PCB East 2025 Technical Conference Announced

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – PCEA this month will open registration for the technical program for PCB East 2025, featuring more than 75 hours of in-depth electronics engineering training.

Rick Hartley, Susy Webb, Dan Beeker, Tomas Chester and Zach Peterson are among the headliners of this year’s conference. It will be held April 29 to May 2 at the Boxboro Regency Hotel and Conference Center in Boxborough, MA. It features classes for every level of experience, from novice to expert.

The scope of classes ranges from the basics of design engineering, documentation, libraries and circuit grounding to more advanced fare such as RF and mixed signal design, DDR5 routing, board stackups, simulation, controlling EMI, and power delivery system design.

More than half the presentations are new to the conference, including ones on maximizing routing channels, successful design release, differential pair design for 112 Gbps and faster systems, EMI shielding, flex design, UHDI design, controlling for tin whiskers, and AI and other upcoming changes in PCB design.

“PCB East continues to grow as the leading place for learning about electronics design and manufacturing on the East Coast,” said Mike Buetow, conference director, PCB East. “This year’s event offers an array of experts in printed circuit design engineering and manufacturing, and a new emphasis on assembly.”

Registration for both the technical conference and the exhibition takes place at pcbeast.com. Those who sign up by March 17 can take advantage of the early bird special discounts for the conference.

The PCEA Conferences Task Group developed the program from more than 60 abstracts submitted. The task group, chaired by Troy Hopkins, is made up of 10 industry veterans with more than 200 years of cumulative experience in the printed circuit industry.

PCB East is the largest technical conference and exhibition for the electronics design, fabrication and assembly industry in New England.

The one-day exhibition takes place April 30 at the Boxboro Regency in Boxborough, MA, while the four-day technical conference takes place April 29 to May 2. For details, visit pcbeast.com.

Mizzou Chapter Kicking off with DfM Talk

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – The new PCEA Missouri chapter will sponsor a talk on DfA by Dale Lee, staff DfX process engineer at Plexus, on Feb. 18 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. CST.

Today’s SMT and PTH assembly processes are driven by component packaging technology and functional design requirements. These requirements, combined with the growth in automobile electrification, space commercialization, wearable/disposable medical electronics and no touchup/rework allowed assembly designs, are driving manufacturing/test toward “build right” and increased reliability requirements.

With this transition, DfM needs to migrate away from general assembly design guidelines primarily driven by general assembly equipment/process capability toward component/printed board-specific driven assembly. understanding the requirements and tolerances of each solder connection on a single device location on the assembly. Manufacturing now has to be able to report design issues not only from assembly-level effects/process customization but also to be able to communicate with designers on potential functional design mitigation strategies and/or cost impacts.

Manufacturing by design is now required to match the assembly/test processes to the functional requirements of the design and address when traditional material limitations, industry standards and assembly tolerances are not adequately addressed with traditional DfM reviews.

The presenter, Dale Lee, is a principal DfX engineer with Plexus, primarily involved with printed board/printed board assembly DfX analysis, root cause failure analysis and definition/correlation of design, process and tooling impacts on assembly processes and manufacturing yields including impacts of new technologies.

Lee has been involved in PTH/surface mount design, package and process development and production for 30-plus years in various technical and managerial positions.  Activities have included research, development and implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies and interconnect techniques, component package design and development, PCB and PCBA design support, DfM/DfX analysis of flex, rigid-flex and rigid PCB/PCBAs including supply chain, process qualification and new process introduction for domestic and foreign low, medium and high-volume production applications for consumer products, industrial, aerospace, defense and medical devices.

Lee has authored multiple technical articles and papers and is a frequent instructor/presenter globally on topics including PCB and SMT design, assembly, cleaning, and DfM/DfX.  He is a past recipient of the Surface Mount Technology Association’s Excellence in Leadership award and IPC’s President’s Award.  He has been or is very involved with multiple industry associations, industry standards development, and symposium/conference technical development committees.

To register: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/506313452873561692

PCEA Issues Call for Abstracts for PCB West 2025

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – Abstracts are sought for the PCB West 2025 technical conference. The conference, the largest of its kind in Silicon Valley, focuses on training and best practices for printed circuit board designers and design engineers, electronics hardware engineers, fabricators and assemblers.

The four-day technical conference will take place Sept. 30 to Oct. 3 at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. The event includes a one-day exhibition on Oct. 1.

Papers and presentations of the following durations are sought for the technical conference: one-hour lectures and presentations; two-hour workshops; and half-day (3.5-hour) and full-day seminars. 

Preference is given to presentations of two hours in length or more, and no presentations of less than one hour will be considered. 

Abstracts of 150-500 words and speaker biographies should be submitted to PCEA. Papers and presentations must be noncommercial in nature and should focus on technology, techniques or methodologies related to printed circuit board design, fabrication, assembly, test, components or packaging, and additive manufacturing. 

Submit abstracts at pcbwest.com by Jan. 24, 2025. No emailed abstracts will be accepted. Submitters will be notified by early April if their abstract has been accepted. Presentations are due Sept. 5, 2025.

Speaker benefits: Presenters of accepted abstract(s) for the 2025 program receive the following event benefits.

• Complimentary access to the online proceedings
• Complimentary pass to the technical conference
• Invitation to the Speaker Reception

For more information about PCB West, visit pcbwest.com or contact conference director Mike Buetow.

PCEA to Hold Conference and Exhibition in Detroit in June

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) will host a new technical conference and exhibition in June in Detroit for printed circuit designers, design engineers, fabricators and assemblers.

PCB Detroit will take place Jun. 2-3 on the campus of Wayne State University. It will include two days of technical sessions, plus a tabletop exhibition on Jun. 2.

Wayne State University is Michigan’s third-largest university, and a licensee of the PCEA Training Certified Printed Circuit Designer curriculum.

The conference will feature presentations on controlling noise, low layer count board design, using AI in hardware and PCB design, flex and rigid-flex materials and DfM, and HDI via design, among others.

For information on attending, please contact pcbdetroit@pcea.net. For information on exhibiting, please contact Frances Stewart.