PCB West Announces Free Technical Sessions

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – Registrants for the PCB West exhibition in September will gain access to 11 free technical sessions (plus a keynote presentation) ranging from printed circuit design to fabrication and assembly, PCEA announced.

The free sessions take place on Sept. 30 at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center, and cover topics including AI and PCB design, flex design, simulation, UHDI, and more. “Free Wednesday” kicks off with “Career Day,” an all-day event featuring classes and a moderated panel aimed at students and graduates interested in a career as a PCB designer.

Signal integrity instructor Rick Hartley will discuss the pros and cons of “Copper Pours on PCB Signal Layers.” Next, Ed Dodd, VP of government and defense for Cofactr, will present “The Prototype Trap: Bridging the Sourcing Gap to Volume Production.”  

Matt Leary, founder of Newgrange Design, will delve into “Changing PCB Design Software: No Big Deal, Right?” Longtime industry analyst Dr. Hayao Nakahara will share “The PCB Market Outlook,” and Al Block of DirectPCB will present “The Hidden Failure Mode Using Mixed VIPPO in BGA Structures.”

The morning sessions will conclude with Itera CEO AJ Cooper’s keynote presentation “It’s Time to Retire the Respin,” followed by lunch on the exhibit floor, which is free to all show registrants.

Free sessions resume in the afternoon with five sessions:

• The Most Common Issues Seen in Incoming Designs for PCB Fabrication 
• Designing High Thermal PCBs with Advanced Dielectrics
• Lessons Learned from Installing AI in an EMS NPI Environment
• The Journey of a Material Disruptor
• Cutting Edge PCB Technologies

Following the free sessions is a reception on the exhibition floor sponsored by Cofactr.

Anyone who registers for the exhibition and free sessions by Sept. 28 will receive free admission. Day of show registration for the exhibition and free sessions is $25.End of article content 

PCEA Launches Designer Career Day at PCB West

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – PCB West this year will debut Designer Career Day, a free program targeted at students, graduates, and anyone interested in careers in PCB design and design engineering, PCEA announced. 

The daylong event will be held on Sept. 30 at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center, and is chaired by Matthew McBride and John Burkhert, Jr. Designer Career Day will feature sessions by industry experts including Stephen V. Chavez, Tomas Chester and Dan Beeker, as well as a panel discussion. Speakers will cover everything from interview skills, networking, and compensation to technology, CAD tools, and the reality of working as a PCB design professional today. 

Attendees will learn about securing industry internships, certifications, fine-tuning a resume and utilizing social media, plus “soft” skills such as communication and problem-solving. Career pathways, education, and training opportunities will also be discussed.

“Designer Career Day could end up being a pivotal moment in a young engineer’s future,” said Burkhert. “I can still recall the first time I was shown a CAD workstation. From that point onward, I knew what kind of work I wanted to do.”

This year’s show will feature more than 100 exhibitors showcasing the leading companies in the PCB industry, including the top CAD and CAM vendors and top names in printed circuit fabrication and electronics assembly.End of article content 

PCEA Announces Fall Webinar Schedule

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – The PCEA fall webinar schedule includes a pair of online sessions aimed squarely at the working printed circuit board designer.

On Oct. 21, veteran PCB designer Judi Emerson will present “How to Be a GREAT Designer,” from 1 to 2:30 p.m. EDT. To register, click here.

Putting down copper traces properly is only part of the job. As Emerson points out, a great PCB designer also has to be an expert on the product, an expert with the ECAD tool, an expert on fabrication and assembly processes, an advocate for the needs of the board, a time bender and, on occasion, a miracle worker. Those demands are sharper still for the solo designer with no team or established process to lean on.

This session covers the “other” work a designer does beyond the board itself, including time management, change control, and building the processes that protect a designer’s schedule and sanity. Where other presentations explain how to do great PCB design, this one explains how to be a great PCB designer.

Emerson has been a PCB designer for 30 years, working primarily for Tier 1 automotive suppliers. She holds a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Lawrence Technological University and is CID+ certified. Apart from a short stint at Visteon and a brief spell with a PCB supplier during the 2001 electronics downturn, she has been the first or only PCB designer at every job she has held, delivering designs for a range of products while learning on the job how to manage everything that surrounds the design process.

Late in October, Keven Dial of ASC Sunstone will speak on copper coins, including design for manufacturing and RF considerations.

On Nov. 4, senior PCB design engineer and instructor Susy Webb will present “Designing the Signal Routing to Control Energy in Digital PCBs,” a 3.5-hour webinar running from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST. To register, click here.

Great care is often given to the way signals are routed, but the full energy path is frequently not considered or even understood. As signal energy travels around a layer or moves layer to layer through the stackup, a range of complications can lead to poor signal integrity or EMI performance.

The webinar examines what signal energy is and where it is actually located, along with its ability to spread out and the containment measures that may be needed; the physics of rise time, signal flow and impedance control, plus EMI mechanisms and control measures; transmission lines, crosstalk and reference planes; and the way signals fanout, route, return and change layers, with a detailed look at routing order, location and spacing. Webb will also cover stackup design and quality planes, which provide a path for energy to travel from layer to layer while minimizing potential antennas. Attendees will come away understanding why certain routing scenarios are more effective than others.

