Defense-grade design: Mentorship, reliability, and the next wave of PCB innovation

Stephen V. Chavez (00:01.24): Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning into the Printed Circuit podcast, where we discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities across the printed circuit industry. I’m your host, Stephen Chavez. In this episode, we’ll focus on education. Here to join me is Tim, CEO of Timberwolf. Thanks for being here, Tim.

Tim (00:18.735): Thanks for having me.

Stephen V. Chavez (00:20.436): Awesome. All right. So Tim, you know, let’s get started. But before we do, you know, could you give our audience a summary of your background and experience and what you bring to the table and, you know, the whole magic that you bring because, know, after, know, initially talking with you, man, oh man, let’s let’s share that. So.

Tim (00:37.561): So I started in the Marine Corps back in 04 to 08. Got two deployments out of that one. I’ve deployed as an ISR pilot captain to multiple theaters, Afghanistan, in support of Special Operations Task Force. I’ve used a lot of defense electronics and avionics and equipment throughout my time.

Tim (01:06.265): I have personal investment in it because I’ve used it and the quality of the hardware that we use has real implications out there. I kind of got into electronics as part of, my dad actually did a lot of printed circuit design. He’s rather talented and he pushed me to kind of make some transitions. I’m no longer flying at the moment. I will go back to flying eventually, but now I’m full-time electronics focusing on printed circuit design.

Stephen V. Chavez (01:43.95): Awesome, awesome. know, you know, from one marine to another, man, thank you for your service, brother. You know that that’s definitely a yellow footprints man. Stand on those yellow footprints. So with that said, Tim, you know, you know, tell us about the current projects and challenges you’re seeing, especially regards to the skills gap, you know, the engineers with, you know, you know, needing the vital education, you know, especially when we talk about specific knowledge, it’s

Stephen V. Chavez (02:13.377): domains such as power integrity, EMC, and basically the foundation when you think about board stack ups and routing and the essence of the purity of designing a circuit board.

Tim (02:23.991): So, some of the projects, most everything that I work on is defense related. So, I can’t get into detail on everything, but a lot of radio equipment, a lot of mixed signal, we’re getting into high speed. I have not done a board in the last two years that didn’t have at least 10 gigabit on the board. I’m starting to see even the experienced guys, which we’re running short of, they’re retiring and there’s nobody to replace them.

Stephen V. Chavez (02:32.929): Mm-hmm.

Tim (02:53.583): And that’s one of the major issues and we need to keep these skill sets alive in this country moving forward. It is a national defense issue and it’s a sovereignty issue. We need to be able to rely on ourselves for everything. One of the things that I’ve found is that some of the older guys, they’ve got a foot out the door and some of the techniques and what we need to do to be able to implement 25 and 52 gigabit on a board reliably. My last design had 64, 25 gigabit lines on it and the board was very small as you’re trying to make all this stuff work. It had DDR4 on it and it was extremely, extremely dense. We’re getting into things people haven’t done before and a lot of people I’m seeing in the industry are struggling with implementing these things. So not only are we losing some of the

Tim (03:52.631): legacy ability and legacy experience that’s out there, we’re also moving into things that are brand new that people haven’t done before, haven’t seen before. So what I’m seeing right now is that there’s a gap. There’s not a lot of investment out there in some of the younger people. So with that lack of investment, I’m trying to fill the gap. And I’m specifically trying to fill the gap for defense applications so that we have

Tim (04:19.471): everything that we need to move forward that when there’s a call for something we can deliver it and it’ll work the first time and it’s reliable for our guys on the ground to be able to say my life depends on this equipment it’s gonna work

Stephen V. Chavez (04:32.814): Yeah, yeah, it has to. mean, when you think about, you know, especially Mil-aero, you think about class redesigns, know, that’s tight tolerances, high quality. I mean, you got to deliver and it starts, you know, at the essence of engineering. You got to know what you’re designing, how to implement the designs according to that class or to meet your needs regarding the envelope of what you’re designing. You know, is it in the avionic bay of the aircraft? Is that on the wing? You know, what is its environment? These are a lot of details that go into what it takes to bring your widget to the market. And you’ve got to understand. then, like you said, we’re pushing the envelope, especially as things are getting smaller, tightly compacted. You mentioned the 25 gigahertz. You talk about DDR4. The complexity is only going up. It’s getting more and more, especially because it’s getting condensed smaller and smaller. Yeah, education and mentorship, these all come into play or the lack of it is really affecting our industry. And especially when you think about engineering jobs, one in every one out of three engineering jobs are going unfilled, you know, in the industry. And it’s getting worse when you think about that skills gap. So, you know, at what point, Tim, did you get involved with education in the next generation of the PCB engineers and designers? Was there a specific trigger, or what sparked it?

