FPC Connector Assembly on Commercial Printer Boards A commercial printer control board connects to a display panel, sensors, a scanning assembly, motors and an operating keypad, and several flexible printed cable connectors are normally needed to do it. After assembly the joints can look perfectly acceptable, and then the cable…

MOSFET Soldering and Temperature Rise on a 3D Printer Board A 3D printer control board drives a heater, fans, motors and other outputs, so it carries several power transistors, driver devices, terminals and power components. If a load test shows that the device on one channel runs noticeably hotter than…

Selective Conformal Coating for Industrial Display Boards An industrial display board carries a display interface, keys, a buzzer, communication terminals, the main controller and the power circuit, and a customer may ask for a coating so that the board survives the environment it will be installed in. The request is…

01005 Assembly on a Bluetooth Earbud Charging Case Board A charging case for wireless earbuds is small, and everything that makes the product work has to fit inside it: the power management device, the charging circuit, memory, the USB-C socket, the battery contacts and a large number of small passives.…

Embedded Firmware Development for Hardware Products Hardware is the skeleton of a product, but it does not do anything on its own. A board can be designed, fabricated and assembled correctly and still fail to perform because the code that is supposed to drive it was written late, written by…

Via in Pad for Fine Pitch BGA Pads As ball pitch falls, the room between the pads disappears before the routing does. At a pitch where no trace can pass between two adjacent pads, the usual escape route is no longer available, and the only way to bring the signal…

ICT Test and Functional Test Services for PCBA Assembly quality and product quality are two different questions, and the inspection that follows reflow only answers the first of them. A board can be soldered perfectly and still fail, because a component is the wrong value, because a joint that looks…

Pilot Build to Volume Production: Closing the Gap Many programmes go straight from a working prototype to a production order, and the problems that were hidden by the small quantity then appear in the factory. A prototype is built in ones and twos, often by hand, with the attention of…

On-Site Design Engineers at the Customer Facility An internal layout team can be busy with several projects and short of hands during a peak, and hiring takes longer than the peak lasts. A complex board may need experience the team has not built up yet. A project may be sensitive…

Half-Hole and Stamp Hole PCB Manufacturing A module board that has to be soldered flat onto a mother board needs a connection that takes little space and carries the current without a connector in the way. The half-hole process is the usual answer. Two boards are joined by a row…