This September, MaRCTech2’s Jennifer, Krystal, and Nick will be in Santa Clara for PCB West 2026, one of North America’s most concentrated gatherings of people who turn electronic ideas into manufacturable, reliable hardware.
Stop by and see what's new with MaRCTech2 at booth #602.
The event combines four days of technical education with a single, high-energy exhibition day, bringing PCB designers, fabricators, assemblers, test engineers, material specialists, and supply-chain partners into the same conversations.
What PCB West Is
PCB West takes place September 29 through October 2 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, with its exhibition on Wednesday, September 30, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Organized through the Printed Circuit Engineering Association, it is built around practical PCB design, fabrication, assembly, and testing, not simply product displays or broad technology hype.
The scale is meaningful: more than 2,000 engineers, designers, fabricators, and assemblers typically register, while more than 100 companies exhibit.
That makes the exhibition floor a rare place where a difficult manufacturing question can move quickly from
“Is this possible?”
to
“What would it take to build it reliably?”
What Makes PCB West 2026 Interesting
This year’s program reaches across the issues that define modern electronics:
- high-speed design
- signal integrity
- materials
- HDI
- flexible circuits
- advanced assembly
- test
- and supply-chain strategy.
Featured technical voices include names familiar to many engineers who take signal integrity, layout discipline, documentation, and design-for-manufacturing seriously:
The keynote, presented by Itera cofounder and CEO AJ Cooper, is titled
“It’s Time to Retire the Respin.”
That topic lands because a respin is never just a newboard revision: it can mean schedule pressure, scarce component substitutions, extra lab work, production disruption, and a design team asking why a problem was not caught earlier.
Why MaRCTech2 Is Exhibiting
MaRCTech2 is exhibiting (booth #602) because the company’s work lives at the intersection PCB West is designed for:
“Helping customers connect design intent with manufacturing reality. “
MaRCTech2 has more than 25 years of experience as a Pacific Northwest manufacturer’s representative, supporting electronics and PCB-related manufacturers.
Stop by and see what's new with MaRCTech2 at booth #602.
For Jennifer, Krystal, and Nick, the booth is less about delivering a rehearsed pitch and more about being available for the useful early-stage conversations:
a board that needs unusual reliability,
a program facing a capability question,
a project needing domestic manufacturing perspective,
or a team trying to avoid discovering a preventable issue after release.
MaRCTech2’s represented manufacturer Calumet Electronics, for example, focuses on high-reliability PCB engineering and fabrication in North America.
The goal is straightforward: put the right people in the same conversation early enough that tradeoffs can be discussed before they become expensive constraints.
What Attendees Can Take Away
Visitors to the MaRCTech2 booth #602 can expect a practical discussion rooted in real project decisions, not generic capability claims.
- A clearer sense of which manufacturing questions to raise before layout is finalized.
- Perspective on high-reliability PCB requirements and the value of involving a fabricator before a design is locked.
- A human connection to manufacturing resources, instead of another anonymous quote-request form.
- Ideas for reducing ambiguity among design, procurement, fabrication, and assembly teams.
- A better understanding of how domestic PCB engineering and fabrication may fit programs where performance, responsiveness, or supply-chain visibility matter.
A good booth conversation may not solve every technical problem on the spot. It can, however, help an attendee leave with better questions, and in electronics manufacturing, better questions early in the cycle are often more valuable than quick answers late in the cycle.
A Few Eyebrow Raisers
PCB West has some details that are easy to miss but worth remembering:
- The exhibition lasts only one day. The show floor is open September 30 only, even though the technical conference runs for four days. That concentrates a week’s worth of introductions, meetings, and impromptu problem-solving into a six-hour window.
- It is a learning event first. The event’s long-format instruction includes one-hour talks, two-hour workshops, and half-day or full-day seminars. In an industry where a single overlooked return path, material choice, or fabrication note can derail performance, that depth matters.
- “Retire the respin” is not just a clever title. It captures an increasingly urgent engineering objective: move validation, manufacturability thinking, and cross-functional review earlier, when changes cost less and options are greater.
- PCB West is an old Silicon Valley institution. Its LinkedIn profile lists the organization as founded in 1991. That means the event predates smartphones, modern high-speed serial interfaces, cloud design collaboration, and today’s AI boom, yet it remains relevant because the physical board is still where electronics must ultimately work.
- The scale of advanced flex is surprising. One MaRCTech2 partner announcement notes multilayer flex-circuit capability up to eight feet long, along with design and assembly support. It is a useful reminder that “PCB” can mean far more than a small rigid green rectangle.
The Value of Being There
There is an old pattern in hardware development: a team starts with a schematic, then a layout, then a fabrication package, and only later finds that the real challenge was a manufacturing assumption nobody paused to test.
PCB West creates room for those conversations before the project becomes a rescue mission.
That is why MaRCTech2 will be there.
Jennifer, Krystal, and Nick look forward to meeting engineers, designers, buyers, manufacturing teams, and partners who want to build electronics that move from concept to production with fewer surprises.
MaRCTech2 is listed among the 2026 PCB West exhibitors, so attendees can add the team to their September 30 show floor plans.
