Dana on Data: Can ChatGPT Solve My PCB Data Transfer Quality Problem?

For decades, humans using software solutions created by humans have been trying to create a perfect PCB design data package that can be utilized, as is, by a PCB fabricator. The goal was to send data to computers that would automatically read and interpret the data and, from that, create production tooling without any human intervention.

So far, we have failed to achieve this goal, and there is no solution on the horizon. The media is talking about how artificial intelligence (AI) will replace all of us with its ability to search massive amounts of online data to create fast, automatic solutions. To this end, I asked ChatGPT how to solve the data transfer quality problem. Below are three questions I posed, along with ChatGPT’s unedited responses.

1. What are the three top reasons why PCB data can't be used as-is when received by a fabricator?

ChatGPT: There are several reasons why PCB data may not be suitable for fabrication as-is when received by a fabricator. Here are three of the most common reasons:

  1. Design errors: The PCB data may contain design errors such as missing or incorrect connections, overlapping or misaligned components, or incorrect pad sizes. These errors can cause issues with the functionality of the final PCB, so the fabricator must identify and fix them before fabrication can begin.
  2. Manufacturing constraints: The PCB data may not adhere to the manufacturing constraints of the fabricator's equipment or processes. For example, the data may specify a minimum trace width or spacing that is smaller than what the fabricator's equipment can handle. In such cases, the fabricator may need to make adjustments to the design to ensure that it can be fabricated successfully.
  3. File format compatibility: The PCB data may be in a file format that is not compatible with the fabricator's software or equipment. This can result in data loss, corrupted data, or incorrect interpretation of the design. The fabricator may need to convert the data to a compatible format or work with the designer to resolve any compatibility issues.

2. What are the top three solutions to create perfect PCB data packages?

ChatGPT: Creating a perfect PCB data package is essential for ensuring successful fabrication of a PCB. Here are three solutions to create a perfect PCB data package:

  1. Use design rules and guidelines: PCB designers should follow design rules and guidelines provided by the fabricator to ensure that the design adheres to the fabricator's manufacturing capabilities. These guidelines may include minimum trace widths and spacing, minimum hole sizes, and other manufacturing constraints. By adhering to these guidelines, the designer can create a PCB design that is optimized for fabrication.
  2. Use design validation software: Design validation software can help identify errors in the PCB data before it is sent to the fabricator. This software can detect issues such as missing or incorrect connections, overlapping or misaligned components, and incorrect pad sizes. By using design validation software, the designer can ensure that the PCB data is error-free and ready for fabrication.
  3. Provide clear documentation: Clear documentation is crucial to ensuring that the fabricator has all the information needed to fabricate the PCB correctly. The documentation should include the PCB layout, bill of materials (BOM), fabrication notes, and any other relevant information. The documentation should be clear, concise, and easy to understand to avoid any misunderstandings or errors during fabrication. Providing clear documentation can help ensure that the PCB data package is complete and ready for fabrication.

3. Why don't PCB fabricators send complete design rules and guidelines to their customers?

ChatGPT: PCB fabricators typically have design rules and guidelines that they use to ensure that PCBs are manufactured to their standards and capabilities. However, they may not always provide these rules and guidelines to their customers for several reasons:

  1. Proprietary information: PCB fabricators may consider their design rules and guidelines to be proprietary information that they do not want to share with their customers or competitors. They may have invested significant resources in developing these guidelines and view them as a competitive advantage.
  2. Variation in capabilities: PCB fabricators may have different capabilities depending on their equipment, processes, and materials. They may not want to provide a one-size-fits-all set of design rules and guidelines that may not apply to all customers. Instead, they may prefer to work with each customer on a case-by-case basis to ensure that the design rules and guidelines are tailored to the specific project and requirements.
  3. Complexity: PCB fabrication is a complex process that involves many variables, and providing a complete set of design rules and guidelines may be overwhelming or confusing to customers who are not familiar with the manufacturing process. Fabricators may prefer to work with customers to provide guidance and advice specific to their project, rather than providing a comprehensive set of rules that may not be fully understood or followed correctly.