Tim (06:00.847): There’s a couple things. I’ve been in education for a long time. spent, as every pilot does, I went through my phase as a flight instructor. When I was in the Marine Corps, my primary MOS was Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons. 80% of that is instructing. So I kind of recognized the shortfalls with academia. The curriculum is really lacking what

Stephen V. Chavez (06:29.644): yeah.

Tim (06:30.015): is necessary. There’s a lot of time spent on things that are not relevant to the modern world. Rather than just hitting on a concept, moving on and then getting an application. There’s a lot of emphasis on theory, maybe just to appease an ABET requirement and that’s it. Versus saying this is what you need to go out and do something. So I’m recognizing that academia

Tim (06:55.919): is missing application of tools. There is some exposure to certain tools, but they’re not the tools that we really need to do some of these high-end designs. And that’s one of my major issues. I might be a little snobby, but I really lean on Xpedition for everything I do. I can’t see doing any of the designs that I do

Tim (07:25.569): in any other tool. just not something that I see as feasible at the moment. Maybe someday they’ll progress, but as of right now, this Xpedition is what I’m using. And I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But there’s no exposure, there’s no avenue currently to expose engineering students to some of these tools. And what I’m

Stephen V. Chavez (07:42.286): Yeah

Tim (07:54.827): noticing right now is that some of the gap between the real world means that a lot of these guys have to go spend their first two years on the job learning tools, learning how to actually apply these things and that gap is a major issue. What I’d like to see is I’d like to see more, I’d like to see academia, it’s going to take some investment.

Stephen V. Chavez (08:05.794): Mm-hmm.

Tim (08:21.135): I think that’s one of the big things is that there’s been a lack of investment. It’s going to government funds investment. It’s going to take major corporations investing to be able to fix some of this. there’s right now I’m seeing a cliff and going forward as these guys retire and most of them will be retiring soon. I’m the youngest by 20 years where I’m at primarily.

Stephen V. Chavez (08:36.322): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (08:45.198): Mm-hmm.

Tim (08:50.351): It’s going to be a major issue because as soon as they retire, even the basics can’t even be done. And another thing that I’m seeing, there’s no entry level to this industry anymore. You can’t grow with the technology. You have to learn from the top at this point. Class one has nothing to do. There is no overlap whatsoever.

Stephen V. Chavez (09:09.312): I don’t think anybody builds class one anymore. Yeah, no.

Tim (09:12.173): Well, I see it with some of the electronics that I open up a computer, I’m looking at hardware that I get, even for a high-end gaming laptop or something, and I just say, this is not how I would have designed this.

Stephen V. Chavez (09:22.414): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (09:26.734): No, yeah, I mean, well, there’s a trade off then. And there’s a trade off between, you know, quality, you know, that you’re bringing to market and what is good enough to sell your product. And there there’s on the commercial side, it’s all about, you know, the bottom line and how many widgets can we sell. And who cares that the quality is not there because we’re going to build 100,000 of them. And, you know, the target is let’s just sell. We don’t have to worry about.

Tim (09:37.219): Yes. Yep.

Tim (09:48.143): Thank

Stephen V. Chavez (09:53.837): It’s not a priority for us to worry about if this product fails after two years or three years. And we want that to happen because we want them to buy another one, another widget. But of course it’s different when you think about more high-end stuff or class three type stuff, whether it’s mill, aero, automobile, medical, where life dependency or importance of use is key. No, you’re on point in especially regarding, you know, the skills gap and the age difference. I’m 55 years old and you know, I’m a baby of bunch within the circle I run with and and you know, you go to any trade show and the majority of people there are gray hair, older, know, know, mid 60s. If not, some of the lectures I like, like, you know, some of the top guns or the icons that are still, you know, bringing it. They’re in their eighties and still on stage, a little slower, but their quality of content that they’re sharing is extremely valuable, but we don’t have enough of them. And the skills gap is getting worse and worse. And like you said, there are no entry jobs anymore. You look right now, there are tons of PCB jobs available, but everyone wants 10, 15 years. want, know, whole list of things that you need to be able to do. And coming out of college, you’re not even remotely close to doing any of that stuff, much less like I love the fact that you mentioned knowing the right tool. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a lot of these colleges and universities today, they have a tool that maybe a license that was given to them and students are using how they are learning, whether it’s YouTube or word of mouth. But the fact is, is, know,

