Senior Vice President & GM of LimFlow, INARI MEDICAL INC
Tara Dunn on Flex Cost Drivers and Next Gen Technologists [OnTrack Podcast]
More than ever, people are doing Flex and Rigid Flex for the very first time as industries drive for smaller, more user-friendly ...
About Tara Dunn
Tara Dunn, Senior Vice President and General Manager of LimFlow at Inari Medical, appeared on the OnTrack Podcast in September 2018, where she discussed cost drivers in flex circuit design and workforce development. Dunn identified three primary cost drivers—materials selection, panel utilization, and technology—and added a fourth: understanding a fabricator's capabilities. She noted that adhesive-based materials are typically less expensive for simpler applications, while adhesive-less materials are recommended for higher layer counts and rigid flex. Dunn described a case where switching to adhesive-less materials in a military application eliminated a 90% field failure rate due to cracking, despite only reducing thickness by three mils. She advised designers to involve fabricators early in the process to leverage their expertise. Dunn also discussed the Flex Factor program by Next Flex, an entrepreneurship program that exposes high school students to flexible hybrid electronics and advanced manufacturing. She stated that the program grew from eight students in 2016 to thousands, and that visits to manufacturing facilities help change students' perceptions of the industry. Dunn reflected on her own early career experience working on the manufacturing floor, which she described as invaluable. She mentioned that her job allows her to travel and work remotely, and that she has recently taken up attending live concerts.
Transcript (234 segments)
J
Judy Warner0:03
Hi everyone, this is Judy Warner with Altium's On Track podcast. Welcome back, if this is your first time we're glad to have you. Before we get going today I've got a great guest for you, but before we get going I wanted to remind you to please subscribe to this podcast, and you can follow us on iTunes, on your favorite RSS feed, or wherever, whatever app you like to use for your podcasts. Today I have with me Tara, oh before I get going on Tara I wanted to also say, please follow me on LinkedIn and also on Twitter, I'm at Altium Judy, and Altium you can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Okay, Tara, hi my friend, so good to see you, welcome to La Jolla, California.
T
Tara Dunn0:53
Thank you.
J
Judy Warner0:53
So, Tara was a recent, is a dear, dear friend of mine in the industry. There's not many of us women that have actually been in the printed circuit board business and understand how circuit boards are made, but we do indeed know how that's done, and Tara owns OmniPCB. She's based in the Minneapolis area, and she is a real flex expert, and we've been friends for, how long has it been now?
T
Tara Dunn1:23
I don't know, what six or seven, eight years? Probably something like that.
J
Judy Warner1:28
Anyways, Tara and I met at a trade show and instantly started introducing each other to our friends and colleagues and next thing you know, we just created this energy, and we both have written columns for iConnect 007, we've, oh my goodness we, Tara has an event in Minnesota called Geekapalooza.
T
Tara Dunn1:55
Which Judy helped bring out to California. California, so I brought it out here to Irvine, and then we brought it together to Boston, so we've had lots of professional adventures together, so it's my joy to have you and for us to learn more about your expertise in flex. So, how are you liking La Jolla? I know you're here for a few weeks, I bet you're glad to get out of the snow.
Oh yeah, it's no hardship to leave Minnesota winter this time of year. I'm loving the sun and the beach, so like-
J
Judy Warner2:24
What was the temperature when you left?
T
Tara Dunn2:29
Minus five, something like that, and slippery roads and cars were going into ditches, we're driving to the airport I'm like 'just please make it there so I don't miss my flight'-
J
Judy Warner2:38
Oh my gosh.
T
Tara Dunn2:38
And I landed here, it was sunny and beautiful.
J
Judy Warner2:41
Right? I know. I know, that's why we like it here. It's expensive to live here, but we love it. So, welcome to the La Jolla office, anyways. So we want to talk today about your deep knowledge on flex circuits, which are becoming more and more commonplace, right? You and I started out in our careers really focusing on Rigid FR-4, very standard boards, but it's really evolved now.
T
Tara Dunn3:11
Oh yeah, flex is a significantly growing portion of the market.
J
Judy Warner3:15
And what do you think's driving that?
