AT&S DFM PCB Manufacturing Tour - AltiumLive 2022

Join Gerald Weis and Ube Sorgman on a tour of the AT&S PCB Manufacturing facility. They will walk you through everything from Designing for Manufacturing and Design for Excellence to every step in the manufacturing process, all within their beautiful facility in Austria. 

Keynote Highlights:

• Answers to complex AT&S PCB manufacturing questions

• Insight into drilling

• How AT&S PCBs distinguish between DFM and DFX

• Discussion of discuss tenting and plugging versus with solder mask

• Info about aspect ratio

Additional Resources:

• Visit AT&S Manufacturing website here
• Connect with Gerald Weis on LinkedIn

Transcript:

Penman:

Hello, and welcome to day three of AltiumLive 2022 connect. We hope you had great days in the previous days and we are kicking off early. So hello to everybody waking up early, or if you're on the East coast or different times. And of course it might be a more convenient time for you. We are having people from all around the world joining, so I actually don't know what time it is in your location, but we are here broadcasting live from San Diego, and we have Gerald Weiss, the team lead of the hardware development center at AT&S and Ube Swagman, the senior product engineer calling in from Austria in the city Leoben beautiful place. We went there last year to produce this factory tour with you but Gerald and Ube are live here with us. Gerald, would you like to introduce yourself?

Gerald Weiss:

Sure. Thanks so far for the introduction. I'm working since around eight years now for AT&S and I'm as already mentioned the team leader of the hardware development team, which is part of the AT&S overall service team. We work together with customers and help customers on PCB designing, gift trainings, do data conversion and do such simulations on terminal side and on electrical side. In addition, thank you for Altium especially Altium connect that we have the possibility to present you a part of our shop floor today within this video.

Penman:

Yeah. And it was very exciting. It was a very modern facility embedded in the beautiful mountains in Leoben and Ube gave us a very interesting tour. Ube, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?

Ube Swagman:

Thanks. Hello from my side all involved. My name is Ube Swagman, I'm working since the year 2003 for AT&S in the project engineering department. My responsibilities are to prepare the data and the way to get a traveler, a bill of material, a product description, and also to bring our customers to the plant through the processes, to explain it little bit about it. And it was a great time to be with Penman on the tour. Thanks for this.

Penman:

Oh yeah. It was very... so the mission was to bring all this to our audience and little bit of housekeeping or kind of explaining to you how we are going to do this. We have separated the tour in three parts and each part will cover two to three topics. And then we're going to take a break and take your questions. Please feel free to use the Q&A on your right hand side to submit those questions. And we will also after each segment send a poll and we would love for you to participate in the polling.

And that will also help you to go up in the leaderboard to win the price today as well, which we will announce at the end of the day. And I think this is pretty much it and we can jump right in, maybe a little bit about the topic that we cannot try to fold into the tour. So it's not just a tour of the manufacturing floor, but we also have Gerald talking about the designed for excellence considerations that you need to do as a PCB designer. He will actually go into Altium designer and show you a couple of tricks that are related to each of the stations that we are looking at. So with no further do, should we just jump in?

Gerald Weiss:

Sounds good.

Penman:

Sounds good. Okay.

Gerald Weiss:

Yeah. We are actually here in Leoben, which is located in Styria. In our department, we are the AISS department, which is the advanced interconnect solution services department. We offer more or less three things. First of all, hardware development, second simulation in electrical and mechanical environment and testability. So in design for excellence, I mean, in particular design for manufacturing, which is required for us as a PCB manufacturer is one of the major goals to ensure that you produce the quality first time right so that you really work on quality.

Ube Swagman:

My name is Ube Swagman, I'm working for AT&S since the year 2003 at the product engineering department. And one of my responsibilities is to make line through our protection. Now, I want to show you how we start with the preparation at AT&S. Normally we get the data from the customer side via mail, and I took this data package and sent it to the integrator. The integrator is a software tool, which do the analyzes of the data for me where we see, okay this-

Gerald Weiss:

Yeah. Main challenge is often the design rule check we do for them. So we are just based on their data package they provide to us, we are doing a first incoming data check. We then start to interact with the customer according to his needs. This could be either an additional PCB layout, it could be a rework of the actual data package. It could be a complete PCB design.

Ube Swagman:

As a result of the integrator analysis, I get such output. All the informations about the design and if I press this button, the camp department gets some information that they can start with the camp preparation.