Stephen V. Chavez (12:02.764): To have a tool in the ecosystem, the right tool are the tools that are in these major corporations at this enterprise level. It’s a whole nother ball game. mean, like you say, That’s been my excalibur for like 25 years. If I’m going to battle, that’s the tool of my choice. Why? Because of

Tim (12:20.143): Well, I think one of the most difficult things, even if you’ve got someone that understands all the concepts, is there’s a learning curve for these tools. I don’t think there’s a simple engineering tool out there. It’s just the nature of the beast. They take time to really understand and learn. And one of the things that I find with Xpedition is that I find new functionality as I go.

Stephen V. Chavez (12:30.733): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (12:40.238): Mm-hmm.

Tim (12:49.433): And I’ve been doing this for a while. This isn’t this I’m not new to it. And that that’s a that’s a huge, huge thing is the continuing education portion of it. And the EDA tool facilitating and making the things that you need to do accessible is massive. There’s certain things that maybe one tool doesn’t do and you have to do manually and some of the automation built into it. The tool.

Stephen V. Chavez (12:51.138): Mm-hmm.

Tim (13:17.729): solving problems for you as you go. They’re specific and they seem small, but they’re specific tools that I absolutely cannot do a dense DDR bus without. There’s no possible way. We’d have to simulate every single line. We’d have to, and that kind of time, that tool saving 15 hours of simulation, being able to set it up, do it right. The EDA tools that we have, especially Xpedition, just… it decides whether or not you’re going to be successful.

Stephen V. Chavez (14:00.59): You’re not the first engineer I’ve heard say this so

Tim (14:04.311): And while I’ve seen some of the things from some of the other tools and I’ve seen some education things from some of what’s out there and just I see recurring problems. Something that I have never dealt with is EMC, EMI issues. Some of that is because of how I design and the rules that I follow. But some of that’s also the tool helping me out with things along the way. being able to set things up so that I don’t ever have EMC issues because so I see, I see discussions where they talk about they had to send it for testing and it failed and they had to redo it and they had to redo it. And I’ve never had that issue. I’ve never had something come back for, so I don’t think that I could do that with some of the other tools. I think that, I think that learning the EDA

Stephen V. Chavez (14:47.79): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (14:51.918): Alright.

Tim (15:02.383): tools that are available to us right now. Being able to get into, especially with the new products that Siemens has with Standard versus Enterprise. And Standard, there’s some things I really like about Standard because especially with a lot of the other resources that you have, you don’t have to have, it’s perfect for a small organization. You don’t have to have a librarian. You don’t have to add all this extra overhead and extra work because all that stuff is included.

Stephen V. Chavez (15:13.56): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (15:25.23): Mm-hmm.

Tim (15:32.471): the being able to have components of HyperLynx and really high-end simulation built into it learning all of this stuff and then being able to expand I can take I can take someone new get them learning on all of this get them designing boards actually making money and then be able to scale up to enterprise when the time comes and start getting them into full HyperLynx and everything else

Stephen V. Chavez (15:39.767): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (15:51.458): Mm-hmm.

Tim (16:02.285): This is the stepping stone that I have needed for a while to be able to do what I want to do.

Stephen V. Chavez (16:07.532): Yeah, you know when you think about, know, getting like you said, getting someone in getting them on a tool and getting up the speed. You know what is that learning curve? Well, you know, and I think you know fortunately what know what Siemens has done. You know is is paid attention to the need in the market and help bridge that gap. You know, especially with our new UX or our new UI with user interface being more intuitive so that way it’s. getting up to speed is just that much faster. And then what we’ve done with AI and how to help bridge that gap. It’s amazing, the evolution of the tool. I wish I had this powerful thing decades ago, but the technology just wasn’t there yet at that time. it’s amazing how we’ve evolved in the tools today to be able to do, as you mentioned, those.

Tim (16:49.583): you

Stephen V. Chavez (17:00.458): very, very high complex designs. I think the key here is not just achieving success in those designs, but achieving it under project conditions or what I call battle conditions or the stress of the project like – you need it yesterday. mean, Tim, can you at least elaborate a little bit on the schedule time? Like what are the constraints that you’re under to make it not just difficult technology wise, but the stress of the project? I feel we got to say something about that.

