As finalists in the second annual IPC Design Competition, these five intrepid designers were invited to the finals heat at IPC APEX EXPO to compete in a four-hour layout showdown. Provided with a rigid-flex board and a pre-set bill of materials (BOM), competitors flexed their skills by routing the board to near completion.
At the end of the four-hour round, each competitor delivered their project file to the judges who convened to review designs, with a winning PCB design going to Sathishkumar Vijayakumar, senior PCB design engineer at Tessolve Semiconductor Pvt Ltd. in Bengaluru, India.
“Sathish exhibited a deep understanding of all technologies presented in the finals design – from a thoughtful usage of given flex layers to well-rounded approach to routing for radio frequency, he wisely chose to spend his limited time routing ‘around’ the board; not focusing on one area more than necessary to demonstrate his skills,” said Patrick Crawford, Manager, IPC design standards and related industry programmes/PCB design competition lead. “Sathish was a competitor in the IPC India PCB Design Competition, where he also took first place. We congratulate Sathish on his back-to-back wins!”
Said Vijayakumar of his win, “This is one of the greatest milestones in my career and I am very proud of being in this world competition. I believe the proper training I received along with knowledge gained from working on different types of PCBs over the years helped me a lot in winning the competition.
Second place went to Adam Thorvaldson, CID, lead PCB Designer, at Innovex Design Service, LLC in Oldsmar, Fla.
“It is abundantly clear that Adam is a talented and creative designer, and it was a lengthy discussion among the judges regarding differentiators between his and Sathish’s design – it was really, really close,” added Crawford. “Adam attempted a significant amount of routing, and his design rule check came back with fewer critical issues than other competitors, relative to his amount of completed nets.
Runners-up included: Jesus Castane, CID+, senior PCB designer, CMR Surgical in Manchester, England; Paul Brionez, CID+, senior PCB design layout engineer, Wisk Aero in Mountain View, Calif.; and Harish G., senior engineer, R&D-Mobility, Exicom Tele-Systems Ltd. in Bengaluru, India.
