PCB prices are up 40% in a month because of a material most people have never heard of
www.techspot.com
The disruption at Jubail did not begin with the missile strikes on April 6 and 7. Plants had already been shut down in late March as it...
  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
    43 minutes

    Hydrogen?

    Edit: nope, a specific resin they can’t just replace because the whole production chain is way too stuck in their ways. Great riddance.

  • Hond@piefed.socialEnglish
    4 hours

    Its High-purity polyphenylene ether resin and the issue is the orange dickhead causing the strait of hormuz to close.

    /eeew, techspot uses ai generated pictures of pcbs. gross

    • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
      4 hours

      In fairness, it’s almost impossible to find a photo of a real PCB. They’re just so very rare.

      • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
        3 hours

        I know right? Like, how would one even get within a few feet of one, let alone a bare one in the wild to take a photo of it. They’re sooo skittish.

  • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
    4 hours

    for context, this is something that will matter especially for higher-end boards, specifically boards that handle higher frequency signals than usual, think 5G connectivity things, or where engineering margins are thin. if there’s a will, they could fly that plastic pellets out of saudi, or set up other logistics routes, as long as cost increase over just using container ship would be justified. it’ll be only a fraction of mass of laminate in any case

          • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
            3 hours

            well it would be if refineries nearby would be running, but they don’t, because there’s no good logistics chain in place

              • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
                3 hours

                that destination could be still somewhere with access to stranded fuel and with access to other port, like oman, or they could perhaps truck it to yanbu and ship from there, but it doesn’t matter because price increase would probably need to be even bigger for it to make sense. facility would also need to run only on fraction of capacity, and there’s probably no point in that if you can’t export everything that’s made there. currently it might be damaged anyway. what i mean is, there are problems solvable by throwing money at them, but it’s probably not one of these