David Fisher

Think a computer can design a better board than a human? Then you haven’t met this one.

PCB Design Plus, LLC just turned 10 years old. Its brainchild, David Fisher, is a little older than that—but it was as a child that his unique talent for finding solutions in a maze of obstacles was born. In fact, he used to devour puzzle books filled with mazes—and got so good at solving them that he began to design his own maze puzzles and sell them to his classmates. Which may explain why he’s one of the foremost PCB designers around today. “That’s what I’m doing today,” he says, “I’m still selling mazes.”

An average PCB designer knocks out about 25-50 designs a year. In his first 10 years at Harris RF Communications and his 10 years running PCB Design Plus, David has worked on a staggering 10,000 PCB layouts over the course of his lifetime. Does he have a life? No. Does he have an uncanny ability to look at a board and see solutions other designers don’t? Absolutely. No one is better at knowing what trade-offs can be made to pull out manufacturing costs, without sacrificing one iota of quality or performance. Which moved one of his clients to say, “If you have a board that absolutely needs to work the first time, you go to Dave.”