Tim (17:21.156): Well, it-

Tim (17:27.919): Well, that’s the fun part. Solving problems immediately is kind of the bread and butter of what I end up doing. I have worked for 72 hours straight to redesign a board from scratch and get it out. When some of these time

Stephen V. Chavez (17:48.28): Been there, yep.

Tim (17:57.251): constraints are applied and they could be this is what we promised the customer or we’re behind or there’s a penalty for being late or or Hey, we need this technology out right now. It needs to be there for operational requirements And we don’t really get to know what the exact reason is a lot of times even the project manager may not know so Pushing for optimization of time

Stephen V. Chavez (18:17.4): Mm-hmm.

Tim (18:26.733): get it out working. It’s one of the balances of is this going to work? You can throw something together versus is this the quality it needs to be as quickly as possible. There’s some pretty heavy constraints on all of that that pushes us into, and that’s where I rely on the tool also, is that being able to say, I’m going to set this up, I’m going to throw it together, and then my design constraints are gonna make sure that I don’t get into trouble as I go and my DFM rules and everything else that I need to do. those constraints can be big. Usually I get things when it’s an emergency. So we need this done or this is broken or it doesn’t work. We need you to fix it, make it work. And so I’ve done a lot of that. And then just like you said, there’s so many components to all of this.

Stephen V. Chavez (19:01.23): Sure.

Stephen V. Chavez (19:11.918): Of course, yep.

Tim (19:25.295): I’ve had some where the customer had an issue with the end user had an issue with power integrity on a previous board. So they were really pushing. we want all of this and I spent five days in hyperlinks running all the voltages through really running through the PDN doing all the math and saying okay this will do everything you need it to. We’ve got we got plenty of room for everything.

Stephen V. Chavez (19:39.543): Hmm

Tim (19:53.459): And the time constraints on all that though is it’s that balance. It’s the it’s the we need it to work, but we needed it yesterday. And so there could some of this can be extremely high stress. And then the other thing too is that printed circuit design. It’s a bottleneck. You, you, you can have 10 engineers working on different parts of the schematic, put everything together. And now you’ve got, but the moment it gets to printed circuit design, it’s kind of hard to have

Stephen V. Chavez (20:10.03): Mm-hmm.

Tim (20:21.347): multiple people working on at the same time. It’s kind of, especially with a really complex board, you could be getting in each other’s way. So you kind of end up running into on high end designs. It’s just you and you need to get it done. So there’s always a push. It’s feast or famine. It’s a, want, we want it all done or Hey, we don’t have anything for you right now.

Stephen V. Chavez (20:26.69): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (20:42.66): yeah, you know what, I’ve been there, done that for decades. I lived in that environment and I can not only visualize it, I can almost taste it. You what I mean? You know what I’m talking about, especially that 72 hour push. But it’s like you said, you gotta bring it and it is what it is. It’s the nature of the beast.

Tim (20:54.659): You

Stephen V. Chavez (21:07.34): You know, know, speaking of that, you know, we think about challenges, you know, what are the most significant challenges do you encounter when educating PCB engineers? You know, are they specific hot topics that you’re asked to do? mentioned, you know, power integrity. You know, I find that typically it’s just the essence of the purity of designing the board, the basic foundation. And I’m surprised how many people get that wrong. Even with complex senior people, know, complex designs or senior engineers, when you look at the issues they have,

Tim (21:32.732): yeah.

Stephen V. Chavez (21:36.962): It’s like a very basic like what what didn’t you what did you miss or how did you why did you do this? This is a very simplistic reason. So give me your give me your insights on this.

Tim (21:49.647): I think the major hurdles that I’ve run into is the amount of information you need to know. There is so much to printed circuit design. You need to know what can be manufactured. What are the rules? How expensive is it going to be to do it? We could do everything to the highest end and now you’ve got $50,000 GPUs.

Stephen V. Chavez (22:00.866): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (22:18.67): Yeah

Tim (22:19.651): That’s, in a lot of the designs that I do, a single chip on the board is 60,000 and I have four of them. So we’re talking half million dollar boards sometimes. We’re talking boards 24 to 36 layers. We’re talking about, and when you throw in there, mixed signal, when you’re putting all this stuff on one board,

Stephen V. Chavez (22:26.446): Mm-hmm.