Webb is a senior PCB design engineer and design instructor with more than 45 years of experience spanning oceanographic exploration and monitoring equipment, point-to-point microwave network systems, and CPCI and ATX computer motherboards. She is CID certified, a regular speaker at PCB West and PCB East, a former columnist for PCD&F, a chapter writer for Clyde Coombs’ Printed Circuits Handbook, and coauthor of the PCEA CPCD program. She is an active member of the PCEA board and education committees.

For more information on PCEA webinars, visit pcea.net.End of article content 

PCB West Panel to Take on What’s Next for PCB Design

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – A panel discussion on the technologies reshaping printed circuit board design over the next two to five years will take place at PCB West this month.

“The Future of PCB Design” (session 10) will be moderated by Matt Leary, founder and president of Newgrange Design. The 90-minute session takes place Sept. 29 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. It is included with conference registration.

The panel will examine four developments designers are likely to encounter before the end of the decade: the current – and realistic – role of AI in PCB design; interposer boards that sit between the PCB and the semiconductor; advances in high-speed and high-current design; and the integration of optical interconnects. The emphasis is on exposure to what is coming, and on what designers should be doing now to prepare, rather than a deep technical dive into any single topic.

Panelists include Joe Dickson of WUS Printed Circuits, Takuro Sakamoto of Elephantech, Steven Clark, Ph.D., of Stanford University (retired), David Fromm, Ph.D., of Promex, and Mohammad Matin of Celus.

Leary founded Newgrange Design, a Wakefield, MA-based PCB design and engineering services firm, in 1996. The company marks its 30th year in 2026 and today fields a staff of more than 30 designers and engineers working across the major ECAD platforms, along with library development, signal integrity simulation and cable documentation. Leary began his career as a full-time PCB designer and is a frequent speaker at PCEA events.

“These four topics are not academic exercises – they are going to land on designers’ desks, and sooner than most people think,” said Mike Buetow, president, PCEA. “Designers who understand where AI actually helps today, what interposers mean for their stackups, and how optical integration changes the rules will be the ones companies turn to. Matt has built a business by staying in front of exactly these shifts, and he has assembled a panel that spans fabrication, materials, research and design automation. This is the kind of session that pays for itself.”End of article content 

Nakahara to Deliver Latest PCB Markets Report at PCB West

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – Dr. Hayao Nakahara, president of N.T. Information Ltd. and author of the annual NTI-100 ranking of the world’s largest printed circuit board manufacturers, will present “The PCB Market Outlook” at PCB West 2026.

His session, “The PCB Market Outlook,” takes place Sept. 30 from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center.

Dr. Nakahara will examine the past, present and future of the PCB market, the forces pushing the industry, and the effects of AI – not only on demand, but on the technology changes fabricators and designers will be asked to absorb. The class is open to all experience levels and is intended for designers, hardware and test engineers, fabrication and assembly personnel, and business leaders.

Dr. Nakahara has compiled the NTI-100, the definitive ranking of printed circuit board manufacturers with annual PCB revenues above $100 million, every year since 1999. The list is published each fall in PCD&F/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY.

His most recent ranking found a record 159 fabricators topped the $100 million mark in 2024, up from 134 the year prior, and put worldwide PCB production at approximately $96 billion, with China accounting for roughly 59% of global output. The 2024 data also tracked an accelerating buildout in Southeast Asia, where more than 60 fabricators are constructing plants in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Dr. Nakahara founded N.T. Information in 1986 and has toured more than 600 PCB manufacturing plants in 67 countries over a career spanning six decades. He began in the industry at Photocircuits Corp. in 1965 and spent 15 years with the PCK Technology division of Kollmorgen Corp. He holds a master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Columbia University.

“Dr. Nakahara’s data are the backbone of how this industry understands itself,” said Mike Buetow, president, PCEA. “When an OEM decides where to source, or a fabricator decides where to put its next dollar of capital equipment, the NTI-100 is the reference they reach for. No one else has spent six decades walking the factory floors in 67 countries and then done the arithmetic. For anyone making a sourcing, capacity or investment decision, this hour is the best market intelligence in the industry.”End of article content 

A Day of Assembly Classes at PCB West 2026

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – PCB West 2026 offers 11 presentations on circuit assembly processes across two days in September at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. 

The two-day event on Sept. 29-30 features a half-day workshop on solder paste qualification, coupled with 10 presentations spanning the spectrum on electronics assembly, from basic fundamentals of circuit assembly processes to more advanced topics.  

The program “Introduction to Circuit Assembly Processes” covers the fundamentals: Chrys Shea of Shea Engineering’s class on the SMT printing process, pick-and-place fundamentals with Daniel Stanphill of Aurora Boardworks, the basic components of solder paste with Anna Lifton of MacDermid Alpha, and the basics of cleaning with Doug Pauls of ItDepends.

“Advanced CA Processes” picks up in the afternoon: X-ray imaging resolution misconceptions, Type 5 solder pastes and beyond, stencil design and manufacturing, placement for high-reliability applications, formic acid reflow soldering, and cleanliness measurement with conformal coatings.

Shea will also present “A Data-Driven Solder Paste Qualification Process,” a half-day course on building a qualification protocol that produces defensible data instead of opinions.End of article content