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
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 analytics that ...
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 be exh...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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 instead of pro...
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 ...
Jon Urquhart is director of global applications engineering at Precision Valve and Automation — one of the world’s leading developers of dispensing, coating, and industrial motion-automation systems. Since joining PVA in 1993, Urquhart has become widely recognized for his expertise in fluid material processing, precision dispensing, and the engineering-to-manufacturing handoff that so often makes or breaks pr...
Margaret (Maggie) Frachioni is a semiconductor hardware engineer at General Motors, where, armed with a bachelor’s in computer engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, she started out college as a software engineer in its automotive test lab.
While at GM, she started work toward her master’s at Wayne State University in Detroit. Last year, she was part of the first PCEA Certified Printed Circuit Designer course taught...
Since 2018, Reliability Matters has been building a knowledge vault, capturing the wisdom of industry experts for engineers everywhere. In this special year-end episode, we celebrate the journey, the growth, and the community that made it possible.
Mike Konrad continues a dive into the world of contract manufacturing—a vital piece of the electronics ecosystem. Joining him are two industry leaders who know this space inside and out. First, we have Daniel Stanphill, SMT process engineer at Aurora Boardworks, and alongside him, Sean Kincaid, president of K & F Electronics. Both companies provide contract manufacturing services to a wide range of customers, helping tur...
The next two episodes of Reliability Matters will be all about contract manufacturing, an area that can make or break the reliability and success of a product. Mike Konrad's guest on this episode is Raymond Novara, founder and owner of East End Assemblies, a US-based contract manufacturer recognized for its focus on quality, customer service, and compliance with AS9100 and IPC standards. During our con...
Note: This is the fourth of four episodes on the subject of soldering materials.
Today, we're diving into a topic that's reshaping how we think about thermal management, energy efficiency, and long-term performance in electronics manufacturing—low temperature soldering. Joining Mike Konrad is Dr. HongWen Zhang, principal metallurgist and R&D manager of the A...
Today’s guest is Matthias Wagner, chief executive and cofounder of Flux. Flux is maker of a Agentic AI-based PCB design platform and programmable simulator that runs in a browser environment. Regular listeners may know we have spoken with Matthias a few times in the past, most recently in February 2024.
Since we last spoke, Flux has built out its platform with a variety of tools for design planning, parts searching, netlist generat...
This is the third of four episodes on the subject of soldering materials.
Today, we’re continuing our deep dive into the world of soldering materials, from advanced alloys and flux chemistries to global manufacturing strategy and materials innovation, with one of the industry’s most respected leaders. Joining Mike Konrad is Ross Berntson, president and CEO of Indium Corp.
Wally Rhines joins Mike Buetow each quarter to share details from the latest ESD Alliance report on sales of PCB design software, computer-aided engineering tools, semiconductor tools, related IP and services, and employment.
This chat, we discuss the long PCB/MCM design tool rally, a massive jump in employment. broader strength across the ECAD industry, and the effects US policies toward China are having on the market.
In this episode, Mike Konrad is joined by Chris Ward, founder and managing director of Solderking Assembly Materials, a UK-based manufacturer of solders and chemical consumables for electronic, electrical, and engineered assemblies. Ward brings decades of experience in soldering materials and chemical formulations—and he’s built a company committed to performance, consistency, and innovation. Earlier th...
Margaret Upshur is CEO of Mobius Materials, a global online marketplace for excess electronic components. Before founding Mobius, she was senior director of operations at Particle, which supplies application infrastructure for deploying software and models on computing or IoT devices. And while in college she cofounded a company that made a hand-held device to detect the alcohol content of liquids.
Noting some $15 billion or more i...
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