Tim (22:43.883): understanding all of the concepts and being able to remember all of them and apply all of them all the time. That’s where I keep seeing issues. As we get into really high speed, there’s a lot of things that really need to be considered. And I’ve picked up boards where some of those rules just weren’t followed. it wasn’t necessarily sloppy work. It was

Tim (23:13.551): They just maybe aren’t aware of some of what we need to do to make these things work. You’re talking about power delivery, which is huge. And I’ve seen power delivery be an issue on a lot of boards. It seems to be a very common issue. I’ve seen signal integrity issues. And that’s the primary issue why boards with DDR come back is.

Stephen V. Chavez (23:31.391): Mm-hmm.

Tim (23:42.827): is signal integrity, too much crosstalk or things mismatched or something like that. And now it says, I’m just not going to run. some of these things, and you see that in some of the job postings is that they want you to have DDR experience specifically. There’s a good reason for that. Some of this is complex enough. And once you’ve seen it, then you can move forward. But there’s just so much to learn that

Stephen V. Chavez (23:48.876): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (24:00.217): Mm-hmm.

Tim (24:11.855): Like we were saying before there needs to be mentorship Maybe like an apprentice-style progression through this and that’s what I’m that’s what I want to do is I want to be able to take younger guys, give them the opportunity to get into this is it I mean, it’s a fantastic career get them into this and oversee them until they’re ready to run on their own and even then be a consultant to say hey

Stephen V. Chavez (24:37.998): Mm-hmm.

Tim (24:41.549): This is, let me check this and kind of review and it’s that mentorship that I think is gonna be the future. We’re running into issues with talent disappearing all over the place. It’s very difficult to get some of the vendors to get me what I ask for, for something even as simple as a stack up that works for what I need within my constraints. So there’s some difficulties out there throughout the entire industry. It’s not just PCB. But this is what I know. So this is what I’m trying to solve in the future.

Stephen V. Chavez (24:55.692): Mm-hmm.

Tim (25:10.957): So that’s being able to. be the resource to be able to get the massive amount of information, apply all the concepts all the time. I think that’s the biggest thing. I think that the concepts that we apply to each individually are well within reach of any engineer out there, no issue. But putting them all together and then how they play together and how they interact with each other and then being able to implement that in the physical world, I think that’s the hard part.

Stephen V. Chavez (25:36.184): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (25:46.477): It is, know, this is why I love our profession as printed circuit engineers. mean, it’s, it’s, you cross pollinate between mechanical domain with the physics, the electrical domain, you know, the electrical aspects and then manufacturing. have to think about manufacturing at the point of design. And then you now, you know, it’s even, you know, with the avid of COVID is supply chain resilience. Can you design for resilience? You know, how do you bring that intelligence to the board and your decisions that you make?

Tim (26:13.616): Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Stephen V. Chavez (26:15.266): and you’re choosing your parts and what you’re doing. There’s a lot to it. Now you think about the complexity of what you need to do when you’re setting up constraints, which means that you’re locking in your stack up and your rules to help guide you and it’s correct by construction. You don’t do that without close collaboration with your supplier, especially if you’re doing something very complex. As you mentioned, you know, the typical arena that you’re in when you’re doing things really complex, you’ve got to work closely with your suppliers to dial in the foundation and your board, which is your stack up. And then don’t even get me started with library parts and building library parts that are made or designed for manufacturability. When you think about mass production and what you’re doing. Yeah, it’s a lot that you have to absorb and it’s a lot you’ve got to bring to the table and understand what you’re doing at the point of design. It really resonates in how this is happening or how we’re evolving.

Tim (26:48.335): You

Stephen V. Chavez (27:10.53): You know, this is why that gap is getting bigger and bigger and bigger in what we’re doing. So let me ask you, you know, we talked about, you know, the skills gap when we talk about the tools, but let’s let’s go even one step further now. And what are your thoughts on the evolution of the tools, especially, you know, the thoughts on AI within the tools and. How AI is going to affect PCB engineering roles and the evolution of how we’re going to use AI to bring engineers to market or bring them up to speed, especially we’re seeing the lack of academia cultivating printed circuit engineers to be able to hit the ground running. And then what are your thoughts on, do you embrace AI? What is your take on that?

Tim (27:52.751): Well, I’ve seen a couple startups that tried to implement AI does everything. understanding how AI works, that’s just never, it’s never gonna be a thing. There’s not enough good data to feed it for it to reproduce or create things. It can, I think it’d be fantastic for class one boards, maybe some class two boards, but when it comes to what I do,

Stephen V. Chavez (28:05.934): Mm-hmm.