T
Tara Dunn3:15
Space, weight, packaging. You know, it's small it can be smaller, lighter, folded, it's really perfect for all of those electronics, the handheld electronics, medical devices.
J
Judy Warner3:26
Right. So what would you say, give us an overview, you just said medical devices, what other things are you seeing an uptick in the flex market?
T
Tara Dunn3:40
You know, really across the board. Across all industries.
J
Judy Warner3:43
Really?
T
Tara Dunn3:43
Absolutely. You know, we've got companies that have been working with flex that are developing maybe more complex flex or rigid flex and, you know, easily once a week somebody's contacting me brand new, just trying to figure out how to work with flex and how to design flex and what's different, what do I need to know. So a lot of new applications cropping up are people that are just trying it for the first time.
J
Judy Warner4:03
Well, that's why we invited Tara to be our flex expert at this year's Altium Live, and we'll share the link below but there's a really great presentation that Tara gave at Altium Live, and we have the video and her slide deck, so we'll share that at the bottom here so you can check into that later. So, let's talk a little bit about that presentation. That was speaking a lot about cost drivers. So, for the designers and engineers listening, what are some of the just overview, basic overview, of what cost drivers are for flex and rigid flex?
T
Tara Dunn4:44
Okay, so we often talk about three primary cost drivers, materials selection, panel utilization, and technology. I kind of like to throw, a little bit tongue-in-cheek but not really, a fourth one in there, which is understanding your fabricators capabilities and making sure that you're matching their capabilities with your design.
J
Judy Warner5:01
Yeah. That's not just true in flex, by the way. True, it's across the industry.
T
Tara Dunn5:07
It's across the board.
J
Judy Warner5:12
Yes. [laughter] So, start with materials. How does that affect cost?
T
Tara Dunn5:21
Okay, so there are just so many materials you can choose from with flex, so, but just for this quick discussion let's focus on the most common which is copper and polyamide.
J
Judy Warner5:28
Mhmm.
T
Tara Dunn5:29
So, even focusing just on that segment, your fabricators are going to purchase laminates. They come in generally three different types which would be, two of them are adhesive-based, one with a standard acrylic adhesive, one with a flame retardant version of that adhesive, and then adhesive-less materials.
J
Judy Warner5:48
Mhmm.
T
Tara Dunn5:49
So, all of those types come in a range. Typically your copper thickness is going to be a quarter, or a half ounce to two ounces. It doesn't mean you can't get a flex circuit greater than two ounces, it just means that your fabricator has to create the material themselves.
J
Judy Warner6:02
Right.
T
Tara Dunn6:04
And polyamide thicknesses are generally between half mil and six mil.
J
Judy Warner6:09
When you said your fabricator has to create that, does that mean they actually take the material and plate it up in their tanks, or you're buying a specialized material from the materials supplier?
T
Tara Dunn6:19
Right, you would buy the polyamide-
J
Judy Warner6:22
Okay, okay.
T
Tara Dunn6:22
The adhesive and the copper-
J
Judy Warner6:24
Okay.
T
Tara Dunn6:24
And the thicknesses that you need.
J
Judy Warner6:26
Okay, gotcha.
T
Tara Dunn6:26
And create them.
J
Judy Warner6:27
Alright. So, like I said, huge range of options that you have when selecting materials for flex. So cost drivers, keeping that in mind, you know, why would you choose one over another or how does that progression go?
T
Tara Dunn6:42
Typically, the adhesive-based options are going to be a little bit less expensive.
J
Judy Warner6:48
Okay.
T
Tara Dunn6:48
Okay, and they are typically used in single-sided, double-sided, maybe three or four layer flex is where you'll see those applications.
J
Judy Warner6:56
Okay.
T
Tara Dunn6:57
As you go into higher layer count, or rigid flex, the adhesive-less material becomes necessary. Highly recommended for rigid flex.
J
Judy Warner7:06
Okay.
T
Tara Dunn7:06
There's a z-axis mismatch between the FR-4 material and that acrylic adhesive, so you don't want to introduce the acrylic adhesive into the FR-4 stack-up.
J
Judy Warner7:12
Oh, gotcha.
T
Tara Dunn7:16
So that's why, you know, your fabricators are always going to recommend adhesive-less materials.
