PCB Chat

In electronics manufacturing, defects don’t usually announce themselves. They happen in milliseconds, far faster than human perception, and often long before anyone realizes a process has drifted out of control. By the time failures show up in test, inspection, or worse, in the field, the root cause may be buried deep inside machine behavior that no one thought to question.

When machines are assumed to be accurate instead of proven to be accurate, and when force is set but not verified, hidden variation creeps in. That variation can translate directly into cracked components, misalignment, latent damage, and long-term reliability risk.

Michael Sivigny is SMT productivity & profit strategist and owner and general manager CeTaQ Americas, a company that has spent decades doing what most factories don’t, objectively measuring machine performance under real production conditions. 

Sivigny's work has repeatedly shown that even well-maintained, recently serviced equipment can operate outside of specification, quietly generating defects at high speed.

In this conversation, we’ll dig into how accuracy validation and force measurement expose problems traditional troubleshooting misses, why OEM calibration alone is no longer enough for today’s miniaturized electronics, and how statistically sound measurement practices improve not only yield and uptime, but long-term product reliability.

If you believe reliability starts long before functional test, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

Wally Rhines the spokesperson for the ESD Alliance, part of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International. He joins Mike Buetow each quarter to share details from the latest ESD Alliance report on sales of computer-aided engineering tools, semiconductor tools, PCB design software, related IP and services, and employment.

We discuss:

The latest PCB/MCB design tool market data

The 19-quarter streak of year-over-year gains (can it continue?)

The massive spike in Asia sales

The remarkable resilience of the Americas in maintaining ECAD market share

The employment growth -- will everyone eventually work in ECAD?

Jon Urquhart is director of global applications engineering at Precision Valve and Automation — one of the world’s leading developers of dispensing, coating, and industrial motion-automation systems. Since joining PVA in 1993, Urquhart has become widely recognized for his expertise in fluid material processing, precision dispensing, and the engineering-to-manufacturing handoff that so often makes or breaks product reliability.

Urquhart holds multiple patents and has helped shape advanced processes used in industries where the stakes couldn’t be higher — from aerospace and EV battery systems to semiconductor packaging, medical devices, and high-density electronics assembly. His work spans everything from protective coatings that safeguard electronics in extreme environments, to next-generation thermal interface material (TIM) deposition, to automation strategies that reduce human error, improve consistency, and dramatically scale production.

He joins Mike Konrad to discuss the real-world challenges of protecting critical electronics and batteries, the latest advances in TIM materials and deposition, sustainable precision-coating techniques, and the power of a strong collaboration model between vendors, manufacturers, and lab technicians.

Margaret (Maggie) Frachioni is a semiconductor hardware engineer at General Motors, where, armed with a bachelor’s in computer engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, she started out college as a software engineer in its automotive test lab. 

While at GM, she started work toward her master’s at Wayne State University in Detroit. Last year, she was part of the first PCEA Certified Printed Circuit Designer course taught as part of a university curriculum.

She speaks with Mike Buetow on her evolving role at GM, her college preparation for electronics engineering, and how the CPCD class altered her career arc from semiconductor methodology to designing and building boards.

Since 2018, Reliability Matters has been building a knowledge vault, capturing the wisdom of industry experts for engineers everywhere. 

In this special year-end episode, we celebrate the journey, the growth, and the community that made it possible.