Doug Dixon, CMO, 360Circuits

Inflation or higher interest rates had no impact on our business. There are other reasons that affect our customers. The shortage of skilled labor is a key driver for further automation. Manual tasks such as controlled impedance testing are being replaced by automated solutions to increase throughput, avoid human error and improve measurement accuracy. And the increasing digital data rates in high-speed applications require accurate characterization of PCB base materials, control of PCB insertion loss and copper roughness.

In addition to controlled impedance testing, the PCB industry sees the need to test trace losses on the PCB. As more and more electronics are used in safety-critical applications (autonomous driving, medical, aerospace, defense), PCB reliability is becoming an important issue.

Therefore, PCB manufacturers are using new accelerated stress test methods such as the IST Interconnect Stress Test to ensure product quality and reliability, especially when using complex multilayer structures, new base materials and drilling technologies. Due to this market situation, we will also be presenting further solutions and options to our customers in 2024.