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Chrys Shea

Chrys Shea

President of Shea Engineering Services, an SMT/PCB assembly consulting firm; known as the "Queen of Soldering" and a frequent technical speaker and podcast guest.

Sep 9, 2026

17:50
And last but not least, Chris, what are you hoping that folks will take away from the circuits assembly track as well as maybe the broader PCB West event?
17:59
Well, I'll start with the circuit assembly track.
18:02
I hope they take away a very practical knowledge of how circuits are built and they will understand the consideration, especially designers or supply chain folks will understand why we like to deploy certain constraints and say, don't put this part here, don't put that part there.
18:21
But I think the networking is really, really an important aspect because over the last decade, 37 years I've been building circuit boards, I learn more from the people I meet at the conferences than necessarily sitting in that room.
18:38
I learn a lot listening to the speaker, but then I can always ask that speaker out in the hallway or ping them on LinkedIn or whatever.
18:47
So I think that's really important.
18:50
And me, as being part of the retiring demographic of our industry, I think it's very important.

15 MINS LATER

33:29
I think most designers, even designers that have, you know, been designing for a long time probably didn't know that there are different types of solder paste and not just like the metal content, right? Or, you know, lead versus no lead, but like there's actually like IPC standardized solder paste types for different applications.
12:20
Yeah, see? Yeah.
12:22
He gets an extra cup of coffee out at PCB West from me for that.
12:27
You take a spreadsheet and you wait what's important to you and in your factory and your operation.
12:32
So you're customizing it for your own purposes.
12:36
Then you run these tests.
12:37
You rank the performance of the different pastes.
12:40
And at the end, you come out with the numerical indicator of what's the best paste for the job.
17:02
It didn't move the needle, unfortunately.

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