Taiwan is the production center for global consumer electronics, and the circuit board production in Taiwan is considered the barometer for the electronics industry.

In an era where delays cannot be tolerated, help has to come from the “interface” between layout design and manufacturing.

Conductive inks on polyester can save 25% or more on the substrate cost compared with an equivalent copper circuit.

The industry is asked for feedback on reducing bottlenecks in the CAD-manufacturing process.

Last year was a watershed year for the IPC-2581 standard.

A broad cross-section of printed circuit board software suppliers, OEMs, equipment suppliers, manufacturers, and service suppliers, having implemented IPC-2581 both in trial and production use, provided significant positive feedback to the IPC 2-16 committee regarding their experiences utilizing the standard to produce PCBs. Working closely with the IPC-2581 Consortium’s technical committee, many of these adopters proposed feature enhancements, leading to IPC-2581B Amendment 1, published in January of this year. This release supports the most comprehensive set of industry requirements for printed circuit board fabrication, assembly and test in a data-centric, open, license-free, industry-driven standard format. On behalf of the IPC 2-16 Committee, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all who participated in this effort.