In a $2.02 trillion global industry such as ours, where printed circuit board components can be fabricated in Taiwan or China, assembled in the United States or Canada, and then exported to Italy, Brazil, or Australia, the need for coherent qualitative standards is a constant one. Because, let’s face it, sometimes products can get “lost in translation.” A 3 year-old PCB manufacturing company in, say, India might not possess the qualitative standards that a PCB assembler in the United States or Japan has had the time and investment opportunities to develop. In order to ensure profitability (and compatibility with the global market), companies need a level of nuts-and-bolts guidelines that goes far beyond international free trade pacts.

Commerce, creativity, and competitive quality are what IPC, otherwise known as the Association Connecting Electronics Industries, seeks to foster on a global level. By striving to develop an overall qualitative standard for the international PCB supply chain, IPC seeks to benefit all of its members by ensuring that the products assembled in diverse locales meet the highest expectations of their end consumers. By employing IPC standards in our own manufacturing and assembly process, we at Badger Technologies have benefitted by gaining control over end product quality, improving communication with our PCB suppliers and component suppliers, and have been able to curtail unnecessary costs in production and assembly.

Just as English is oftentimes considered the language of international business, IPC strives similarly to develop a common “lingua franca” for OEM electronic manufacturers.  If everyone keeps on the same page, that can only mean higher levels of cohesiveness, success, and profits for all.

America’s Disengagement from the Middle East – and its Effects on the U.S. PCB Industry

By announcing a 2014 deadline for all NATO forces to withdraw from Afghanistan, the U.S. continues to reduce its presence throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. While the situation in Afghanistan remains, to say the least, incredibly fluid, American politics would seem to be shifting its focus from abroad and towards the home-front.

What, then, are the general effects of America’s withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan on our domestic PCB manufacturing and assembly capacities? After all, the armed forces of the United States rely critically on American-made electronics to perform their daily functions. Some analysts make a point of how the decrease in American ground forces (the Army cut by 80,000 and the Marine Corps slashed by 20,000), and the delayed purchase of new military systems such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Virginia-class submarine, would negatively impact American electronics as a whole.

But other analysts would disagree. A study of federal spending conducted last year by UC Berkeley economists showed that government spending in other areas, such as in health care, education, transportation, infrastructure, and energy, had an overall benefit to the US economy of up to 50% more than did defense spending. With the impending retirement of the entire Baby Boomer generation, the medical industry in this country is set to skyrocket phenomenally, more than off-setting the short-term reductions in military spending. Regardless of inevitable importing of PCBs from other countries, the need for ever-more precise electronic instrumentation for OEM medical devices will surely come as a boon to American PCB assemblers.

Even so, there is the reduction in R&D defense spending to consider. 55% of all federal spending on research and development is related – either directly or indirectly – to the Pentagon. With the Pentagon’s R&D coming out to be $81.4 billion this past year, it seems likelier than not that innovation and seismic breakthroughs in electronics and PCB assembly will be affected by this latest budget.

Both the White House and the Pentagon have emphasized the need for, in President Obama’s words, “a leaner military,” which nonetheless relies on high-tech applications to accomplish its missions. While $450 billion is set to be cut from the Pentagon’s budget for these next coming years, there is still the matter of realizing that defense budget spending will actually increase, though less exponentially so than in this past decade of conflict. But what the future entails profit-wise for our industry, no pundit, politician, or researcher can fully ascertain.

According to the weighty bundle of papers known as the Pentagon’s Aircraft Procurement Plan 2012 – 2041, the US Department of Defense doesn’t foresee any vast, Cold War-scale increases to its air forces in the coming decades. Indeed, it plans on more-or-less maintaining the current number of bombers, transport aircraft, and refueling aircraft, in addition to reducing the number of fighters and ground attack aircraft by around 10%.

The one aircraft program that the DoD forecasts rapidly expanding is its drone fleet. As it turns out, the Pentagon wants to double its drone capabilities within the next nine years, which would run current with its current focuses on terrorism and a possible (though unforeseeable) clash with China. With the Predator drone now retired from production, the emphasis is now placed on a newer (and deadlier) generation of drones, such as the MQ-9 Reaper, the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the Army’s so-called Gray Eagle drone, the Navy’s carrier-based strike/recon drone, and an as yet undetermined drone for the Marines as well.