J
Judy Warner7:20
All right, that makes sense. Mhmm. So, it's kind of like cost versus function-
T
Tara Dunn7:25
Right.
J
Judy Warner7:25
At certain point-
T
Tara Dunn7:26
Right.
J
Judy Warner7:26
That you need to keep in mind.
T
Tara Dunn7:28
Right. So, other than materials, I know, what are other things that help drive the cost? I mean I think that's what people are afraid of, right? They think 'oh flex is too expensive, I can't go that way' but they really need to go that way, route, for functionality, and I think really what you taught us at Altium Live was it's not that cut-and-dry, right? If you evaluate all these different things then it may not be as expensive as you think.
Exactly, and as you decide to move to flex, you know, working with your fabricator on the materials side specifically can really help drive out cost. Is it looking at just the raw material? You know, you're generally going to be FR, flame-retardant, material, LF adhesive, and adhesive-less, but if your fabricator is building a lot of rigid flex they're gonna stock more adhesive-less materials, and your adhesive-less material is gonna be probably less expensive-
J
Judy Warner8:24
Right.
T
Tara Dunn8:24
Because they're buying more of it, they have it in stock-
J
Judy Warner8:26
Right.
T
Tara Dunn8:26
You don't have to worry about minimum.
J
Judy Warner8:28
And that's the match you're talking about, like-
T
Tara Dunn8:31
Exactly.
J
Judy Warner8:31
Make that match, and so finding someone that does a lot of flex and rigid flex is going to help you right off the bat.
T
Tara Dunn8:37
Exactly, and understanding the material sets that they're using, and you know a great way to do that is to ask their field applications engineering group to help you with a stack-up.
J
Judy Warner8:46
Right.
T
Tara Dunn8:47
'Cause if you're not directing them in a certain direction they will default to the material that they're using most commonly.
J
Judy Warner8:50
Right, yeah.
T
Tara Dunn8:53
So it's a really good way to make sure you're fitting that gap.
J
Judy Warner8:55
Right. So what are some of the other cost drivers? You know, we look at different types of coverlay. Coverlay kind of follows a progression.
T
Tara Dunn9:05
So like, explain what coverlay is. So, with flexible circuits there's two types of coverlay. There's a flexible solder mask, which is very similar to our board type solder mask other than formulated to be flexible-
J
Judy Warner9:15
Right, okay.
T
Tara Dunn9:15
But applied the same way. It's a good option for circuits that might be single sided, double sided or less than two ounces of copper.
J
Judy Warner9:24
Okay.
T
Tara Dunn9:24
Tends to be a little bit less expensive.
J
Judy Warner9:26
I see.
T
Tara Dunn9:28
It does have a limitation in flexibility. It is flexible, but if you're having a highly dynamically flexing application it's probably not your best choice.
J
Judy Warner9:37
Right. But another advantage is it does allow you to form those nice 90-degree angles on your surface mount pads.
T
Tara Dunn9:43
Of course. But when you need to, when you're concerned about reliability for flex life, the polyamide cover length, so it would be the polyamide that's the same as your base material and a layer of adhesive.
J
Judy Warner9:52
Mmhmm.
T
Tara Dunn9:54
That would be the next option that you would want to go to. The limitations on that tend to be, you know, because you're drilling or routing that coverlay, you're gonna have a round or an oval opening.
J
Judy Warner10:06
Oh, okay. So as your circuits get more and more dense, it gets more and more difficult.
T
Tara Dunn10:10
We jokingly call it the Swiss cheese effect-
J
Judy Warner10:14
Yeah.
T
Tara Dunn10:14
Right, you drill it and you take off the back route entry and there's not enough material there to even hold it together. You know, it looks great on the screen when it's this big but when the part's little, yeah-
J
Judy Warner10:21
Yeah, exactly.
T
Tara Dunn10:25
So your fabricator will watch out for that if you're doing a design. We all do try to minimize that impact.
J
Judy Warner10:29
Yeah.
T
Tara Dunn10:32
The circuit board designer may be asked to gang open or, you know, make a larger opening over several pads to kind of alleviate that problem.
