Author Archives: Mike

About Mike

Mike Buetow is president of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (pcea.net). He previously was editor-in-chief of Circuits Assembly magazine, the leading publication for electronics manufacturing, and PCD&F, the leading publication for printed circuit design and fabrication. He spent 21 years as vice president and editorial director of UP Media Group, for which he oversaw all editorial and production aspects. He has more than 30 years' experience in the electronics industry, including six years at IPC, an electronics trade association, at which he was a technical projects manager and communications director. He has also held editorial positions at SMT Magazine, community newspapers and in book publishing. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikebuetow

IPC Apex Expo Recap

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I’ll be taking questions and comments on IPC Apex Expo today from 2 to 3 pm over at PCB Chat.

Also, Kal Kawar will take questions on MSDS tracking and environmental regulations on March 8* from 2 to 3 pm EST.

*The date has changed to March 8 from March 6.

ODB ‘Partners’ Up

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After the IPC-2581 Consortium was founded to support the move from Gerber, it was only a matter of time before Mentor responded with a similar group to push its own format, ODB++.

Today, that measure was officially announced, with some 18 companies among the initial partners in what is being called the ODB++ Solutions Alliance.

Astute readers will notice many of the same companies are publicly supporting both formats. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds, given concerns by some of Mentor’s competitors about the advantage it gains with its hold on the ODB++ format.

IPC-2581 ‘Chat’ Recap

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We had nearly 1,000 visitors to today’s PCB Chat on IPC-2581. The moderators, led including Gary Carter of Fujitsu, answered more than 20 questions in a chat that lasted almost twice as long as planned. (The moderators plan to respond to some of the other questions they received that they couldn’t get to during the chat, so be sure to check back in a few days and see the updated transcript.) You may also contact them directly with questions at www.ipc2581.com/index.php/about.

The results show that data transfer is an area of high interest to the industry. The committee will be presenting a poster next week at IPC Apex Expo and will also have a booth there, where members can answer your questions about the new standard.

Speaking of Apex, on March 2 I will moderate a chat on the show. As always, we’ll open the chat to questions a few days early.

2581 Hits a Milestone

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For years one of the hangups for any data transfer format hoping to supplant Gerber has been the lack of independent validations that the output from a given CAD tool could be accurately read in CAM.

That’s why the IPC-2581 Consortium is right to herald today’s announcement of not one four independent validations as a “significant milestone.”

Today the Consortium published a validation matrix showing data output in Cadence Allegro and Zuken CR5000 has been correlated and validated against typical proprietary and multi-file manufacturing formats by Adiva, Wise, EasyLogix and DownStream. Those CAM vendors also are launching viewers — free, in most cases — to help users compare the data themselves.

The Consortium will take its show on the road next week, presenting a paper at Apex and also at the Cadence users group meeting in March. Both events represent an opportune time to question the members on their progress. If you can’t make the conferences, tune in to PCB Chat on Feb. 22, where the members will answer questions in our new online moderated chat forum.