Tim (28:20.995): you’re never going to replace the engineer. However, having the tool be able to anticipate what it is that I need, what comes next, learning my workflow, recognize what it is that I’m trying to do and have it be able to say that might be an issue, maybe you don’t want to do it that way. I think there’s a lot of applications for AI in this space and I think it does facilitate bringing up new people because like I said there’s so much to know and so much to learn in PCB to be successful at the high end that trying to teach all of that you’re talking five or six years of full-time experience to be able to apply everything all the time and if you have AI that can maybe prompt you say hey maybe maybe this isn’t good what you’ve got going on here. And then optimize some of the things. Automation has been huge in this space. Custom scripts with different organizations. And the reason why is because it streamlines some things that take a long time. And if you’re doing repetitive things, that’s the perfect application for AI at that point is when you’re doing repetitive things and it says, hey, last time you did this, you did this. Maybe even prompt you down the line of,

Stephen V. Chavez (29:40.332): Mm-hmm.

Tim (29:48.973): I’d like, I’m doing my drawings, what notes do you want? Well, here’s my fab notes that I need for this specific board. And then what’s the application, what’s this, what are your constraints? And have it say, okay, we’re gonna put all this together. I see application for AI in almost every aspect of utilizing the tools. So the more that gets expanded in the right ways, I think, the more it’s going to facilitate newer people coming into the space. Something as simple as I’ve got documents and checklists for new guys of this is all of it. And it gets into, it’s massive. The documents that I have, the how to do this, even something as simple as, we’re going to send this to manufacturing, give us all our outputs. That can be complex. And AI can then say,

Stephen V. Chavez (30:31.5): Mm-hmm.

Tim (30:45.155): Well, this is the workflow you did the last seven times you did it. Let’s do that again. And it can ask you with a wizard style, step you through it and check everything. But as of right now, you need to know what you need, which files you need, which outputs you need and who they need to go to.

Stephen V. Chavez (30:50.454): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (31:06.242): Mm-hmm.

Tim (31:06.327): to build your full fab package and something as simple as that, AI is great for that because I can’t tell you how many, even today I still have to go back depending on my customer and check my checklist. Do I have everything here?

Stephen V. Chavez (31:19.278): Yeah, I mean, it’s actually using the checklist. Don’t just check it just for the sake of checking it. Actually use it for what it’s for. mean, you know, from your background, you know, you’ve got to go, you gotta walk through the checklist. You know, that’s what it’s there for. Its purpose is to make sure you fulfilled all the requirements, all the gaps, you know. It’s, yeah, processes. Follow the process. Follow the process. Yeah. You know, we got one more question before we finish it up.

Tim (31:43.535): You

Stephen V. Chavez (31:49.185): want to talk to you about current trends. With the current trends and talent gap, how do you think the gap will be closed? We talk about mentorship and your passion for help cultivating the next generation of engineers. How do you see this gap being closed?

Tim (32:05.743): I think it’s going to take investment. That’s something that I’m contemplating pushing for in the future is grants to facilitate some of this. Maybe pushing some of academia to at least have an option available that will allow students coming out to get exposure to all of these things. Get exposure to the tools. Get exposure to One of the things, I mean… Xpedition Standard is the perfect tool to give to students doing their senior design or their capstone projects and say, make something and then have it produced and actually build a product in the real world versus something that just checks the box for the academic program. I think it’s going to take some investment, though. And that’s the interesting thing is that I see Siemens putting in the investment. They’re pushing to

Stephen V. Chavez (32:48.398): Mm-hmm.

Stephen V. Chavez (33:08.151): yes.

Tim (33:10.147): get this out there, get it available and get people learning. But I don’t see it from academia and I recognize and like I said, I’ve spoken to like at SOF Week, I’ve spoken to some of the people that make decisions and they’re recognizing that we are missing some talent in this country. And I think that that is enough to possibly get some investment from that direction also is say, hey, this is what’s needed.

Stephen V. Chavez (33:29.73): Mm-hmm.

Tim (33:40.587): make it happen and as soon as that starts flowing, I don’t see the legacy defense contractors investing currently, but I think what’s going to end up happening also is that when the current crop that they have that have been there for a long time all start to retire, they’re going to be in emergency mode and suddenly they’re going to want to invest. But being ahead of the curve, there’s going to be a gap. There’s going to be, there’s going to be, takes time to develop. is, you cannot

Stephen V. Chavez (33:42.185): Mm-hmm.

