronics industry is falling – signaling bad weather ahead.”

The annual trade show was heavier on turnout than innovation.

Our industry seems unwilling to let the ancient data format perish. It should.

The wet plating process is not a new technology.

But is what they are designing getting more complicated?

We’ve often discussed the growing need for young PCB designers to fill gaps in an industry where it seems more than half of its workers will retire in the next decade. That much is clear now, so instead of focusing on what is already well-known, we can instead point to an alternative gleaned from the 2018 designers’ salary survey: the technologies they are asked to design.