The printed circuit design industry’s choice for comprehensive training and certification. This 40-hour live curriculum was developed by leading experts and includes a 400-page handbook containing information on everything from parts libraries to high-speed design.
PEACHTREE CITY, GA – JANUARY 8, 2025 – The exhibition floor for PCB West 2025 is now open to any prospective exhibitor, the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) announced today. The exhibition floor is expected to sell out, as it has in 10 of the past 11 years, PCEA added.
PCB West will be held September 30 to October 3, 2025, at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. The event includes a one-day exhibition on October 1.
Booth sales opened in mid-October to returning exhibitors, and the exhibition floor is currently more than 50% sold out.
“PCB West has sold out 10 of the past 11 years, and we fully expect it to do so again,” said Frances Stewart, vice president of sales and marketing at PCEA. “Attendance at the show was up 4% year-over-year in 2024, and attendees have noted the access to vendors and each other as the primary reasons why they come to PCB West.”
Companies interested in exhibiting should contact Frances Stewart at frances@pcea.net for details.
PRINTED CIRCUIT DESIGN & FAB/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Magazine are media partners for the event.
PEACHTREE CITY, GA – JANUARY 6, 2025 – Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) today released the groundbreaking keynote presentation from PCB West 2024, “AI Roadmap for PCB Layout: New Opportunities for PCB Designers.”
Presented by electronics computer-aided design software (ECAD) architect Charles Pfeil, the roadmap highlights current limitations of artificial intelligence and necessary steps to address them to overcome these challenges. It illustrates the capabilities and methodologies that will be needed for AI success with complex PCB designs, with a focus on constraints, place and route.
The talk was designed to inspire collaboration among EDA companies, customers and designers to create AI capabilities that solve complex PCB layouts. Success, Pfeil says, lies in balancing the growing capabilities of AI with the preservation of proprietary design knowledge and methodologies.
The pdf may be downloaded at no charge at Printed Circuit University under the White Papers section (https://printedcircuituniversity.com/index.php/free-content/white-papers).
“AI functionality for effective place and route of simple designs is currently available; however, using AI for place and route of complex designs is still in the first stages. But the ultimate goal of AI-driven PCB design tools is to replicate and potentially surpass the capabilities of experienced human designers, particularly for complex designs,” Pfeil notes.
“Communicating PCB design expertise and decisions to an AI program involves several steps, including knowledge extraction, representation, and the development of an appropriate system to leverage this knowledge. But significant challenges remain, particularly in capturing and applying the nuanced expertise of experienced designers and the unique methodologies of different companies.”
Over his 50-year career in the PCB industry, Pfeil has been a designer, owner of a service bureau, and had engineering management and product definition roles at Racal-Redac, ASI, Cadence, PADS, VeriBest, Mentor Graphics, and Altium. Most of his career was at Mentor Graphics, where he was a software architect focused on the advanced development of PCB design tools. He was the original product architect of Expedition PCB, and an inventor of Team PCB, XtremePCB, XtremeAR, and the Sketch Router. He is also the author of BGA Breakouts and Routing and High-Speed Constraint Values and PCB Layout Methods.
PEACHTREE CITY, GA – JANUARY 6, 2025 – Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) this month will open registration for the technical program for PCB East 2025, featuring more than 75 hours of in-depth electronics engineering training.
Rick Hartley, Susy Webb, Dan Beeker, Tomas Chester and Zach Peterson are among the headliners of this year’s conference. It will be held April 29 to May 2 at the Boxboro Regency Hotel and Conference Center in Boxborough, MA. It features classes for every level of experience, from novice to expert.
The scope of classes ranges from the basics of design engineering, documentation, libraries and circuit grounding to more advanced fare such as RF and mixed signal design, DDR5 routing, board stackups, simulation, controlling EMI, and power delivery system design.
More than half the presentations are new to the conference, including ones on maximizing routing channels, successful design release, differential pair design for 112 Gbps and faster systems, EMI shielding, flex design, UHDI design, controlling for tin whiskers, and AI and other upcoming changes in PCB design.
