Printed Circuit Engineering Association™

Certified Printed Circuit Designer Training

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.

Upcoming Classes (Spring 2025):

 

PCB Detroit

PCEA Announces PCB Detroit Technical Conference

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – FEBRUARY 4, 2025 – Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) will host a new technical conference and exhibition in June in Detroit for printed circuit designers, design engineers, fabricators and assemblers.

PCB Detroit will take place June 2-3 on the campus of Wayne State University. It will include two days of technical sessions, plus a tabletop exhibition on June 2.

Wayne State University is Michigan’s third-largest university, and a licensee of the PCEA Training Certified Printed Circuit Designer curriculum. 

The conference will feature speakers on controlling noise, using AI in hardware and PCB design, flex and rigid-flex materials and DfM, HDI via design, and PCB cost drivers, among others. A free reception and special designers meetup (registration required) will take place after classes end on June 2 and 3, respectively.

“Our efforts with Wayne State University have shown there is a vibrant yet underserved electronics community in Michigan,” said Mike Buetow, president, PCEA. “PCB Detroit will bring world-class experts to help with their new designs and products.”  

For more information about PCB Detroit, visit pcea.net/pcb-detroit or contact  pcbdetroit@pcea.net.

Awards

CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Opens Registration for 2025 Service Excellence Awards

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – JANUARY 30, 2025 – CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY today opened registration for its annual Service Excellence Awards (SEAs) for EMS providers and electronics assembly equipment, material, service, and software suppliers. 

Now in its 33rd year, the SEAs honor companies for excelling in the critical area of customer service, permitting participants to benchmark customer service against their peers. It is the only industry awards program that uses direct customer feedback to determine best-in-class. The deadline to enter is March 31, 2025.

Customers are surveyed to determine their satisfaction with a participating company in various categories, including dependability/timely delivery; ease of use; manufacturing quality; responsiveness to requests and changes; technology; value for the price; and flexibility/ease of doing business. For each EMS category, the overall best-in-show winner is selected.

All customer responses and ratings are tabulated and provided in a confidential report for the participating company.

Participants report using the data to improve their customer response and comply with various quality audits such as ISO 9001 and AS9100.

“Datest offers testing, engineering, analytical, and other value-added services, all geared to speed, flexibility, and results.  We need a mechanism for obtaining meaningful feedback from customers on a regular basis. We also share that feedback with our AS9100 auditor. The CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Service Excellence Awards are ideal for capturing those honest reactions that make us a better company,” said Robert Boguski, president, Datest (2024 winner, Test Laboratories).

About the Awards

The SEAs recognize four categories of EMS providers based on revenues (under $20 million; $20 million to $100 million; $101 million to $500 million, and over $500 million).

Equipment, material or software supplier awards will be presented in each of the following categories: component storage systems; automation and handling equipment; cleaning processing or materials; device programming equipment; dispensing; pick-and-place; repair and rework; screen printing; test and inspection; materials (solder, encapsulants and adhesives); soldering equipment; automation/manufacturing software (not ERP/MRP); and supply-chain/ERP/MRP software.

Non-manufacturing service providers will be honored in the following categories: test laboratories; recycling, cleaning or other non-manufacturing process providers; and design service bureaus. Reps or agents and/or distributors will also be honored.

CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY will honor winners in person at SMTA International in October 2025 at the Rosemont Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. Participants will receive their report as an Excel file after the show.

For more information, visit https://circuitsassembly.com/ca/editorial/service-excellence-award.html.

To register, visit https://na.eventscloud.com/2025sea.

PCB West

PCB West 2025 Booth Space Now Open to Any Exhibitor

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. 

PCB East

PCB East 2025 Conference Registration Open

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.

PCB Design Training

Upcoming PCEA PCB Design Training Classes for 2025

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:

  • Jan. 20, 27, Feb. 3, 10, 24   
  • Feb. 28, Mar. 7, 14, 28, Apr. 4
  • May 9, 16, 23, 30, Jun. 6

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.

Read the latest issues of PCD&F/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY!

Collaborate, Educate, and Inspire

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.