Ontrack With Judy Warner

Today we're thrilled to be joined by John Watson, Customer Success Manager at Altium. He and Tech Consultant Zach Peterson chat about the importance of education for designers, what it's like working with students, and what new opportunities there are for PCB designers in today's market. Watch this episode here. Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE Key Highlights: Introduction to John Watson, Altium Customer Success Manager John talks about his teaching profession at Palomar College in San Marcos, California where he teaches Basic and Advanced PCB design The Middle College Program at Palomar College was created for junior and senior high school students to give them a head start in taking college courses The demand for PCB designers is driven by a lack of interested individuals in the industry An increasing number of young engineers are drawn to computer science and software development, while the fields of hardware, electrical engineering, and PCB design are experiencing a declining interest Joh

Making wearable smart devices smarter, is one of the heavily invested research in the tech industry today. Our guest Henry Crandall, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah talks about his electrical research applied to human health monitoring and diagnosis. He will also briefly talk about his involvement in the IEEE, BioHive Utah, and his exciting role as a student board member in the IPC. Show Highlights: Introduction to Henry Crandall, his research, and involvement with IPC Henry’s research focuses on the intersection of electrostatic and biology. How electrical applications can help diagnose disease and monitor health care condition How Henry’s research relates to Elon Musk’s “Neuralink” What is Neural Engineering? Bioimpedance and non-invasive sensor products are already available through wearable health devices just like the smartwatches Henry explains briefly the difference between surface measurement and penetration depth Photoplethysmograph

Quality and reliability are a big deal when designing PCB for assembly. Our guest Tony Lentz, Chemist and Field Applications Engineer at FCT Solder will bring us to the PCB manufacturing space while tackling solder beyond basic thermodynamics and composition. Listen or watch through the end. This is a great opportunity for PCB designers to learn about soldering products that are used for printed circuit board assembly. Episode Highlights: Introduction to Tony Lentz, his background, and role as a Chemist and Field Applications Engineer at FCT Solder Tony talks about how they work with their clients to achieve best quality when manufacturing their PCBs Diving into the chemistry side of things, Tony tackles about how the blending of different metal alloys, additives, and different inter-metallics to that solder joint composition, the pads, and the components can affect the overall reliability of the PCB With the automotive industry’s growing electronic demands, thermal testing cycles are expanding aggress

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 ch

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? T

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

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 bigge

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 qui

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

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

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

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

Having Steve Sandler in this episode is such a treat! He talks about his presentations at the upcoming DesignCon 2023 in Santa Clara. He gives us a deep dive into some very complex engineering topics, including measuring the PDN Flatness and the state space model. Download this episode Show Highlights: Steve Sandler is in the running for Engineering of the Year along with Ken Wyatt Steve is doing a two-and-a-half-hour tutorial on PSMR, PSOR, and PSMR testing at the DesignCon. Molex and Tektronix are both participating in the live demonstration He s also doing a presentation with Heidi Barnes, Bandanin, and Ben Denon A lot of conferences are going virtual. The reach is undeniably great, however, what are the pros and the cons? What is valuable to who? Steve talks about the conception of Picotest in the US Picotest made the very first water-cooled probe which he will be showing at the DesignCon Innovative solutions can take decades from conception to fruition, Steve shares his PdD thesis from 2011 that got hi

One of PCEA’s (Printed Circuit Engineering Association) goals is to provide accessible education, affordable to everyone in the electronics industry. In this episode, we are fortunate to have two passionate educators in the industry, Mike Buetow and Mike Creeden. We will talk about the PCEA’s efforts to use all possible platforms to promote educational programs for design engineers. PCEA, it's an international network of engineers, designers, fabricators, assemblers…anyone who is involved in printed circuit development. And we promote Printed Circuit Engineering as a profession. We're looking at trying to take information, new design concepts, get them down into the manufacturing side, and then also to communicate those manufacturing constraints and make sure that they are communicated back to the design side. -Mike Buetow Watch the episode here Show Highlights: Introduction to PCEA and updates on its acquisition of key assets of UP Media Group Mike Buetow talks about the PCB East conference reboot Who can be