Hello, readers. It’s me, Dana, again. My human reaction to the answers above is to simply sigh. As you can see, no detailed solutions were provided. ChatGPT just provided the usual, high-level, generic answers. I guess us “carbon units”—what humans are called in “Star Trek”—will have to continue trying to solve this problem manually.

It's worth noting that some PCB fabricators provide their customers with design rules and guidelines, and even online resources or software tools, to help them optimize their designs for fabrication. Ultimately, that decision is up to the fabricator. Customers, in turn, can always ask for guidance or advice on how to optimize designs.

Dana Korf is the principal consultant at Korf Consultancy LLC.

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2023

Dana on Data: Can ChatGPT Solve My PCB Data Transfer Quality Problem?

05-18-2023

The media is talking about how artificial intelligence will replace all of us with its ability to search massive amounts of online data to create fast, automatic solutions. To this end, I asked ChatGPT how to solve the data transfer quality problem. Below are three questions I posed, along with ChatGPT’s unedited responses, followed by impressions about how well the AI did.

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Dana on Data: An IPC APEX EXPO 2023 Data Transfer Mission

01-19-2023

January: Time to leave home and travel to sunny San Diego to attend the meetings, professional trainings, technical sessions, and exhibition at IPC APEX EXPO 2023. I hear that this year promises an excellent turnout for both the large exhibit floor and IPC committee meetings; maybe Tom Cruise will give us a fly-over from the Miramar Top Gun airbase? For myself, I have a full agenda and new tennis shoes, so my feet won’t wear out as soon as they did last year.

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2022

Dana on Data: PCB Data Transfer Non-evolution

12-08-2022

The PCB industry still sends scanned copies of paper documents, which I have termed “ePaper,” back and forth to each other; this process requires humans to interpret the information on the electronic copy of a document before manually entering it into a computer. As many as 90% or more of all design data packages sent to manufacturing are still Gerber file-based with additional ePaper files. So much for the concept of continuous improvement.

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10-06-2022

Every year children often start creating their holiday gift list before Halloween. So, I thought that it would be a great idea to provide my holiday present request list to the PCB industry this month. My fundamental wish is simple: I wish to make it easier for designers to output designs and for PCB fabricator front-engineering teams to spend less time reviewing data so they may release production tooling into their factories faster. Secondarily, these requests should reduce the NPI cycle time and cost by reducing the insidious back and forth DFM review Technical Query (TQ) cycle. Here is my gift wish list.

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Dana on Data: Time for a Data Format Revolution

07-28-2022

Starting in the 1950s, the Gerber data format, complemented with several paper and electronic files, was used to transfer the physical PCB data from designers to fabricators and assemblers. RS-274-D and RS-274X gave us incremental improvements to the Gerber format, but still required several additional files to transfer all the data. IPC-D-356 was released in 1992 to provide a data transfer quality check. The 274X format with associated file, are still the most predominant data transfer package in use today, 70+ years later. Hard to believe from the highest technology industry on the planet.

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Dana on Data: DFM Issue Reduction—Company-specific PCB Acceptance Specifications

05-26-2022

PCB data packages commonly generate fabricator DFM feedback questions that require resolution. Resolving these issues delays the manufacturing cycle time until the issues are resolved. There are many methods and techniques to reduce the DFM issues, such as working with the fabricator to review proposed stackup materials and impedance structures early in the design cycle. Another common method is to generate a company specific acceptance specification that provides requirements that are not covered in referenced IPC specifications and include negotiated DFM issue resolutions.

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Dana on Data: Is the Customer Always Right?

03-03-2022

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2021

Dana on Data: Understanding Mechanical Drill Size Capability and Cost

09-29-2021

Fabricator capabilities are generally initially provided on a one-page summary as part of the general marketing presentation. The technical values that are presented provide the “check mark” information so the potential customer can determine if the fabricators capability is greater than the design requirements. Often, this is the only method used for design rule knowledge transfer.