“PCB East continues to grow as the leading place for learning about electronics design and manufacturing on the East Coast,” said Mike Buetow, conference director, PCB East. “This year’s event offers an array of experts in printed circuit design engineering and manufacturing, and a new emphasis on assembly.”
Registration for both the technical conference and the exhibition takes place at pcbeast.com. Those who sign up by March 17 can take advantage of the early bird special discounts for the conference.
The PCEA Conferences Task Group developed the program from more than 60 abstracts submitted. The task group, chaired by Troy Hopkins, is made up of 10 industry veterans with more than 200 years of cumulative experience in the printed circuit industry.
PCB East is the largest technical conference and exhibition for the electronics design, fabrication and assembly industry in New England.
The one-day exhibition takes place April 30 at the Boxboro Regency in Boxborough, MA, while the four-day technical conference takes place April 29-May 2. For details, visit pcbeast.com.
PEACHTREE CITY, GA – NOVEMBER 21, 2024 – The Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) today issued a call for abstracts for the PCB West 2025 technical conference. The conference, the largest of its kind in Silicon Valley, focuses on training and best practices for printed circuit board designers and design engineers, electronics hardware engineers, fabricators and assemblers.
The four-day technical conference will take place September 30 – October 3 at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. The event includes a one-day exhibition on October 1.
Papers and presentations of the following durations are sought for the technical conference: one-hour lectures and presentations; two-hour workshops; and half-day (3.5-hour) and full-day seminars.
Preference is given to presentations of two hours in length or more, and no presentations of less than one hour will be considered.
Abstracts of 150-750 words and speaker biographies should be submitted to PCEA. Papers and presentations must be noncommercial in nature and should focus on technology, techniques or methodologies related to printed circuit board design, fabrication, assembly, test, components or packaging, and additive manufacturing.
Submit abstracts at pcbwest.com by January 24, 2025. No emailed abstracts will be accepted. Submitters will be notified by early April if their abstract has been accepted. Presentations are due September 5, 2025.
Speaker Benefits: Presenters of accepted abstract(s) for the 2025 program receive the following event benefits.
For more information about PCB West, visit pcbwest.com or contact Conference Director Mike Buetow at 617-327-4702; mike@pcea.net.
PEACHTREE CITY, GA – NOVEMBER 20, 2024 – PCEA Training today announced the upcoming winter and spring 2025 schedule for the Certified Professional Circuit Designer (CPCD) training and certification program.
The instructor-led classes cover the gamut of printed circuit design engineering, from layout, place and route to specifications and materials to manufacturing methods. Schematic capture, signal integrity and EMI/EMC are also part of the comprehensive program.
Classes will be held on the dates below:
Each class is 40 hours long and includes a copy of Printed Circuit Engineering Professional, a 400-page handbook on circuit board design, and the optional certification exam.
The deadline to register for the January class is Jan. 3, February class deadline is Feb. 3, and May class deadline is April 11.
There are no prerequisite requirements to enroll. Upcoming classes will be held online. All courses are led by experienced instructors.
The course handbook, Printed Circuit Engineering Professional, was authored by Michael Creeden, Stephen Chavez, Rick Hartley, Susy Webb and Gary Ferrari, industry veterans who combined have more than 200 years’ experience designing and building PCBs for all types of applications.
The course includes an optional certification exam recognized by the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA).
For information about the course overview, class format, and materials to prepare in advance for the class, visit pceatraining.net/course-overview.
For information about the instructors of the course and authors of the course material, visit pceatraining.net/instructors-authors.
To enroll, visit pceatraining.net/registration for the next available class or email pceatraining@pcea.net for additional information.
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The Printed Circuit Engineering Association® (PCEA) is an international network of engineers, designers, fabricators, assemblers, and anyone related to printed circuit development. Our mission is to promote printed circuit engineering as a profession by encouraging and facilitating the exchange of information and the integration of new design concepts through education, certification, communications, seminars, and workshops. This is facilitated by a network of local, regional, virtual PCEA-affiliated chapters and the support of our sponsors.
