-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBreaking High-speed Material Constraints
Do you need specialty materials for your high-speed designs? Maybe not. Improvements in resins mean designers of high-speed boards can sometimes use traditional laminate systems. Learn more in this issue.
Level Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
The Survey Said: What Does It Take to Become a Great Designer?
March 14, 2024 | Andy Shaughnessy, PCB Design007Estimated reading time: 1 minute
There are thousands of good PCB designers around the world. But the number of truly great designers makes up a much smaller universe.
What does it take to become a great designer? After all, there isn’t exactly a critical path to becoming a great designer. How does a designer qualify as “great” in the first place?
We posed that question to our PCB designer readers in a recent survey, and, as usual, the readers did not disappoint. These are a few of the more illustrative answers, edited slightly for clarity.
1. Great designers have a love for layout and plenty of experience. Training is not helpful, but mentoring is very valuable.
2. You need to have a broad knowledge of the physics behind the process—metallurgy, chemistry, mechanics, and electronics—and the interaction between opposing issues (which ones should be given priority over another).
3. It takes experience and the ability to communicate with both designers and production engineers closely.
4. I personally think a great PCB designer should start with basic drafting skills and basic electronics. Learn everything you can about PCB fabrication, assembly and test. Then jump back in and learn in-depth electronic applications, maybe focusing on a desired field. We should not expect engineers with tons of application skills and minimal PCB knowledge to create great PCB layouts.
5. Learning from those with the proven ability to design optimal PCBs is the best way to gain from the experience of others. However, is there a reluctance on the part of those with experience to pass it on to the next generation? Those who will be retiring in 2-3 years can afford to train less experienced engineers, but I believe that those with 20 years to run are much less likely to share what they've learned. This is especially true in companies with a history of “hire and fire.”
Special thanks to all of our readers who responded to this survey. We appreciate your input.
Suggested Items
Relive the Experience: Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Show & Tell Magazine
05/14/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOYou came, you saw, and you experienced the magic of IPC APEX EXPO 2024. Now you get to relive the many memories and experiences in the pages of Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Show & Tell Magazine, our annual review of everything that happened during our week in Anaheim, California.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024: A Preview of the Women in Electronics Reception
03/18/2024 | Alicia Balonek, IPCThis year’s Women in Electronics Reception is scheduled from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 9. It will feature a panel discussion led by IPC Hall of Famer Karen McConnell, Northrop Grumman, on work-life balance. Panelists include:
The Survey Said: What’s the Difference Between Good and Great Designers?
03/06/2024 | Andy Shaughnessy, I-Connect007With many PCB designers facing retirement, there’s been a lot of discussion about how we’ll replace this “brain drain” and what it means to be great PCB designer. Think about it: What’s the difference between a good designer and a truly great designer? We posed that question to our PCB designer readers in a recent survey.
Review: The Institute of Circuit Technology Christmas Seminar 2023
12/18/2023 | Pete Starkey, I-Connect007A multitude of delegates from the UK printed circuit industry made the journey to the Institute of Circuit Technology Christmas Seminar on December 5 at the grandiose Majestic Hotel in the picturesque spa town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire. They were welcomed by ICT Chair Emma Hudson, who introduced a program of three presentations encompassing the diverse topics of satellites, electroless metallisation and electronics manufacturing initiatives.
Your Thermal Designs Are Inefficient
12/07/2023 | Douglas Brooks, Consultant, and Johannes Adam, ADAM ResearchMost designers rely on the trace widths suggested in IPC-2152, the “bible” for calculating high-current trace widths (unless you have read our book). IPC-2152 is the best, most thoroughly researched study of trace currents and temperatures available. But it does have some weaknesses. One weakness is that it (by necessity) studies 6-inch-long traces in isolation. But traces are not all 6 inches long nor in isolation.