In short, it’s going to be a field day for the American electronics industry, as it bestows the DoD with its new line of pricey, high-tech aerial platforms. With aluminum, copper, and copper alloy cables poised to help power these weapons, it remains a question of when, not if, the DoD comes calling to our industry with plans to increase its custom mil-spec wire and cable harnessing supplies.

If you are familiar with the “touch-screen” technology of today, the sort that is ubiquitously replacing the need for a mouse, then you have most likely at least heard of the technical term, capacitive sensing. Capacitive sensing is an electrical engineer’s term that simply denotes the capacity of an electronic item to detect and measure qualities exterior to the item itself; qualities such as velocity, temperature, placement/displacement, and the like. Clearly, if you are the proud owner of an iPod, an iPad, a Kindle, a Nook, or even a laptop computer, your fingertip has come into contact with the principle of surface capacitance, and the PCB technology that drives it.

Printed circuit boards are the driving root of electronic devices, and the “touch-screen” capacitive sensors on a Nook (for example) are no exception. Fashioned from various types of wiring depending on the operating conditions for which the electric device is intended, the general guideline is the same throughout: a layer of material with conductive properties is coated onto the surface of the destined touch-screen. Upon application of this conductive layer, a minute, unnoticeable measure of voltage (at least to human touch) is then applied to the layer. Whenever a human hand touches the conductive surface, the surface voltage informs the PCB capacitor underneath to respond appropriately, thus creating the user-friendly ease of the iPhone we have all come to enjoy.

No longer are pressed buttons needed to activate the printed circuit boards beneath the surface of the application. With the simple coating of an insulator, and the appropriate underlying wiring (Indium tin oxide, or ITO, is most frequently used for touch-screen phones), technology has become a more seamless, “humanized” experience.

As recent statistics show, the Baby Boomer generation is fast-approaching retirement age. Every day in America, some 10,000 members of that generation enter into formal retirement from work. A full 78 million Americans, a sizable percentage of the population, will be hitting 65 in the next 15 or so years. The demographic shift in American society will be without parallel. Our country will have changed.

This monumental increase in the number of retired and elderly citizens insures that the healthcare and medical equipment industries will become even greater driving engines of our economy than ever before. The level of senior care will be unprecedented, as will the number of advanced technology medical applications that monitor and provide for the health needs of these citizens.

It’s common knowledge that social trends drive sales trends. Indeed, many of the new printed circuit board assembly orders we’ve seen at Badger in recent years come from the medical device market. Since the medical device market combines (frequently) the need for high-quality products with high-volume of products, we haven’t seen the full-scale off-shoring of this industry that we have in other prominent sectors. Medical device production runs strong in the United States and Canada, to say the least. Statistically, the industry is forecasted to grow at an average rate of 10.3% each year, which is in startling comparison to the average annual 1.8% GDP growth for the corresponding time period.

Here at Badger, we’ve performed numerous PCB assembly jobs for medical devices of all kinds and stripes. We have done everything from standard assembly, to turn flex, to ultrasonic flex, to back flex assemblies on behalf of medical device OEMs. With our extensive resources, experience, and well-trained staff, we are fully capable of meeting the demands of tomorrow’s senior care devices. An exponentially growing demand requires an exponentially growing supply, and our high-grade assembly facilities in Farmington, NY are just the ones for the job.

While it’s true the United States originally invented the concept of the printed circuit board, it’s also true it’s hard to find American companies who assemble actual PCB technology in high-volume. As it stands, there are some 350-odd PCB design, manufacturing, and assembly companies operating in the United States. Otherwise, the market is dominated by East Asia.

While other American tech companies have long since outsourced their assemblage abroad, Badger Technologies remains planted in its domestic roots. Here at our facility in Farmington, New York, we pride ourselves on performing the sort of cost-targeted/high-volume jobs that most American PCB assemblers have simply given up on. The fact that our company has been aggressively expanding its capabilities and employment roster this past year is proof and testament that our willpower and corporate strategy are paying off: American PCB companies can be driving engines behind a vigorous economy.

Of course, given the nature of the global electronic market, and given the fact that the ten largest PCB manufacturing companies are all headquartered in Taiwan, a small degree of outsourcing is essential in retaining our ability to perform large-volume PCB assemblage on the domestic front. To meet that challenge, we have done our homework and done it well. Our “secret weapon” at being cost-effective on an international scale? His name is Joseph Bao.