J
Judy Warner10:38
Right, okay.
T
Tara Dunn10:40
And then continuing on that cost spectrum-
J
Judy Warner10:44
Mmhmm.
T
Tara Dunn10:44
If you need the polyamide coverlay and you need that individual pad coverage-
J
Judy Warner10:50
Mmhmm.
T
Tara Dunn10:50
Laser-cut coverlay would be the next option.
J
Judy Warner10:54
Okay.
T
Tara Dunn10:54
So that allows you to get the nice 90 degree angles for the surface mount pad, much tighter registration.
J
Judy Warner11:00
I would think from a cost standpoint too, in this case like laser cut, again a fabricator that doesn't do a lot of production of these kind of circuits may not have that equipment, may have to send it out, which drives the price up.
T
Tara Dunn11:16
Exactly, exactly. So, you know, I could see, that would be another benefit to making sure you're finding a fabricator that's really good at this technology.
J
Judy Warner11:22
Exactly.
T
Tara Dunn11:24
Okay. Are there other areas or did we did exhaust that one? I didn't want-
I think on the materials, yeah I think that those are the two primary things to look at, is the base material and the coverlay.
J
Judy Warner11:36
Okay. So, it's always easy to kind of relate to that if we can hear a case study or an example that you've had, you know in your career, is there a couple stories you could tell us?
T
Tara Dunn11:51
Sure, sure. So, there is a medical application, for example, and trying to reduce the material cost it was designed as a three layer rigid flex.
J
Judy Warner12:01
Mmhmm. Okay, and flex being on the outer layer in that case.
T
Tara Dunn12:05
Oh on the outer layer, okay. Because of the three layers, okay? So, but then in this case that required the flex to be button plated to maintain the flexibility-
J
Judy Warner12:14
Mmhmm.
T
Tara Dunn12:14
And it required the circuit to have to be sent out to laser-cut for the coverlay-
J
Judy Warner12:18
Mmhmm.
T
Tara Dunn12:18
To maintain the surface mount pads.
J
Judy Warner12:22
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
T
Tara Dunn12:25
So those two together required it to be done on a smaller manufacturing panel for the tighter registration.
J
Judy Warner12:30
Okay, gotcha.
T
Tara Dunn12:33
So, very expensive circuit-
J
Judy Warner12:36
Very.
T
Tara Dunn12:36
And very difficult to manufacture. After a review with a fabricator, they decided to go to a four layer rigid flex, more standard construction. So the material costs are higher-
J
Judy Warner12:46
Uh-huh.
T
Tara Dunn12:46
But it eliminated the need for the laser cut of the coverlay, it eliminated the need for the button plating and it was processed more standard. So although the material costs were higher the overall cost of that flex circuit dropped dramatically.
J
Judy Warner12:59
So it's not always about look at the material cost and run, right, it really is about collaboration, which you and I both over the course of our careers have sang that song, you know, in a variety of circuits right? It's not, but I can see how in the case of flex and rigid flex it's even more important, right, because there's all these variables.
T
Tara Dunn13:23
Exactly, and that tends, flex and rigid flex tends to be a product that people are a little less sure of themselves when they're designing, have a lot more questions, so-
J
Judy Warner13:29
Yeah, absolutely.
T
Tara Dunn13:31
My advice is always to identify a few fabricators that you think will be good partners and then involve your fabricators early in the design. You know, because they're doing flex and rigid flex all day.
J
Judy Warner13:42
Right.
T
Tara Dunn13:42
They've learned a lot of lessons so we all might as well take advantage of those lessons.
J
Judy Warner13:45
Yes, absolutely, and that reminds me, another plug for Miss Tara is that she writes a column for the PCB 007 magazine monthly?
T
Tara Dunn13:56
Yes.
J
Judy Warner13:56
Monthly, specifically about flex-
T
Tara Dunn13:58
Yep, it's called Flex Talk.
J
Judy Warner14:01
Flex Talk, there you go. So there's another resource that, and she usually covers a lot of these in that magazine and I always, I always look forward to reading your columns. So another case study?
T
Tara Dunn14:14
Okay. A second case study I can think of is a military application. The product was, I would say having probably 90% failure in the field after assembly.
