PODCAST · technology
PCB Chat
by PCEA
PCB Chat - interviews with experts on electronics design and manufacturing, hosted by Mike Buetow
Episodes
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PCB Chat 162: HDP User Group Annual Update With Madan Jagernauth
The High Density Packaging User Group recently released its Annual Progress Report. In this episode, Marketing Director Madan Jagernauth discusses the group's R&D activities over the past year, as well as the challenges facing designers and manufacturers working with today's extreme densities and...
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RM 199: Good Adhesive, Bad Bond: The Hidden Causes of Adhesion Failure
Adhesive failures can be frustrating because the problem isn’t always obvious. The adhesive may have been properly selected, the part may look clean, and the process may seem under control. But weeks or months later, a coating lifts, an encapsulant separates, or a bond fails in the field. So what...
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PCB Chat 161: Chris Parker Discusses Case Study on Dielectrics and Thermal Management
Thermal management is a “hot” topic right now, and with today’s rising power densities, thermal issues are moving into more mainstream PCB designs. If you’ve ever wondered whether you could squeeze another heat sink onto your board, you won’t want to miss this episode of PCB Chat. Chris Parker is...
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PCB Chat 160: Tom Kastner on M&A Trends and Global Manufacturing Challenges
Tom Kastner is the founder of GP Ventures, a company that provides M&A advisory services. He's been involved in PCB industry mergers and acquisitions for decades, and he's written extensively about M&A challenges and opportunities. In this episode of PCB Chat, Tom discusses his background and the...
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RM 198: Sean Patterson on Making Al Useful in Manufacturing
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...
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PCB Chat 159: AJ Cooper and Itera Aim to Retire the Respin
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...
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PCB Chat 158: Wally Rhines on the Latest ECAD Market Data
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,...
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RM 197: Closing the Gap Between Validation and Reality
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…
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RM 196: Dr. James Maisiri on Responsible Technology Adoption
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...
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RM 194: Why Post-Reflow Cleaning Is Becoming Mainstream Again, Part 2
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...
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PCB Chat 157: Tomachie's CJ Clark Discusses AI-driven Schematic and Test Analysis
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...
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RM 193: Why Post-Reflow Cleaning Is Becoming Mainstream Again
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...
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RM 192: Why PCB Revision Errors Are a Hidden Reliability Risk
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...
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RM 191: Why Maintenance Is Finally Getting a Seat at the Table
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...
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PCB Chat 156: Lauren Waslick and Kristen Aguiar of Newgrange Design
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...
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RM 189: Predict, Prevent, Produce: RoviSys' Bryan DeBois on Manufacturing's Al Future
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…
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PCB Chat 155: Breadboard's Nemanja Jokanovic on Automating BOM Management
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…
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RM 187: An Academic Look at Al in Electronics Manufacturing: Where It Works, Fails, and Why It Matters
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...
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PCB Chat 154: Wally Rhines on the Latest ECAD Market Data
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…
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PCB Chat 153: Karen Burnham on Taking the Pain out of EMC
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...
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PCB Chat 152: Mike Buetow on the Cadence Acquisition of EMA
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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PCB Chat 151: Scott Bright of Cadstrom IO
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...
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RM 185: How Accuracy & Force Compliance Contribute to Better Quality & Reliability, with Michael Sivigny
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...
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PCB Chat 150: Wally Rhines on the Latest ECAD Market Data
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…
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RM 184: Advances in Dispensing Automation and Thermal Management with PVA’s Jon Urquhart
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...
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PCB Chat 149: Maggie Frachioni on the Evolution of a PCB Designer
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...
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RM 183: A Reliability Matters Podcast Year-End Reflection
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.
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RM 182: How to Work Effectively with your CM - with Daniel Stanphill & Sean Kincaid
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,...
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RM 181: Working with Contract Manufacturers - with Raymond Novara
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...
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RM 180: Low Temp Soldering for a High-Reliability World
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....
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PCB Chat 147: Matthias Wagner of FluxAI
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…
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RM 179: Indium's Ross Berntson
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...
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PCB Chat 146: The Latest EDA Market Results
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…
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RM 176: The Chemistry of Reliability: Choosing the Right Solder and Flux
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...
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PCB Chat 147 with Margaret Upshur of Mobius Materials
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…
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RM 177: Humidity: Small Cause, Huge Reliability Risk with Viktoria Rawinski
Chapters: 00:00 Introduction & Episode Overview 02:12 Meet Victoria Rawinsky: Expertise & Industry Impact 05:09 Social Media Challenge & Making Science Accessible 09:09 Humidity in Electronics: The Science & Risks 15:12 Types of Humidity & Effects on Materials 20:04 Manufacturing Shortcuts &…
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PCB Chat 146 - Stephen Chavez on PCB Design Trends and Needs
Stephen Chavez is principal technical product marketing manager with Siemens, but he’s best known for his three decades as a printed circuit designer and instructor. He’s a regular contributor to various industry publications and host of the Printed Circuit Podcast. He also coauthored and teaches...