Expedite your transition from prototype to scale with the help of an experienced PCB broker! In this episode, a returning guest joins us to discuss everything that involves cost-effective PCB manufacturing. Greg Papandrew, a PCB buying and selling expert, gives us a comprehensive understanding of PCB cost drivers and tips on a good supply chain strategy. Watch this episode here Show Highlights: The process of buying and selling, Greg Papandrew is a PCB broker with 30 years of experience in the industry Greg emphasizes the importance of quoting smartly, learning when, where, and how to save money without sacrificing the PCB quality What is a good supply chain strategy? Greg dives deep into his role as a PCB broker, and his involvement in the decision making involving specs, materials, cost, and more Sending too much information can be problematic, and it involves the vulnerability of intellectual property Good communication with the PCB manufacturer and fabricator can go a long way; asking the right questions

If you look at the way people have used FPGAs, they are a miracle product in many ways. -Mark Oliver Our guest Mark Oliver, VP of marketing at Efinix talks about the evolving role of FPGAs in the industry beyond prototyping. Mark will give us a very insightful use of FPGA as an efficient custom silicon solution and will go deep on the importance of RISC-V for processor designs. Watch this episode here Show Highlights: Introduction to Efinix, an FPGA company Mark starts off by addressing the inefficient ways designers use FPGAs and how this has helped them develop a product that can be utilized from prototyping and straight to high-volume manufacturing Efinix FPGAs are cost-effective, low-power, and small-form efficient for custom silicon solution The common FPGAs integration including the SIP (Session Initial Protocol) implementation FPGA market is set to explode because it is going in the same direction as the current industry growth they  are designed as mid-volume production solutions with the potential

Join us as we reflect on the best moments and the coolest guests we've had on the OnTrack podcast this year. 2012 has been a whirlwind year for the electronics industry–chip shortages, and a supply chain crunch. Altium has passed several milestones, as well as releasing an education program. And there have been some groundbreaking reports from industry groups highlighting the need for workforce training and development, and workforce shortages coming on the horizon. Watch the episode here Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only Show Highlights: One of Altium’s Milestone is the Altium Education Program In most of the episodes, the issue of automotive chips shortage comes up coupled with the passing of the PCB Act PCB Packaging, and production of integrated circuit substrates  Most requested repeat guests and new faces Links and Resources: Watch all the OnTrack Podcast Episode Register at Altium Education for Free Connect with Zach on LinkedIn Visit Nexar website Visit Octopart website Claim the sp

Young blood in the PCB industry, Christopher Bonsell talks about process engineering–the chemical involved in the PCB, etching and encouraging the young generation to the “cool-tech” aspects of PCB design and manufacturing. Watch this episode through the end, and check the show notes and additional below. Watch this episode here Show Highlights: Chris Bonsell published articles on i-Connect007 What kind of services does Chemcut offer related to PCB manufacturing and the role of a process engineer Chris talks about his career journey and how he landed his position in Chemcut Misconception about the circuit board industry, does it belong to tech industry? The grand challenge – the Moorse Law What is the Peri Etch Process? The lack of interest in the chemistry of circuit boards might be what’s blocking the PCB industry from moving to the next level of processing capability The US is 20 years behind in the PCB industry Is fully additive circuit board could be the big game changer in the industry? Workforce shorta

Let’s take a glimpse into a life of a young process engineer. In this episode, our guest Paige Fiet talks about her career path in the world of PCB manufacturing. She will also share how she landed her role as the Student Liaison in the IPC. Watch this episode through the end or listen on the go. We hope to inspire young engineers to become more motivated to jump into the PCB industry. Show Highlights: Paige shares her story and her exciting career path before she landed her role as a process engineer at TTM Technologies Zach and Paige exchange college experiences, they talk about the courses and curriculum then and now Paige briefly talks about her experience in getting the role of the IPC Student Liaison She also talks about how interested engineers can become involved in the IPC and encourage them to invest in a membership and attend other industry-related trade shows and conferences Participating in committees can be a rewarding and fun experience Paige had her eyes on TTM from the very beginning. She s