J
Judy Warner14:26
Ouch.
T
Tara Dunn14:26
So, very very expensive after a fully populated board and what happened was it's a rigid flex and it was being bent and it was cracking.
J
Judy Warner14:35
Mmhmm.
T
Tara Dunn14:35
So back to the drawing board, what can we learn from that? Turns out, simply re-did the stack up and went from adhesive based materials to adhesive-less materials-
J
Judy Warner14:45
Oh wow.
T
Tara Dunn14:45
So it eliminated only three mils thickness in the overall stack up but-
J
Judy Warner14:50
Oh my goodness.
T
Tara Dunn14:50
It was a thickness, and the bend radius was causing that cracking. So by making that one simple change in that stack up, you know they've had 300 assemblies completed now with no cracking at all.
J
Judy Warner15:06
And there's the expertise, right? Like who would know that three mils could fix that problem. I would have never guessed that in-
T
Tara Dunn15:11
Yeah, it seems insignificant-
J
Judy Warner15:15
It, absolutely.
T
Tara Dunn15:15
Especially when we're used to looking at thick rigid boards-
J
Judy Warner15:18
Right, right.
T
Tara Dunn15:18
Right?
J
Judy Warner15:20
3 doesn't seem like anything at all.
T
Tara Dunn15:20
It doesn't seem like anything at all. That's so cool. Well, thank you. Those are great stories.
J
Judy Warner15:25
You know, since you and I started in this industry, there were, I'm kind of shifting subjects now, a little bit and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about women in our industry. So, there are far more women in this industry now than there used to be. There still isn't that many of us who actually are on the front lines of sales and marketing that kind of thing. How did, I know I didn't end up in this industry on purpose. I love it and I love the industry, so how did you find your way, and I don't think I've ever asked you this?
T
Tara Dunn16:05
I'm here completely by accident.
J
Judy Warner16:11
See? We didn't do this on purpose.
T
Tara Dunn16:11
No, my first job out of college was in the accounting department of a flexible circuit manufacturer.
J
Judy Warner16:17
Okay, what was your major?
T
Tara Dunn16:17
Economics and industrial relations.
J
Judy Warner16:20
Well, there you go.
T
Tara Dunn16:20
I didn't know what a flex circuit was when I started there.
J
Judy Warner16:22
Right.
T
Tara Dunn16:22
Because of that, they required me to work out on their manufacturing floor and learn how to build a circuit, so I was out on that manufacturing floor for a few months.
J
Judy Warner16:31
No way, I did the same thing but-
T
Tara Dunn16:33
Really?
J
Judy Warner16:33
Yes, yes I-
T
Tara Dunn16:37
I'm so sorry to interrupt you, I just do this-
J
Judy Warner16:39
No it's alright. So, but, the first circuit boards shop I worked at, and they had this whole language, these terms and things I'd never heard, you know what is SMOBC and I'm like, I don't know, solder mask over bare copper, and so I asked a production manager I'm going to come in on Saturdays and he's like, I'll put you in every department. That was like the best education ever, wouldn't you agree?
T
Tara Dunn17:02
I agree and I totally didn't appreciate it at the time.
J
Judy Warner17:06
Yeah.
T
Tara Dunn17:06
But looking back I would have never learned the process as well, because I was running equipment and, I'm really terrible at registering coverlay. I've learned this. It's not something I should do. I don't have that hand-eye coordination, but it was it was a good thing to learn.
J
Judy Warner17:21
Yeah, absolutely. That's so funny, I never knew that about you. So, what do you think we can do to sort of encourage, I mean we're doing a lot to encourage women in STEM and encourage them to become exposed to these types of careers. What do you think would be a good way, or how are some ways that you've seen, oh I know one thing you're going to tell me about right, Okay so, go, I already know what you're gonna tell me
T
Tara Dunn17:50
You know, alright-
J
Judy Warner17:54
Before I, I wasn't thinking about it when I asked the question, but I'm excited-
T
Tara Dunn17:59
See how excited I am I get to talk about it?
J
Judy Warner18:01
I know. I did see your face there. I'm like oh you're gonna talk about that. Okay go, this is very exciting.