Gerald Weiss:

Once it comes to file formats, Gerber is one of the oldest file format. There are so many different versions. So next step in evaluation would be the ODB++, basically the file format is very intelligent compared to Gerber, which should be from nowadays view the past. For the future, we want to even go more for a higher level of collaboration. And that's why it's necessary to come up with tools like Altium365 to ensure that there the most transmission from data that you have drawn as a PCB designer directly to the manufacturing house, as well as the assembly house.

Christian Stana:

My name is Christian Stana, I work at CAM. My daily business is to prepare customer data for our production. At first step, we get our data from the customer, it look like the design. Most problems we had with isolations so we had to clear before we've customers. If we can do that or not, then we had to get to a B collects and try to clarify it with the customers. If we have done our preparation on our seed shop, that's the most preparation we've done on the carts then we penalize it and do all for the production that they can produce this PCBs.

Ube Swagman:

We are now in our stock where all the materials are stored before production start. And here you can see we have the material in a refridge because the preprex have to be cool. So please come with me, first what we have here is the core material. We took it out from stock, and you can see here, it's a copper coated material, nothing produced with this material, only base material. And here you can see the pieces of the copper coated core, will be taken and run through the pre-cleaning line. After that, behind this line, you can see the room behind this with yellow light, yellow light means we have the material which is photosensitive. Here we started with the etching process, and this will be in the middle of the process and then the end, we will see now such a design. Everything, what happens behind this wall, you have seen now on the sample here, the resist will be prod on, exposed, developed, etching and now we go to the end of the etching process where we can see what's look like after this process steps.

And here you can see the different lots which we are producing at the moment, different customer designs. And now we are verifying, we are checking the design, the etching process, and verifying if the failures are real failures, or maybe they are so-called soldier failures, and this can be done on these machines. It's a two step process. First machine checks where are the failures, second machine calls out, oh, here it is. Check by man power. Is it a real failure or not? Very important for us is also the digitalization in this area. We have also so-called AOI machines with artificial intelligence, means that we can program the failures, which are possible on the machine and the machine can check it by its own. If it's soldier failure or maybe it's a real failure. So for us, it's very important for the digitalization, the manufacturing of the future will be done I think with less people and more machines, more with connections to the internet, more data, which are available on the world for the future.

Penman:

Okay. So we are in the first Q&A section. I want to ask everybody that is watching, please submit your questions now. While we wait for some more questions, we have a poll that we would like to ask. And so the question is, why do we need a camp department? So we're going to publish this question right now. Why do we need a camp department? So please go in and give us your answer. Why do you think that a camp department is needed. To ensure the data package is produceable and prepare for production to work. Oh, they're skipping around, to work with the customer on the design, to automate operations in operation for fast manufacturing or to create quotation based on the data package received. We have already 26 votes. Let's give it a little bit more time here. 39, so Gerald, you see that hold right on the right hand side, we have 87% saying to ensure the data package is produceable and prepare for production and 9% to automate operations in the production for fast manufacturing. So was that a quiz or? Yeah, go ahead.

Gerald Weiss:

Yeah, it was a quiz and I guess the first one is the best one. So most of you guys did it correct, well done. It's to ensure correct data package for production and to prepare for production. So you need to think about that we need to prepare the data somehow to compensate some aging behavior and to compensate some other behavior, which is generated during production. Yes, what they do income department.

Penman:

Fantastic. So I do have a question about section one, how does AT&S distinguish between DFM and DFX.

Gerald Weiss:

Yeah. Maybe I will talk this question. It's very interesting because if it comes to standard manufacturing, so if we just manufacture standard data packages like for layer PCB, six layer, eight layer, 12 layer, whatever, some standard things which we do since years, it's more about DFM. So you run through your well proven process and after the well proven process, everything goes quite smooth during production. If we come into account as a hardware development center, for example, it's not longer enough to have just one prepared data package for production. You also need some data package maybe for simulation or for some other things you might need to consider during product development. And that's why DFX is really something where the way go through, so we are on track somehow, two words designed for excellence. So as a PCB manufacturer, which also offers some service capabilities, we have let's say the overall target to ensure DFX over time.

Penman:

Okay. Let's see. Ube is back, Gerald is back. Hello. Hey everyone. That's okay. Yeah, we got it restored. Perfect. So I think you were halfway into your question. Was there anything else that you wanted to add?

