Satellite Communication PCB Manufacturing Guide Why Satcom Boards Are a Different Category A satellite communication board has to do three things at once, and each of them constrains the others. It has to carry RF and microwave signals with controlled impedance and low loss. It has to survive the thermal…

Automotive PCB for EV and ADAS: Requirements and Design What Separates an Automotive Board A board that goes into a vehicle is specified differently from one that goes into a consumer product, and the difference has nothing to do with how complicated the circuit is. It is the operating environment…

High Frequency PCB: From Prototype to Production The Problem Is Reproducibility, Not Design Most high frequency designs work in the prototype. The engineer measures the board, tunes the matching network, and the performance lands where the simulation said it would. The difficulty appears six months later, when the same design…

20 Layer PCB: Stackup, Design Rules and When It Pays What Twenty Layers Is For A 20 layer board is not simply a denser version of a 12 layer board. It exists because three problems appear together in high end systems and each of them consumes copper layers. High speed…

Embedded PCB vs Traditional PCB: How to Choose Two Different Answers to the Same Question A conventional board puts everything on the outside. The laminate carries the copper pattern, and the components, from a 0402 resistor to a large IC, are soldered to the surface. It has been the industry…

IPC Class 3 PCB: Requirements and Manufacturing Reality What Class 3 Actually Commits You To IPC classification runs from 1 to 3 and describes the consequence of failure rather than the difficulty of the build. Class 1 covers general electronics where the main requirement is that the product works. Class…

VIPPO PCB: Via-in-Pad Plated Over Explained What VIPPO Actually Means The acronym stands for via-in-pad plated over, and each part of the phrase describes a step. A via is placed inside a component pad rather than beside it. The hole is filled with solid copper by electroplating, not with resin.…

Microvia PCB: HDI Structures, Design Rules and Cost What Makes a Via a Microvia The definition is dimensional, not descriptive. A microvia is a small via formed by laser rather than mechanical drilling, and it connects one layer to the layer immediately below it. The recognised thresholds are a diameter…

Halogen Free PCB: Materials, Standards and Trade-offs Why the Halogen Content Is Specified at All Flame retardancy in a conventional laminate is achieved with brominated epoxy resin. Bromine is effective, cheap and well understood, and that combination made it the default for decades. The problem appears when the material burns…

Microwave PCB Materials: Choosing a Substrate Above 1 GHz Where the Material Becomes the Circuit Microwave boards cover roughly 1 to 30 GHz, and in that range the laminate is not a passive carrier. Its dielectric constant sets the impedance and the propagation velocity, its dissipation factor converts signal into…