A lifelong native of Taipei, a husband and a father, and a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Taiwan, Mr. Bao has been essential in acting as a liaison between our team in Farmington and our Taiwanese industrial partners – a PCB assembly house and a custom cable and wire harness manufacturer. Joseph ensures the quality of product procured from these Taiwanese companies meets American quality standards and globally efficient pricing.

In addition to being a tech-savvy interpolator between the American and Taiwanese markets (Joseph had previous experience working with Cisco Systems in procuring security monitoring systems for their American corporate offices), Joseph is a bit of a renaissance man. At 57, he enjoys the rigors of hiking in the mountains as well as scuba-diving. A devotee of Western classical music, he admits his favorite composition is Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

As well-versed in international culture as he is a connoisseur of international technology, Joseph is the right sort of man for getting Badger’s work done overseas; the ideal co-worker in turning Badger into the momentous success story it continues to become. We look forward to many additional years of collaboration with Mr. Bao in growing Badger into a high-volume PCB assembler that can serve as a model for American business.

In our last blog entry, we gave a short history of Steve Jobs; how he started his career as a programmer for Atari, and how – true to his restlessly brilliant and creative nature – he quickly grew dissatisfied with his work there, and proceeded to found one of the most path-breaking companies the world has yet to see: Apple, Inc.

Apple’s effect on America and on the world at large is now completely self-evident. But what seems inevitable today didn’t necessarily always feel that way. There was a time back in the late 80s and early 90s when other companies began to outdistance Apple right and left. Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, and many other companies began producing computers and software that captured a much greater share of the public eye than Apple could attract.

It didn’t help Apple that Steve Jobs had decided to quit his position there. Ever the restless lone-wolf, and known for having an irascible reputation in an office setting, Jobs decided to build yet another computer company from the ground up, a company he called NeXT. NeXT would be everything that Apple was (in Jobs’ eyes) failing to become: a wellspring for innovative PC programming that would, through sheer application of innovative genius, vault itself to the top of the high-tech heap. Jobs began manufacturing a computer that became known as “the Cube,” a new computer that employed a state-of-the-art (for its time) Motorola 68030 CPU supported by a 68882 FPU for better and faster mathematical calculations. It was a good computer for its time, and it employed excellent printed circuit board technology, but it failed to catch on. By 1990, the Cube had tanked. NeXT and Jobs were both viewed as “space oddity” has-beens.

In the meantime, without Steve Jobs at the helm, Apple continued to fall further and further behind its competitors. In 1996, Jobs was invited back to become a “temporary” managing CEO for Apple, Inc. Jobs accepted his new position with a rekindled passion for taking Apple to the heights he had initially envisioned. At the time Jobs came back to Apple, Apple was working on a sprawling diversity of products. Jobs stopped almost every single one of those projects dead in its tracks, and focused his company’s efforts on developing a mere six new products for that year.

But the products were ahead of their time. Already Jobs had begun imagining – and sometimes actively producing – prototypes for the iPod and various new iMac desktop and laptop computers. The new ideas began to pick up steam, and spread like wildfire. Apple began taking back its share of the market from its overblown behemoth of a competitor, Microsoft. Microsoft still had an amazing and voluminous line of products, and dominated the market, but Apple’s newfangled credibility made smart heads turn and eyebrows raise in wonderment and appreciation.

These new Apple products featured ever more sophisticated drives and digital signal processors, and monitors with smaller printed circuit boards that focused on connecting with USB and Firewire pass-throughs, unlike other, larger, unwieldy PCBs.

The designs continued to improve, the circuit boards grew continuously both smaller and more powerful, to the point where, for example, an Apple Nano iPod, or an Apple iPhone, contained technological programming that couldn’t be matched by competitors at the moment of its introduction.

With Steve Jobs’ recent passing due to pancreatic cancer, the future remains uncertain for Apple. Will Apple continue to follow in the almost mythological path mapped out by its founder, or will it slump into just another computer company among dozens? Time will tell, but no-one will be able to soon forget the heyday of Steve Jobs as CEO (and temper-tantrum boss) of Apple, and the incredible products that seemed to follow from everything he touched.