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RM 175 - SMT War Stories with Phil Zarrow and Jim Hall
Mike Konrad is joined by two of the most respected names in the electronics manufacturing industry, Phil Zarrow and Jim Hall. Together, they bring decades of hands-on experience and unparalleled insight into the challenges and solutions within our field. Hall and Zarrow are the driving forces...
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RM 173: Reliability as a Service: How ChargerHelp! Keeps EV Charging Running
As the electric vehicle market accelerates, the reliability of the charging infrastructure becomes increasingly vital. Chargers that are down or malfunctioning can hinder adoption and erode consumer confidence. But who ensures these chargers stay up and running? This episode of Reliability…
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PCB Chat 145: David Schild on Congress Priorities
On this episode of PCB Chat, David Schild of the Printed Circuit Board Association of America and Mike Buetow discuss the current legislative environment for supporting the PCB industry. We discuss the organization's latest annual meeting, the changing political environment, competition with…
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PCB Chat 144: The Latest PCB Design Software Market Trends
Wally Rhines, spokesperson for the ESD Alliance, joins Mike Buetow to discuss the first quarter electronic design automation market results. The good news: sales of PCB/MCM design software were up 5.5% to $399.8 million for the quarter, the 17th straight period of growth. Strength in Asia-Pacific...
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RM 172: Steering ERP Projects Back on Track with Chintan Sutaria
Today we're diving into a topic that keeps many executives awake at night—ERP implementations. More specifically, why so many of them fail and, perhaps more importantly, how to fix them midstream before they derail your operations. Joining Mike Konrad is someone who knows this space inside and...
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Cofactr on Supply Chain Execution
Cofactr is a supply chain execution platform that includes source-to-pay and 3PL solutions for electronics hardware developers. Live from the show floor at PCB East in May, cofounder Phil Gulley and VP of marketing Libby Melton join Matt Leary, Geoffrey Hazelett and Mike Buetow to discuss the...
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RM 171: Pick & Place Machine Selection and Optimization
Today we're turning our attention to a cornerstone of modern electronics manufacturing: pick-and-place technology. Joining Mike Konrad is Tim Kang, CEO of Hanwha Semitech Americas. With nearly two decades of experience in the electronics manufacturing space — starting as a mechanical engineer and...
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RM 169: On the Road - Soldering
On this episode of the Reliability Matters podcast, Mike Konrad left his usual studio for the IPC Apex Expo trade show. He interviews two subject matter experts on topics related to electronics assembly. The guests are: Gerald Gardner, global product manager at Weller, a manufacturer of hand...
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RM 168: On the Road - Electronics Assembly
Mike Konrad interviews three subject matter experts on various topics related to electronics assembly. The guests are: Greg Beck, director of sales at Absolute EMS, a contract manufacturer. Brian Watson, cofounder of HyRel Technologies, a global provider of quickturn semiconductor modification...
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Chris Banton of EMA Design Automation on Board Optimization
Chris Banton of EMA Design Automation joins Matt Leary, Geoffrey Hazelett and Mike Buetow to talk about how the EDA vendor's helps printed circuit board designers optimize their designs. Recorded live on the show floor at PCB East 2025.
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PCB Chat 143: Frank Mullaney and Emma Hudson of iNEMI
For early 30 years, the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (INEMI), has been the go-to consortium for many leading OEMs companies and their suppliers to identify and develop next-generation technology, and then help deploy it for high-volume manufacturing. Frank Mullaney, director...
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Tom Britton and Nataliia Matsiuk on an AI Solution for PCB Manufacturing
Tom Britton and Nataliia Matsiuk join Geoffrey Hazelett of FreedomCAD, Matt Leary of Newgrange Design and Mike Buetow of PCEA to share work on a Department of Energy program that pair scientists with real-world industry problems. In particular, Britton and Matsiuk are focused on developing an AI...
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Robert Byrne of Allspice
Robert Bryne, director of marketing at Allspice.io, joins Geoffrey Hazelett of FreedomCAD, Matt Leary of Newgrange Design and Mike Buetow of PCEA to talk about the five-year-old company's GIT hardware platform that helps hardware and electrical engineers streamline hardware design reviews. We...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
PCB Chat - interviews with experts on electronics design and manufacturing, hosted by Mike Buetow
HOSTED BY
PCEA
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does PCB Chat have?
PCB Chat currently has 250 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is PCB Chat about?
PCB Chat - interviews with experts on electronics design and manufacturing, hosted by Mike Buetow
How often does PCB Chat release new episodes?
PCB Chat publishes regularly with 250 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to PCB Chat?
You can listen to PCB Chat on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts PCB Chat?
PCB Chat is created and hosted by PCEA.
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