Gerald Weiss:

Okay. I guess if everyone could hear me since I was talking the last sentences around DFX, that this is the future, I guess this was the overall answer.

Penman:

Perfect. Perfect. And now we do actually have some questions come in. We have one question from, let's see. What data package format do you prefer asks Ken Butler.

Ube Swagman:

Gerald.

Gerald Weiss:

Yep. I can answer the question as well. No, if you, data package, we prefer in daily chain data package. To be honest a data package which is out of standard Gerber or extended Gerber should be the past. It's also covered in the video somehow. I mean, you can manufacture data with these files as well, no issue on that. We get in the meanwhile around, let's say 20% ODB++ packages and 80% steel Gerber. So you see collaboration standard, it seems to be not so high, at least for us, but we are working hard let's say to run towards intelligent data packages and also towards collaboration with tools Altium.

Penman:

Okay. We have another question from Dave here. As a contractor, I'm hired to relay out for all designs and the customer sometimes uses old PCB tools that still generates Gerbers. What can I tell them to convince them to use Altium which I try to do anyway?

Gerald Weiss:

Good question. Really good question. I mean, in our service team, we are also using two different design tools. One of them is Altium and I'm always telling the guys that Altium is from the price point of view and from the capability point of view, one of the best tools I know. So since some other guys are also using old versions of Eagle and Hopi versions of Eagle, they really should skip them and work with profession software, like the Altium designer. And you can also tell them that the price is not so high, so I guess if they do five plus PCB designs in a year, I guess you will get the money back.

Penman:

Maybe we touched on that question. I will bring it up any with Roger Beers asks, explain why you would need ODB++ versus Gerbers. Maybe you can go a little bit more into detail here.

Gerald Weiss:

Oh, okay. With Gerber you need to channel it first, your cooper layer. Second, you need to generate a drill package, which is out of excellent files. Usually if you for example use Altium designer, and if you output for example, PCB which has 12 layers, which is maybe an HTI construction. So something with high density interconnects, means laser drilling mixed with some mechanical drills, you run into the problem that you will have, or will generate maybe 24 files. On our side, we have software which analyzes the Gerber files if your file extension is not perfectly matching our system. If your file name is not matching our system, we run into the problem that we need to resort every file exactly into the correct position to fit to our construction and to our buildup. With ODB++ in comparison, everything is fixed, there is a matrix inside and the matrix aligns automatically every layer of one on top of each other.

And also it aligns the drill files. So Altium automatically outputs every information directly in a single compressed file. And you just need to take that file and use the file. So for you as a PCB manufacturer there's no difference, either you output the Gerber files and you input or you drag and drop it directly into your Gerber viewer. On the other hand side, you just have the ODB++ for you and you direct the file into the ODB++ viewer. So either you use that or the other especially if you want to send the data to somewhere, some rails to another location store, whatever, you do not have a set of files with different informations, you just have a single file and everything is included.

Penman:

Okay. Maybe a last question before we jump into the next segment. Do you provide rule files for Altium? Are they available? Do you have any presets downloadable?

Gerald Weiss:

Not so far, but this is something we discussed already with Altium and not only with Altium to be honest, we discussed it with several customers as well. And the problem here is that AT&S is more as a series production facility. So we run really mass production and that's why we have very, very many different constructions. So there is no standard eight layer construction. For example, if you go to a prototype house, an eight layer construction might have, I don't know, every time a thickness of 1.5 or 1.6 millimeters. In our a case, we can offer eight layer construction from 800 micrometers towards two millimeters. So just is an example.

So I cannot really give you a standard rule set because the thickness influences somehow the drill holes and the thickness of the copper layers influences somehow the distances between the copper you want to draw. So between your lines that you draw and your surface polygons and so on. So standard data set, unfortunately, I cannot give you, but in the end, we are quite close to our customers. And if you want to go in touch or get in touch with us once, we can share some other information that I guess would be quite easy to import for you into Altium.

Penman:

I said it's the last question, but there's one very interesting. Check Olson asks, what is the most common reason for placing a job on hold to discuss it with your customer? What is the number one reason why you send it, it's not bad to discuss it?

