PCB Chat

Today, we’re going to explore a topic that seems to be touching nearly every industry, every workplace, and increasingly every part of our daily lives: artificial intelligence.

But this conversation is not just about what AI can do. It’s about what AI assumes, what it values, what it misses, and what happens when powerful technologies are deployed into environments they were not designed to understand.

Mike Konrad's guest is Dr. James Maisiri, an AI researcher and writer whose work focuses on responsible AI, digital transformation, education, labor markets, and the societal impact of emerging technologies. 
His work has been featured through organizations and publications including UNESCO, Guardian, and others, and his message is both simple and profound: AI is not neutral.

In one of his three TEDx talks, Dr. Maisiri said, "If Africa does not shape AI, then AI will shape Africa." 
While his work often focuses on African communities and institutions, the lesson is much broader. 
Every industry, including electronics manufacturing, needs to think carefully about how we adopt AI, what assumptions are built into these systems, and how we validate their use before trusting their output.

In electronics reliability, we often say that context matters. Materials, environments, residues, humidity, temperature, field conditions, and use cases all influence performance.

This is part two of a two-part series.

In Part One, we explored how the electronics industry transitioned from a clean-everything approach to one where cleaning became optional. But what happens when the assumptions behind “no-clean” collide with modern electronics design?

In this episode of Reliability Matters, Mike Konrad examines how the definition of cleanliness has fundamentally changed.

As assemblies became smaller, denser, and increasingly deployed into harsh environments, the industry discovered that historical cleanliness standards were no longer sufficient to predict real-world reliability. Modern low stand-off components like QFNs, BGAs, and CSPs create tight geometries where residues can become trapped and difficult to remove, while thermal cycling and internal condensation can create localized harsh environments inside the product itself.

This episode explores:
• Why IPC moved away from fixed cleanliness limits
• The growing importance of SIR and ROSE testing
• Why “cleanliness” is now tied to risk, not a number
• How internal condensation can trigger electrochemical migration
• Why no-clean flux has become the most commonly cleaned flux type in the industry
• The return of cleaning as a mainstream reliability process
• Why modern assemblies require aggressive spray-in-air cleaning technologies instead of historical immersion-based vapor degreasing methods
• How diffused spray patterns improve cleaning beneath low stand-off components

Konrad also explains how modern cleaning challenges are no longer just about chemistry. They are about physics, fluid delivery, and whether the cleaning process can physically reach contamination hidden beneath today’s densely packed components.

As electronics continue to shrink and reliability expectations continue to rise, one question becomes increasingly important: Clean enough for what?

If you work in electronics manufacturing, reliability engineering, process engineering, or quality assurance, this episode provides a detailed look at why post-reflow cleaning has once again become a critical part of modern electronics manufacturing.

Tomachie has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. Its eponymous platform provides AI-assisted analysis of PCB schematic data. It optimizes DfT and identifies the ideal locations for physical test point insertion. And it generates a 0-100 layout-readiness score, providing design teams with an objective, data-driven metric.

Tomachie is the brainchild of CJ Clark, a veteran test engineer with a background in JTAG and boundary scan technology, not to mention five patents under his belt. He is also CEO of Intellitech, Tomachie's sibling company.

CJ spoke with Andy Shaughnessy about Tomachie, what AI can and can't do, and why he wishes his team had access to a tool like this 25 years ago.

Today, we’re going to explore a topic that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves but has a direct impact on product quality and long-term reliability.

Mike Konrad is joined by Mehdi Nahali, founder of PCB Revision Control PRO. His platform is designed to replace spreadsheets, emails, and disconnected systems with a centralized approach to PCB revision lifecycle management and factory intelligence. 

They going to talk about how revision control, data integrity, and process discipline impact reliability, and where manufacturers are still getting it wrong.

For decades, cleaning circuit assemblies after soldering was not optional. It was standard practice across the electronics manufacturing industry. Then, almost overnight, that changed.

In this episode of Reliability Matters, Mike Konrad takes you back to the origins of that shift. From the widespread use of CFC-based cleaning solvents to the global impact of the Montreal Protocol, this episode explains how environmental regulation led to the rapid adoption of no-clean flux and the removal of cleaning as a standard process step. But that decision came with assumptions.
Assumptions based on larger components, wider spacing, and assemblies that were far more tolerant of residues than what we see today.

As electronics evolved, so did the risk.

Miniaturization, increased component density, and the expansion of electronics into harsh environments have dramatically reduced the tolerance for contamination. And when cleaning was removed, it wasn’t just flux that remained. It was the totality of residues introduced throughout the manufacturing process.

This episode walks through how those residues, combined with moisture and electrical bias, can lead to electrochemical migration, including parasitic leakage and dendritic growth, often resulting in delayed or intermittent failures.

This is the story of how we got here.

In Part 2, we bring this discussion into the present.

What does “clean” actually mean today? Why did the industry move away from fixed cleanliness limits? And why is cleaning once again becoming a critical part of modern electronics manufacturing?
If you’ve ever asked the question, “Do I really need to clean?” Part 2 will challenge how you think about the answer.