T
Tara Dunn18:05
Okay the Flex Factor program, Flex Factor, put on by Next Flex, so centered around flexible hybrid electronics, they have a program that reaches out to high school kids and it's an entrepreneurship program-
J
Judy Warner18:19
Uh-huh.
T
Tara Dunn18:19
That ties in advanced manufacturing.
J
Judy Warner18:22
Mm-hmm.
T
Tara Dunn18:22
So they go to J Bell, they get to see all the cool things, it's a month-long program-
J
Judy Warner18:28
And this is in the middle of Silicon Valley?
T
Tara Dunn18:31
Yes. So fun.
J
Judy Warner18:33
I believe it's expanding beyond that.
T
Tara Dunn18:36
Wow. I was lucky enough to be on the judging panel at the end of one of their last ones. So much fun, but what it does is it takes, you know, students who may or may not be interested in a technical field, they might be interested in marketing or entrepreneurship, but they have, it's like a month program. First week they kind of get the charter and you have to develop, it's about product development, what kind of need do you see around Health and Human Services and what how could you solve it using a product that's using advanced manufacturing?
J
Judy Warner19:05
Uh-huh.
T
Tara Dunn19:05
And then they get to go into the fancy J Bell building and see all the really cool things that they do there. They tie that into the next step, is entrepreneurship at a community college, and the students are actually given credit, college credit for this program, and then the fourth and final week they need to pitch kind of shark tank style to a panel and go through the whole product development process, profit and loss, and I mean it's just it's an amazing program, and it's so fun to watch kids you know who, I talked to one girl Jordan and she had really no interest in manufacturing or advanced manufacturing until, she wasn't exposed to it until this program, and now she's got a lot of ideas.
J
Judy Warner19:46
Which is so great! I don't know how kids otherwise would get exposed to manufacturing, and when you go into a facility like J Bell or TTM or some of these big facilities, you know I think kids think manufacturing is like a dark, dank building with, you know, I don't know, something awful and you go in and there's robotics and chip shooters and all this amazing high-tech equipment and these clean rooms and you have to wear-
T
Tara Dunn20:16
The whole bunny suit.
J
Judy Warner20:19
The whole bunny suit and the glasses and you go in and you're like wow this was not what I was expecting and that's so great. I forgot that you told me about that program and the whole shark tank, which makes it so-
T
Tara Dunn20:29
Oh it was so much fun.
J
Judy Warner20:31
So what did the students pitch? Or like what are a couple things that the students pitched?
T
Tara Dunn20:37
You know there was all kinds of different things. They tended to kind of centre around babies or athletes.
J
Judy Warner20:43
What?
T
Tara Dunn20:43
Well, different injuries that you might have as a student-athlete and how to rehab those injuries.
J
Judy Warner20:48
Oh, okay.
T
Tara Dunn20:48
Or baby monitoring devices.
J
Judy Warner20:51
Oh that kind of, okay.
T
Tara Dunn20:51
Yeah.
J
Judy Warner20:54
That's funny. So, what was the winner? Was there, is there a clear winner, do you remember?
T
Tara Dunn21:00
I don't remember who won for the panel I was on because they didn't announce it the day that I was there.
J
Judy Warner21:04
All right. And so you're continuing now, right? To be involved with this initiative, and is this gonna be each year, or how often do they offer it?
T
Tara Dunn21:11
They do it throughout, throughout the year. I think they just had another round that went through so, and I might mix up the numbers slightly, but I think that the first program that they did which would have been the fall of 2016-
J
Judy Warner21:23
Uh-huh.
T
Tara Dunn21:23
I think they had eight students participate and its teams of four. So now they are up to thousands of students participating in this program. It's just growing and growing so fast.
J
Judy Warner21:35
We're going to make sure that we put that website, so you have to make sure and share that, the URL, so people that are listening can look into that. Such an exciting program and I, you know, here at Altium we're doing so much with the universities and stuff and I love to see it happening, and it's so fun when you see the light bulbs go on and, you know, we love our industry and we want to keep, you know, keep it vitalized.
T
Tara Dunn22:00
Yes, yes. I think this is a great tool for generating some excitement.