Ube Swagman:

I want to take this question if it's okay for Gerald. There are a lot of reasons. Mostly we have the problem that we have not enough information, begins with tool sizes and tolerances sizes of the PCB. Sometimes we only have only the data and the outline is weight label for example, stack up in the last few years. We always get more requirements for impedance controlled PCBs. This calculation for the impedance value must be done with the real data that cannot be done pre-work, must be done with the correct data because the copper distribution of the different layers influences also this value. So there are a lot of things. I think the most questions are the stack up and maybe the drilling. Drilling is we always have to drill bigger than the final diameter of the customer and sometimes it's not so easy to calculate which tool size is possible and why it's not possible.

Penman:

So the main reason is because you do not have full transparency?

Ube Swagman:

All the information. Yeah.

Penman:

Yeah. Okay. I think that was it for this section. Let's move on and continue the tour and I'll start to play that video. Thank you everybody for your questions. Please keep them coming.

Ube Swagman:

Welcome now in plant one of AT&S and here we have the pressing step. At the start we have seen how to prepare a core and make the design on it. And here you can see such core and we do know a pre-cleaning and a roughening of the surface to get the better treatment for the pressing step. But on this tables behind, they make the layer sequence means starting with a copper foil, then pre breaks core material, the next pre-break, the next core, the next pre-break, the next core, next pre-break and then with a copper foil. Then we have the eight layer, mighty layer and then we have to press it together. For pressing maybe interesting is it depends on the material itself, but approximately 200 degrees during the pressing, approximately 20 per hour on pressure for the pressing step and it lasts approximately five hours, always depending on the material. The material supplier provides us a line where we have to follow from the temperature, how long, which temperature and also to cool down afterwards. So now we go to the drilling. Hello.

Gerald Weiss:

Drilling is often a topic where you can really make things wrong. First of all, you need to define layers take up and you also need to define all the virus used in the build up in the port. So you see, we have a mechanical through drill, which is always necessary because the mechanical through drill is used on the port array because you might have some alignment holes, which are necessary for the assembly guys for your EMS service. And that's why you always need this through hold drill. But in your card, you can also simply stake laser virus and if you are allowed to, you can also stake them directly on a mechanical wire.

But this is a bit related to reliability, so you have to talk to your PCB manufacturer if he's fine with staking laser virus directly on mechanical filled up virus. And you will also drill for every single layer, this wire holes here and plates them to form an electrical connection. And if you put a wire above another wire, it would break the mechanical drill bit. And for the laser drilling, you would even get a larger hole that you want to have and this is always a bit a problematic thing because then cooper plating does not work. Your design might not fit to the larger hole, and we need to redefine either the data or maybe we can avoid and spare some material to run it through production with this double hit.

Ube Swagman:

In our drilling department, we got in the last year more than 13 new drilling machines. This machines consists of a real big stone because of the weight to have it stable during the production. And here you can see a machine with six spin rods. We can do, depending on the thickness of the material and the tire meter of the drill tool. We can drill more than one core material at the same time. We have to do a look on the inner layers of the PCB to know where are the pads now, and this machine can have a look inside to special institutions to know how much is the material longer or shorter after the pressing steps. Now we have seen how we can do the connection between layers, means maybe by mechanical drilling from every layer to another layer, or maybe with laser drilling from one to the next layer.

Afterwards, we have to do a copper plating to get a good connection and this is the next what I want to show you. Here we have different copper plating lines, you can see how long they are, and you can see them because of the red and blue wires, which you can see here. One of the advantages of the next generation, any layer is that all the connections will be done with laser drilling. That means with laser drilled holes, we get only 20 to 30 microns copper on the surface and so smaller line and space is possible. Let me see, or let's go to the end of the line to see what it look like now. And as a result of this copper line, you can see here, the drilled holes. If you have a look inside, you see that the drilled holes have now copper inside, and now we have to protect all the areas which will have, or should have no open surface. That means we bring on a lock Hyundai surface, and this, I want to show you in the next step.

Gerald Weiss:

So the mask is basically for covering the corporate surface that is not used for assembling components or some taste points or something else, which you do not want to cover. On the PCB it's more or less to protect the copper from environmental influences so that the copper does not corrode on your PCB. But be aware, it is a matter of how you define soldier mask openings or how you define pets for a dedicated component. Be aware that the PCB manufacturer might adapt the copper to soldier mask overlap according to his processes. So what does that mean? If the overlap is too less here in this case of solder mask defined openings, then the pet itself will be manufactured smaller to ensure that there is no leak on the edge here of this soldier mask.

