Board Cost Drivers in PCB Manufacturing Board cost drivers are the small number of physical and commercial facts that decide what a circuit board costs. Layer count, panel utilization, hole count, finish, tolerance and volume explain most of the price difference between two boards that do the same job. Understanding…
PCB Quote Preparation: Building a Price Quote preparation is the point where engineering data becomes a commercial promise. A quotation states a price, a quantity, a lead time and a set of assumptions, and every one of those has to be defensible a month later when the order arrives and…
Copper Foil Wrinkle and Dimple Defects in Lamination A wrinkle in the copper of a multilayer board is a small fold that forms during lamination and stays in the finished product. It may look harmless on the surface, but it changes the thickness of the copper, the width of the…
Wave Solder Pallet Design And Fixture Rules A wave solder pallet is the fixture that carries a board across the solder wave while holding the parts on the top side in place and keeping solder away from areas that must stay clear. It is often treated as shop furniture, but…
Design for Manufacture Cost Model for PCB A design for manufacture cost model is a small calculation that connects layout choices to the price of a board. It does not need to be precise to be useful; it needs to be fast, consistent and visible at the moment the choice…
Via in Pad Assembly and Void Control on Dense Boards Placing a via inside a component pad saves routing space and shortens the current path, which is why the technique is common on dense boards and around fine pitch packages. It also creates a hole directly beneath a solder joint,…
PCB Test Strategy Design for Production A test strategy is the decision about what will be checked, at which stage, with which method, and at what cost, and it is made long before the first board is built. The decision determines the fixture, the test points, the layout of the…
Conductive Gasket Design For Shielded Enclosures A conductive gasket is the part that closes the gap between a shielded enclosure and its lid. The metal walls of the box carry the current, but the seam between two pieces of metal is not continuous, and at radio frequencies a discontinuity of…
Flex Stiffener: Design Rules and Process Limits A flexible circuit is thin by design, and that thinness is exactly what makes it useful. The same property makes it difficult to handle, to solder and to plug into a connector, so a piece of rigid material is bonded to the flex…
Microvia Laser Drilling In HDI Boards A microvia is a small hole, typically under one hundred and fifty micrometres in diameter, that connects one layer to the next in a high density board. It is formed by a laser rather than by a drill, because a mechanical drill of that…