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07-29-2021

Billions of dollars are spent yearly on CAD and CAM software to produce complex PCB designs and fabricate PCBs. The final technical manufacturing decisions generally are made by one person for each design. This is the PCB fabricator product engineer. But I don’t think most design, procurement, or NPI teams understand how critical this person is to the data transfer success and liability protection.

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Dana on Data: Effective Front-end Engineering External KPIs

05-13-2021

PCB fabricator front-end engineering departments are always under great pressure to be kept small, generate production tooling instantaneously from customer data and never, ever, make a mistake. Key performance indicators (KPI’s) emphasis internal process improvements and are generally simple in nature, such as jobs/person/day and scrap dollars/month.

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Dana on Data: Factory 4.0 NPI Compatible Industry Specification Format

03-11-2021

IPC APEX EXPO’s emphasis on the Connected Factory Initiative based on CFX and IPC-2581 is underway in a virtual mode this month. One area that has not been addressed is the automation of industry technical specifications from organizations like IPC, ASTM, UL, IEC, etc.

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Dana on Data: Factory 4.0 NPI Data Transfer Improvements

01-14-2021

The recently released IPC Connected Factory Initiative scope is similar to other Factory 4.0 models with the same glaring omission: They all seems to assume that the incoming design data can’t be used as-is and must be reviewed and potentially manually modified prior to manufacturing release.

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2020

Dana on Data: Reducing PCB Specification Interpretation Issues

11-12-2020

The PCB industry has accepted a low-quality level of provided documentation from its customers for the past several decades. In this column, Dana Korf reviews one common fabrication print note and asks, “How do you interpret this note?”

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Dana on Data: A Team Method to Reduce Fabricator Engineering Questions

09-03-2020

Hundreds of PCB designs are released to be quoted or fabricated every day around the world, and most will have engineering questions or technical queries generated once the data package has been received and analyzed. Dana Korf outlines seven fundamental steps based on Lean/Six Sigma concepts to reduce data transfer issues.

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Dana on Data: How Can the PCB Industry Improve From COVID-19 Responses?

07-16-2020

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world transformed a very slow medical approval process into the equivalent of a concurrent NPI process by challenging some of the golden rules. Dana Korf shares his thoughts on four areas the PCB industry can re-evaluate and improve.

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Dana on Data: The Importance of PCB Technology Roadmaps

05-14-2020

Peter Drucker once said, “Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.” Dana Korf explains how it is critical that PCB fabricator technology roadmaps and capacity planning align with their customers’ product development and volume requirements to ensure that optimum cost, reliability, and performance goals are achieved.

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Dana on Data: Automating DFX Transfer and Analysis Using IPC-2581C

03-19-2020

We are inching closer to a world where a complete intelligent PCB data transfer is realized. The IPC 2-16 Digital Product Model Exchange (DPMX) Subcommittee has just sent revision C out for IPC-2581 Consortium review with final industry approval targeted for this June. Dana Korf discusses the significant additions and their impact.

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Dana on Data: Creating IP-protected PCB Design Rules

01-09-2020

One of the primary reasons that data packages aren’t compatible is the fabricator/assembler does not provide a complete set of design rules out of concern of giving away their intellectual property (IP). Dana Korf explores the design rule development hierarchy as well as what should be included in an IP-protected design rule document.

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2019

Dana on Data: The DFM/Data Transfer Process Is Broken

11-14-2019

In a world that is showing great strides toward implementing a Factory 4.0 world, why can’t a design be passed from a designer to the fabricator without errors every time? Dana Korf emphasizes moving the responsibility up in the food chain, examines key design package error categories, and proposes creating a cultural change.

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New Column—Dana on Data: IPC-2581 Intelligent Bi-directional Data Flow

09-12-2019

The IPC Consortium is nearing completion of transferring notes on drawings and working with IPC on converting key IPC specifications into attributes that can be automatically loaded into CAD and CAM systems. This format is extendable to created automated company-specific acceptance files that can be automatically loaded into the CEM’s or fabricator’s engineering systems. IPC-2581 data format is being widely used globally and now needs to become the standard to reduce NPI cycle times by associating critical design information automatically to the physical features.

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