Ube Swagman:

You can see one line here the green color is like, but I think there's a requirement to do a second coating and so we see it again. We go pre-cleaning, then we come to the collecting coating process. Here you can see now our collecting coat process for the soldier mask. Here you can see a lock collecting behind and the ports running through this and get a very thin layer of lock on the copper surface. And here in, we have all the different possibilities of different screen printing processes. For example, the blocking process is running here and so on. Also everything which is done with lock for example, is in this area, maybe an IT print, tenting of some holes and so on, all these additional prints are possible and running in this area.

Penman:

So we are back here for Q&A and we already had some questions come in. Again, first, we have a poll, it's more like a quiz guarantee. I think you made them all quizzes already. That's not like a quiz. Let's run this quiz here. Is it necessary to define a PCB outline in the manufacturing data package? No, I can share the size and the shape in the text file or yes, I need to include it in case of different separation methods. Let's see. Okay, here we go. Separation methods. They need to be indicated on a mechanical layer. One second, I'm trying to publish this. Here we go. And the poll is out, you can now give you answers. Oh, it took me a while to get this out. Is it necessary to define a PCB outline in the manufacturing data package? We have 17 votes and they are pretty much all on the same page so far. You would probably have a lot of problems.

Gerald Weiss:

It should not really be an exam. Okay. So that's-

Penman:

I'm Curious. I was curious what such a text would look like. And if you have a template for such a text on your website.

Gerald Weiss:

Yeah. That's...

Penman:

Well, at least, somebody clicked on the letter one, but maybe just wishful thinking, what is this text file going to look like?

Gerald Weiss:

Maybe too early in the morning.

Penman:

Yeah, for some it's maybe very early. Okay. So we did get some questions and also some feedback. So people really appreciate what you guys present here. So thank you again for doing this with us. Let's see here. So at the large drill holes converted to milling, or does milling not create a perfect hole? Asks Stranid Noya.

Gerald Weiss:

I can start the answer, maybe you can add something Ube. Okay.

Penman:

Yes.

Gerald Weiss:

So AT&S at least in hinter break production floor, we are able to offer the possibility of 150 micrometer mechanical drills up to six point something millimeter drill holes. So large drill holes might be milled so then you have just a pre-hole which is drilled and then the milling tool goes directly into it and starts routing more or less. And more or less the wall for the drilling and the mailing is completely the same so no big difference from my point of view. The only concern is the time for production, which means that in case you have a standard drill bit you might stake the different or the same production panels, one above the other and drill through so you are quite fast. And if you go for milling, you need first to go to drilling and then you go to milling again. So this is something which takes a bit more time.

Ube Swagman:

Perfect done. Nothing to add.

Penman:

Nothing to add.

Ube Swagman:

Thanks a lot.

Penman:

Okay. So we have one other question from Jeff Call. Is it Jeff? I hope I'm spelling this correctly. Can you discuss tenting and plugging versus with solder mask.

Ube Swagman:

Yeah, correct on my.

Gerald Weiss:

Let's start with you Ube.

Ube Swagman:

Yeah. The difference for us is not really big. For the tenting itself, we are using not the same lock like the soldier mask lock but it's nearly the same. Tenting means for us to close this holes from one side with lock, it's not filled with lock. The possibility is up to a drill bit size of zero to five MM, can be closed air tight. For bigger holes, it's not possible to do this air tight, we can do then soldier mask plug in with soldier mask and with this, we can also close these virus with the soldier mask lock itself. Nearly the same, a little bit difference in the process flow, but nearly the same, both are closed with lock from one side

Gerald Weiss:

May be just some more comment regarding reliability, because this is a very strongly related to reliability. You over mentioned that we just closed the virus from one side. Usually we do not close them from both sides because you can bring in some chemical residues into the hole if you close it from both sides and these chemical residues can somehow over the lifetime follow or lead to problems more or less. And that's why usually we carry it from one side.

Ube Swagman:

Yes. And we want to avoid air inclusion because during the sampling process, the air will extend and we get the elimination of the PCB. So it's only possible to do it from one side because it's a lock, it's nearly on the outer layers. So it's really close from one side compared for example, with the blocking process, with a non-contactive based, then we can fill this holes. We fill it with a base and then from both sides closed, but there's no air between. If we are talking about tenting, then it's lock from one side.