Tim (34:08.771): just make a printed circuit designer. can’t just plop someone in the seat. Here’s the tool, off they go. So you’re talking a couple years before they’re really ready to do high-end boards independently. And I think that’s going to take investment ahead of time. And that’s what I’m trying to work on right now is I’m trying to fill that gap so that when the emergency comes, the blow is softened as much as possible until the big money starts flowing.

Stephen V. Chavez (34:12.494): Correct.

Stephen V. Chavez (34:36.654): I couldn’t have said any better. The thing is, how do you fill that gap? What are we doing respectively in seasoned veterans like yourself and myself and what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do to cultivate the next generation? I know Siemens is doing its part with micro-credentialing and all the other things that they’re bringing to the table and partnering with universities. I’m part of the team that’s cultivating the micro-credentialing activities. It’s a lot. I mean, Siemens is definitely doing its part in doing that, but it’s not fast enough. It’s just not fast enough. There’s not enough engineers coming out of school ready to hit the ground running to do this. And many I’m still surprised to this day. Many don’t realize that printed circuit engineering is a career path they can take. And the reason why is because most academia don’t have a degree in printed circuit engineering. It’s either electrical or mechanical or systems or hardware. It’s not a printed circuit engineer. that is, like you mentioned earlier, the bottleneck. That is the skill set that is highly sought after. And it’s just not there. It’s just not there yet. And that gap is going to continue to grow. Like I said, Siemens is definitely doing its part in helping bridge that gap with what we’re bringing to the table with our solutions.

Tim (36:01.054): And that’s what I’m looking at is Siemens can’t fix an industry. They can do their part, but the industry needs to get on board with it to really make a difference.

Stephen V. Chavez (36:05.922): No.

Stephen V. Chavez (36:10.926): The entire industry. Yeah, it’s got to be a collective effort and. It’s hard because you know everyone has their own agenda and their own bottom lines that they’re looking at. You know, competitive competitiveness. know, when you think about AI, happy to learn from, you know, other technologies to improve itself. Well, who’s going to be willing to share their technology or their their IP and then share that with the world? No, they’re not going to do that so. We’ll just see how things evolve. We’ll see how things evolve. You know, are there any last thoughts or anything before I close this out? Any last words you’d to give to our audience?

Tim (36:49.492): not really. I think we covered everything.

Stephen V. Chavez (36:53.102): Yeah, I know you and I can keep talking, especially being Marines, we can continue to talk, we’ll bring a lot of content to the table. So, you know, well, you I think that’s all we have time for today. You know, thank you, Tim, for sharing your insights on education and what you’re doing in helping to bridge that gap and cultivate the next generation. to our audience, I want to continue to tune in. I’d like you to continue to tune in for more trends, challenges, and opportunities across the printed circuit industry.

Tim (37:25.345): Hopefully I get to see you again soon.

Stephen V. Chavez (37:27.614): yeah, more definitely. We’ll have a follow up conversation. Believe me, there’s a lot of good content and even what the audience don’t realize is that you and I were talking like 20 minutes before this podcast even started, we should have just hit record then because that was a lot of gold there too. awesome. Well, thanks for joining in the audience. Again, continue to follow us for challenges and opportunities across the printed circuit engineering industry.

Tim (37:51.695): Thanks for having me guys.

Stephen V. Chavez (37:58.848): And that’s a wrap. Awesome. So let’s just stay on Tim. Yeah. Stay on. Let’s wait till it until it tells you complete. Once it says, yeah, once it says complete, then you cancel. Yeah, Tim. I mean, like I said, you and I can keep talking. I mean, I know it’s because we’re both Marines, or not only that, but we’re not just Marines, but the fact that we’re seasoned veterans of design.

Tim (38:07.353): No problem.

Tim (38:12.227): Yeah, it says 99%.

Tim (38:24.084): Hahaha

Stephen V. Chavez (38:29.653): know, printed circuit design. both have that middle-era background. We’re both gunslingers, you know, for the majority of our career, because that’s, I’ve been very blessed and, and, know, I told you earlier before the podcast, I don’t have my AA degree. I’m a junior in my AA degree, but I stopped because I talked to Rick Hartley, Lee Richie. These are my dear friends, you know, Dan Beaker over decades and Susie Webb.