If you read my column regularly, you know I’m passionate about helping designers get the most from their designs. As the demands on electronic devices and board complexity increase, it is essential to look to the future of designing for the realities of manufacturing.

The future for many electronic products is ultra high density interconnect (UHDI) PCBs. When designing UHDI boards, the choices you make are key to achieving more functionality in your PCBs and the electronic devices they power.

In my November column, I focused on designer best practices for the electroless copper component of the manufacturing process. The next step is outer layer imaging: the transition from digital to physical, and where the designer’s IP meets the board.

The conversion of digital designs to physical products was the topic of an episode of I-Connect007’s On the Line with…  podcast, explaining how the outer layer imaging process maps the design’s unique features onto the board.

Designers must have a solid working knowledge of how their manufacturing partners apply the photo image to the external layers—the method of physically transferring the digital image onto copper on the outer layer. Every component of the design layout, from pads and through-hole pads to trace routes and ground fill, goes onto the manufacturing panel.