Penman:

Okay. Thank you. We have another question from Dave here. It says great tour. What are some common mistakes made by drilling and placement location such as hold to hold to edge of board, et cetera?

Gerald Weiss:

I guess it's from designers point of view now, for sure. In production also some guys on the shop floor makes things wrong. Sure. We are all human and that's why we make mistakes. But from designers point of view, there really goes a lot wrong to be honest, we get data packages where we have two close, let's say distances of two drill holes, for example, on several layers, especially this happens if you have HDI construction. So laser drilling introduced. So this is some weak point let's say because the design rule checks of the design software packages run quite good.

But if you have introduced maybe on an area of 100 by 100 MM, more than 100,000 drill holes, the design rule check is often just checked off. And if you switch off the designer rule check, this will automatically lead to problems. So I recommend here at least to run the design rule check, at least once after you finish your design and then you will find out what goes wrong. And this is some source of problem let's say and the other sources as well than the incorrect set of the design rules. So design rules in this case prepare your design rules in a very good manner. Try to check them as good as possible, ensure that they are correct, then also your board will be correct by the first time.

Penman:

Fantastic. Question from Dave here is, if you could please discuss expect ratio a bit.

Gerald Weiss:

I guess, this is Ube. This is exactly your turn.

Ube Swagman:

Yeah. Expect ratio. The expect ratio is needed for the copper plating process means, we have to have a special opening into panel and a special depth to bring into copper. Means, for example, one of the standard drilling tools is zero to two MM and the expect ratio for copper plating is one to 10, means we can do the copper platting for a zero to two MM hole drill a thickness of the PCB of two millimeters. If we want to do it for two to four MM PCB thickness, then we will get an open in the drill hole. We bring not the copper in the hole. So this is the expect ratio. We are always a little bit talking about one to 10 or one to 12, I suggest to stay at one to 10, because it's the safer way to produce the port.

If we are talking about laser drilling, for example, then we have to take care, this holes are not through holes. The fluid during the copper plating process cannot go through this hole and so the expect ratio is much less than we have only one to one means if we have a laser hole, a laser diameter of 100 microns, preprex thickness tilt the next layer can only be 100 microns. We can do the laser drilling, that will be no problem, but we will not bring in the copper in this holes. The same is for the drilling. The drill pit is long enough, we can do the drilling for five MM thickness but we will have the problem to bring in the copper and to have enough copper in the PTH. This is often a requirement from customer side, doesn't matter how much on the surface, but we need approximately 20 or 25 microns in the hole, still a reason for expect ratio and why we have to take care about this.

Penman:

Well, thank you very much for your answers. Let's jump into the third part of our tour and continue our Q&A right after that. Let's just jump right in. Thank you everybody for submitting those questions. We really appreciate that and I just want to mention that we did this manufacturing tour after a successful manufacturing tour last year, and that's all thanks to your feedback session, specific feedback you will see throughout the event. There's always the request for you to give us feedback. At the end of the event, you will also, or after the event, you will also receive a survey sent to you. We will really appreciate your survey. This is how we can serve you better in the future and this is just an example. This tour is just an example of how we respond to the feedback, because we got really good feedback last year as well. And so I would encourage you to do that. So let's jump right to part three.

Ube Swagman:

This is how the bots look like now. We have the finished PCB with the copper surface, the connections between all layers and have covered now all the areas which are not needed for a sampling, testing or something at their customers side. First, we have to test them and afterwards we have to separate them and ship it to the customer.

Gerald Weiss:

In the production or in the shop floor. We will use the same outline in the production package to do the routing outline.

Ube Swagman:

Here you can see machines which look like nearly like a drilling. It is the same or nearly the same. The big difference is the spin itself. Here, we have the force in the X direction and for the drilling, we have it in the set direction. The same as the drilling, we have a wooden base plate, then the material itself and the cover plate, and can do any contour which is needed. A second possibility to make a contour if we have straight lines, is the scoring. Here you can see the ports which are produced with a knife in this case, but only straight lines. Here you can see this cut we have, and for the customer, he can break it easily after they're sampling. And that's the reason for their scoring some lines in the PCB.