J
Judy Warner22:05
I know, I love it. I want a program for people our age to go back and do that.
T
Tara Dunn22:11
Right?
J
Judy Warner22:12
Wouldn't that be fun?
T
Tara Dunn22:12
Yeah. What would we call it? Like, I don't know-
J
Judy Warner22:16
I don't know.
T
Tara Dunn22:16
I don't know, we'll have to think about that later.
J
Judy Warner22:20
So okay, here's a really wonky question I think I already know the answer but I'm asking anyway. Are you a nerd or a geek?
T
Tara Dunn22:36
Geek.
J
Judy Warner22:36
I asked the woman who runs Geekapalooza, that was like a really-
T
Tara Dunn22:40
That was an easy answer.
J
Judy Warner22:42
I know, okay but why do you think a geek? Why is it not Nerdapalooza? Like, why do you think you're a geek and not a nerd?
T
Tara Dunn22:50
That is an excellent question. Other than geek sounds better than nerd.
J
Judy Warner22:56
See, I know, well-
T
Tara Dunn22:56
It's the general excitement over something that other people-
J
Judy Warner22:59
Right, like geeking out over something right? Geek Squad. It's become cooler. I think geeks are cooler than nerds still, like just generally. I think that's the consensus. And my other wonky question is, on a scale from one to ten how weird are you?
T
Tara Dunn23:17
Well, pretty high up there, yeah.
J
Judy Warner23:28
So like, what are some wonky things that make you weird? You know, I - Well first of all you're in this industry. First of all it's the industry right? And laugh because I'll go out to have lunch, a work lunch, and sometimes I think if anybody is listening to our conversations, we're talking about impedance control and stack-ups and EMI and I'm like, what are they talking about over lunch?
T
Tara Dunn23:47
I know I posted a video of me talking about fusion bonding on my, like, not personal Facebook page, and it blew up and people are like who are you? What are those words? They had no idea that I spoke this whole other tech language.
J
Judy Warner24:07
And if you're out of the industry, you know, most of my friends, you know, my parents, my family, they don't know what I really do.
T
Tara Dunn24:11
I know, I know.
J
Judy Warner24:15
We're gonna put your podcast, this podcast.
T
Tara Dunn24:19
Can you cut that part out?
J
Judy Warner24:22
No we'll put it on this and see what they think of you on a podcast talking about coverlay. They'll be like what? And my final question would be, well, one thing I know about Tara Dunn is that you love the beach even though you live in the snowiest place in the country.
T
Tara Dunn24:40
I live in a landlocked state.
J
Judy Warner24:45
Yeah, there's that. But I noticed that a lot of technical people have really interesting hobbies, so what kind of things you like to do with your family or places you like to vacation or things you like to do in you're very few off hours that you have Tara because you don't have a lot of off hours.
T
Tara Dunn25:08
I don't, but with the job that I have it allows me to travel quite a bit because I can work pretty much remotely from anywhere and make that easy. So, yeah we love to travel. Specifically the beach. It's one of my favorites or in the winter anywhere warm. Desert area, everything's great, and I don't know what happened this year but suddenly I've become a music buff.
J
Judy Warner25:30
Oh.
T
Tara Dunn25:30
I haven't been to a live concert in a few years and all of a sudden I think I have six or seven things booked so-
J
Judy Warner25:35
That's so funny.
T
Tara Dunn25:36
I don't know why.
J
Judy Warner25:36
It's because your son went to college and you have a little more free time.
T
Tara Dunn25:39
That could be it. I don't know, I'm picking up new things now that my kids are out to college so that's probably the reason why.
J
Judy Warner25:49
Well Tara, thanks. It's always a blast to hang out with you, and it's so fun to have you in California.
T
Tara Dunn25:53
Thanks for having me here. Usually we're on the phone on conference calls and we actually get to see each other in person, it's fun.
J
Judy Warner26:02
So again we'll share lots of informative links for, that Tara has shared on this podcast and some that she didn't have time to talk about, we'll share them below so you can tap into all the interesting resources that Tara has, and I want to thank you again for what, for listening and or watching the On-Track podcasts today. Please remember to subscribe at your favorite podcast app. Until then, always remember to stay on track.