PCB Chat

PCB Chat

Recorded conversations and interviews on electronics design and manufacturing with the editors of PCD&F/Circuits Assembly, brought to you by the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA)

Episodes

July 23, 2026 69 mins

Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now. It’s in the headlines, it’s being built into software tools, and it’s showing up in more and more conversations about engineering, manufacturing, quality, and process improvement. But here’s the problem. A company can buy the software. A team can attend the training. Everyone can walk away impressed by what AI might be able to do. And ...

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What if PCB design respins were a thing of the past? What if updating hardware was as easy as updating software?

Itera CEO AJ Cooper co-founded the company to address this exact issue. And now, Itera has developed the world's first "fluid" PCB that can rewire itself in real time. AJ will discuss this groundbreaking technology in his PCB West keynote speech, "It's Time to Retire the Respin." 

In this episode of PCB Chat, AJ dis...

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Wally Rhines is the spokesperson for the ESD Alliance, part of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International. He joins Andy Shaughnessy every quarter to share details from the latest ESD Alliance report on sales of computer-aided engineering tools, semiconductor tools, PCB design software, related IP and services, and employment.

In this interview, Wally discusses the results for Q1 2026, which marks the 21st consecutive quar...

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What if passing the test is not enough? In reliability engineering, we often place a great deal of confidence in laboratory validation. We test, measure, analyze, and document. And when the product passes, we naturally assume it is ready for the field. But what happens when a product passes the lab test and still fails in the hands of the customer? Today, we are going to explore the gap between laboratory reliability testing and ...
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Today, we’re going to explore a topic that seems to be touching nearly every industry, every workplace, and increasingly every part of our daily lives: artificial intelligence. But this conversation is not just about what AI can do. It’s about what AI assumes, what it values, what it misses, and what happens when powerful technologies are deployed into environments they were not designed to understand. Mike Konrad's g...
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This is part two of a two-part series. In Part One, we explored how the electronics industry transitioned from a clean-everything approach to one where cleaning became optional. But what happens when the assumptions behind “no-clean” collide with modern electronics design? In this episode of Reliability Matters, Mike Konrad examines how the definition of cleanliness has fundamentally changed. As assemblies became sma...
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Tomachie has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. Its eponymous platform provides AI-assisted analysis of PCB schematic data. It optimizes DfT and identifies the ideal locations for physical test point insertion. And it generates a 0-100 layout-readiness score, providing design teams with an objective, data-driven metric.

Tomachie is the brainchild of CJ Clark, a veteran test engineer with a background in JTAG and boundary scan techno...

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For decades, cleaning circuit assemblies after soldering was not optional. It was standard practice across the electronics manufacturing industry. Then, almost overnight, that changed. In this episode of Reliability Matters, Mike Konrad takes you back to the origins of that shift. From the widespread use of CFC-based cleaning solvents to the global impact of the Montreal Protocol, this episode explains how environmental regulation...
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Today, we’re going to explore a topic that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves but has a direct impact on product quality and long-term reliability. Mike Konrad is joined by Mehdi Nahali, founder of PCB Revision Control PRO. His platform is designed to replace spreadsheets, emails, and disconnected systems with a centralized approach to PCB revision lifecycle management and factory intelligence.  They go...
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Today’s episode is going to resonate with anyone responsible for uptime, efficiency, and ultimately, product reliability.  Because whether we’re talking about circuit assemblies, manufacturing lines, or entire facilities, reliability doesn’t start at inspection. It starts with maintenance. Mike Konradf's guest is Paul Ross, chief marketing officer at Limble, a company providing modern maintenance and asset ...
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Printed circuit designers Lauren Waslick and Kristen Aguiar of Newgrange Design have become mainstays as presenters at industry conferences such as PCB East and PCB West. Neither, however, anticipated a career in PCBs coming out of college.

They discuss their career paths, finding mentors, and adjusting to a male-heavy industry with PCEA managing editor Ryann Howard. 

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What if your factory could predict failures before they happen, capture decades of human expertise, and make better decisions than ever before—without replacing the people who run it? Today’s guest sits right at the intersection of innovation and industry.  Bryan DeBois, director of industrial AI at RoviSys, is helping reshape what manufacturing looks like in the age of intelligent machines. From predictive anal...

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Nemanja Jokanovic is the executive leader of Breadboard, an AI-powered platform that he believes will revolutionize BOM management. In this interview with Andy Shaughnessy, Jokanovic, an Octopart alum, discusses the many sourcing challenges facing EMS companies today, and he explains how Breadboard optimizes BOM analysis and supply chain management. 

Stop by and chat with Jokanovic in person at PCB East 2026. Breadboard will b...

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Artificial intelligence is being promoted as the next revolution in electronics manufacturing, but what happens when the people evaluating it aren’t traditional AI experts, aren’t software vendors, and aren’t selling anything?  Today’s conversation brings together engineers and professors who live at the intersection of education, reliability, and real-world manufacturing to separate meaningful progres...
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Wally Rhines is the spokesperson for the ESD Alliance, part of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International. He joined Andy Shaughnessy to share details from the latest ESD Alliance report on sales of computer-aided engineering tools, semiconductor tools, PCB design software, related IP and services, and employment.

In this interview, Wally discusses the results for the fourth quarter of 2025, which marks the 20th consecutiv...

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Karen Burnham feels your pain - the pain of EMC, that is. Karen is an EMC engineer, instructor, and founder of EMC United, a consulting company that aims to make EMC less painful for the rest of the PCB design engineering community. Karen joins Andy Shaughnessy to discuss some of the most common EMC challenges facing our industry today, a variety of solutions for these challenges, and design practices that can help you avoid EMC pr...

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What does Cadence's acquisition of EMA Design Automation mean for the respective companies, and the market? Mike Buetow considers the issues related to the EDA giant's acquisition of its largest VAR.

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February 11, 2026 32 mins

Scott Bright is co-founder and COO of Cadstrom IO, a new company that is coming up with tools for resolving some of the engineering problems that designers and engineers are encountering daily.

Bright has more than 35 years of technology and management experience, including three years at IoT company Jiva, where he was CEO, and 13 at the engineering firm Synapse, which he co-founded and was CEO.

Bright has designed hardware from ba...

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In electronics manufacturing, defects don’t usually announce themselves. They happen in milliseconds, far faster than human perception, and often long before anyone realizes a process has drifted out of control. By the time failures show up in test, inspection, or worse, in the field, the root cause may be buried deep inside machine behavior that no one thought to question. When machines are assumed to be accurate inste...

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Wally Rhines the spokesperson for the ESD Alliance, part of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International. He joins Mike Buetow each quarter to share details from the latest ESD Alliance report on sales of computer-aided engineering tools, semiconductor tools, PCB design software, related IP and services, and employment.

We discuss:

  • The latest PCB/MCB design tool market data
  • The 19-quarter streak of year-over-year gains ...
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