Gerald Weiss:

One of the most critical stuff is the board outline. Why do we do a board outline with 420 micrometer? Because if AT&S is using routing to separate the PCBs out of the production panel, we use a drill bit, which has a tolerance of 210 micrometers. So to see the tolerance of 210 micrometers, we just double these 210 micrometers to be 410, and we easily see the port outline and its tolerance on the PCB. I do not even need a ruler, I can just have a look on the screen and I will see, okay, there is something wrong or not.

Ube Swagman:

Now we have the contour of our ports. Before we can ship them, we have to do the electrical test and do the FI, the final inspection. We are now in our electrical test department and here we have two possibilities for the electrical test. One is the parallel test, I want to show you one of such adapters. And here you can see, depending on the design of the PCB, we have such a test adapter, which with golden needles, and we can do the electrical test for shorts and opens for the complete PCB in a few seconds. Here we have the parallel test, you can see the ports are taking for the machine. Inside here, we have the test adapter and the ports are running through, the test adapter goes one time down and you have the result for good and bad cuts. Here you can see inside the finger test where one of the fingers goes to a test point and all the test points next to this test point are tested for open and short. And if we find an opener and short, we have to scrap the boards.

And here at AT&S in [inaudible 00:48:53] we offer two surfaces. One is the immersion code surface, and the other is the so-called OSP organic surface protection. Here we have the organic surface protection, S surface it's a very small thin layer and will be brought on the PCB as one of the last steps, because we cannot do the electrical test with the surface because it will get scratches. Here we have the final inspect, final in inspect means an optic inspection where we do maybe four different colors, first scratches, some missing elements and so on. Will be done by microscope, by a lens to make it bigger, will be checked and everything, which is fine. Also control the drill tire meters or the finish tire meters and if everything is fine, we give it to the packaging. If we find some failures in this case, then we have to strap it or ask the customer for special approval for maybe less things, maybe cracks in the lock or something, which will not influence the electrical performance of the PCB.

Gerald Weiss:

While you're designing a PCB, just think about that it is necessary to ensure electrical performance. This is the most critical stuff. It's not only the electrical performance, without manufacturing you won't have a PCB and that's the problem. So you also need to think about mechanical details. You also need to think about how does the PCB manufacturer work with your data. Why is the layer required for the PCB manufacturer inform days. Nokia tried to trigger the overall supply chain as good as possible. So they tried to trigger the PCB manufacturer, they tried to trigger the assembly houses. They tried to have a second source and they wanted to come up with the product as fast as possible. So since we have now even more electronics on the market, it is even more complex to trigger the overall supply chain, a supply chain between the component manufacturer, the PCB manufacturer, and the assembly house is not so easy to install. You need to talk to them. You need to ensure that everything goes smooth along the overall development and you need collaboration tools like Altium365 to work together as close as possible.

Penman:

And hearing this closing shot, the beautiful mountainous area that you have the joy of working in, and going every day, I'm from Austria as well for everybody to know. And that makes me homesick to see that. So we got some more questions coming in and let's just start from the top I would say. What is the maximum panel size and what is the common panel size that AT&S can handle, asks Renee then Oya. Thank you for all your questions, Renee.

Ube Swagman:

The standard panel sizes in inches, 18 multiplied by 24. And the second one is a standard is 21 multiply by 24, means in millimeters 457 multiply it by 610. And the bigger one with 533 multiply by 610. Please imagine or keep in mind that 16 millimeter surrounding and needed for the production. So from this numbers which I gave you now, you have to substrate on every site, 16 millimeters which is not a useable area for the PCB from the customer. This area is needed for internal use in the production for [inaudible 00:53:43].

Penman:

Okay. Next question is, do you have a PCB panelization tool to understand the best panel utilization?

Ube Swagman:

Yes, it's included. In the past we started with Excel tool, which was programmed by colleagues. Nowadays we have some software tool, maybe you have seen it in the video. We are working with the software of Engenics in the PE on the PE side product engineering side. And there we have the possibilities to give in the size of the customer array or maybe of the single card and get the best utilization for this. We have to take care a four layer standard, which is a standard product. Can be also rotated on one working panel if we do 22 layers with 16 laser drilling programs and something like that, we only have one orientation on the vacuum panel.

Penman:

Okay. The next question comes from Dave kier, board edge clearance is a complaint. I hear a lot from PCB map fabricators because my customers have very small board with a lot of components. And when Gerald discussed routing the panel/slash board and using doubling of the 210 micrometers to test edge clearance, is this something a designer can do as a sanity check to verify board edge clearance for manufacturing in assembly?

