PCB Printing Service: Prototype to Volume Production From Design File to Working Board A PCB printing service takes a design file and turns it into physical circuit boards ready for assembly and test. The term covers more than fabrication: a full service also handles the layer alignment, copper imaging, solder…

PCB Electroplating: Process, Chemistries and Thickness Control Metal Deposited by Current Electroplating deposits a metal layer onto a circuit board by passing current through a solution containing that metal. It is the process that connects the layers of a multilayer board, protects copper from corrosion, provides a wear resistant surface…

5G PCB Technology: Materials, Design and Manufacturing Why 5G Boards Are Not Simply Faster 4G Boards Previous generations of mobile equipment worked at frequencies where a well designed FR-4 board was adequate. 5G spans two very different ranges: sub-6 GHz, where the challenge is largely bandwidth and channel count, and…

Robot PCB Price Guide: Board Types, Materials and Volume A Significant Share of the Robot Bill of Materials Robots concentrate a lot of electronics into a small machine. Motor control, sensor acquisition, communication and, increasingly, on-board inference all sit on boards that have to work reliably under continuous motion. Across…

Medical Equipment PCB: Materials, Standards and Cost Boards Where Failure Has a Patient Medical electronics are unusual in that the consequence of a board failure is measured in patient outcomes rather than in warranty cost. A ventilator that stops, a monitor that reports a wrong value, or an infusion pump…

Circuit Board Components: Types, Functions and Costs From Fractions of a Cent to Tens of Dollars A printed circuit board is a platform, and the components mounted on it are what make it do something. They range from a resistor costing a fraction of a cent to a processor costing…

PCB Copper Plating: Types, Thickness and Cost The Step That Makes a Multilayer Board Work Copper plating deposits a conductive layer onto the board surface and, more importantly, into the walls of drilled holes. Without it, the inner layers of a multilayer board would be electrically isolated from each other…

Radar PCB Cost: High Frequency Materials, Layers and Test Boards That Operate Where FR-4 Stops Working Radar systems transmit a signal, receive a reflection far weaker than the transmitted energy, and extract range, velocity and angle from the difference. The board has to keep the transmitted waveform clean, protect the…

Impedance Controlled PCB Price: Materials, Tolerances and Volume Why These Boards Cost More An impedance controlled board holds a defined characteristic impedance along its traces, which is what prevents reflection, crosstalk and signal distortion at high frequency. Achieving that requires a stackup designed around the dielectric, line width held to…

IoT Device PCB Cost: Ranges, Design Effects and Volume From Half a Dollar to Thirty The bill of materials for a connected device can be dominated by the radio module, the sensor or the battery, but the board underneath sets the price floor and often the price ceiling as well.…