Gerald Weiss:

This is some kind of, I would call it visible check. So by doubling the size of the outline, you visualize more or less the total runs of the production. And if it comes to very small boards, let's say we as AT&S figured out that routing might not be the most beneficial process for singulation of the carts, because you lose a lot of area on the production format. So that's why we also use other singulation methods like scoring for example, but scoring it's not so beneficial from the tolerance point of view unfortunately, and it's why we also have dicing in house, which is well known from Wafer side of you, but therefore you might have some other restrictions regarding to the overall thickness of the PCB and to some other things.

But the tolerance can go down to below let's say 100 micrometer in terms of dicing and can go up let's say to around 500 micrometer, Ube correct me if I'm wrong, but around 500 micrometer for scoring. And in the center or in the best choice, more or less is the mailing process. And the mailing process is around somewhere by 200 micrometer, 200, 250, maybe a bit less if you go for camera alignment. So there are some tricks let's say you can use during production, but these are now values used for standard products.

Penman:

Okay. Maybe you can clarify what you mean by dicing David [inaudible 00:57:20] asked.

Gerald Weiss:

Dicing is a process usually used to singulate the wafer. So singulate the components which you produce in cheap manufacturing on a wafer. And you can use the same process as well for singulation of other materials, let's say, and in our case,we have a dicing equipment in house. So we can really do really, really small to all around this and we can run therefore without producing a lot of scrap and without having quite a lot space lost for singulation of the card. So maybe if you want to have detailed or more detailed information on dicing, it might be beneficial to just check out Wikipedia for example or similar platforms to see exactly what is it about.

Penman:

Okay. Yeah. We have a lot of questions coming in. I'm not sure we can answer them all. Let's see but, let's see, Christian Godzinsky asks can a board be scored only from one side leaving a track where you can later easily separate the part of the board after fabrication component assembly?

Ube Swagman:

Yes. Scoring only on one side is possible and then afterwards you can break it out, is no problem as Gerald mentioned before. Always think about the possible tolerances, scoring is the process where we need the biggest tolerances if needed. Please make, always the tolerance is only so small, what is really needed there. Often we get plastic houses for the PCB itself, where I want to say in summer this houses will be maybe two millimeters bigger than in winter. And so the tolerance for PCB itself plus minus zero, one MM, should always be fine, I think. Because there are different other things where we have to think about. So often it's not needed to make such small tolerances.

Gerald Weiss:

Just as an add on, maybe it is also interesting for you that you can also combine different singulation methods together. So on a one hand side, you can have a routing outline, on the other hand side, you can have a scoring outline or you even can combine it with dicing. So if the total runs is just on the left side of the board or on the North side of the board, for example, then you use the process with lace tolerance and on the other hand side, you use another process for example.

Penman:

Okay. So this brings us to the end of the session, there are many more questions, and I'm not sure what we agreed on, but I want to give you the option to continue the conversation with our attendees, if you are available. I know it's very late in Austria but there's the option maybe to be in one of the rooms afterwards, I would say in the keynotes and panelist room or, actually in the PCB manufacturing room, if you want to continue, would you like to do that? I know it's very late already so.

Gerald Weiss:

I guess, we can stay there at least for a few more minutes and-

Penman:

Few more minutes.

Gerald Weiss:

Yeah. Not a few more hours, because then I'm getting tired, but.

Penman:

I would ask the audience to not nail them down too much, but they said that we would be available because I see some more questions in the PCB manufacturing room. So if you just click into rooms in the PCB manufacturing room, you could hang out maybe 10 more minutes and-

Gerald Weiss:

Sure.

Penman:

We need to get ready here now for our kickoff and the keynote with Todd Hubing. So please make sure you don't miss out. We have a lot of great things on this last day adult in life, and we are excited to have you. Thanks again for being part of this. It's still not too late to share the event with your colleagues and friends. All the recordings are available and will be made available, of course, but being here live even for the last afternoon is still joy. So thank you everybody. Thank you Gerald. Thank you, Ube. It was great to visit you. It was great to do the session with you and we are so blessed to have you as part of Altium life.

Gerald Weiss:

Thank you.

Ube Swagman:

Thank you very much.

Penman:

Thank you everybody.