PCB Layout and Routing: A Practical Order of Operations A board that is easy to route is usually a board that was planned before it was routed. The order of operations matters more than any individual rule: floor plan first, then connectors, then the parts that join functions, then the…

PCB Accelerated Life Test Planning: Squeezing Years Into Weeks Modern electronics depend on boards that are assembled correctly the first time. Every product – a phone, a charger, a medical instrument or an industrial controller – relies on thousands of solder joints that must conduct current for years. This article…

Mixed-Signal PCB Layout Partitioning Rules Mixed-signal boards fail for a predictable reason: an analog front end and a digital core share one copper plane without a floor plan. The schematic is correct, the netlist is correct, and the board still picks up noise because return currents from the digital section…

Analog PCB Layout: One-Point Grounding and Component Mounting Most analog problems that survive the schematic stage are layout problems. Oscillation that appears only after assembly, hum that changes when a wire is moved, crosstalk that worsens as the gain is increased: all three usually trace back to where the return…

FPGA Transceiver Routing and Power Delivery A high speed FPGA board design is a routing problem, and FPGA transceiver routing is the part of it that decides the layer count wrapped around a power problem. The device can implement almost any function, so the interfaces are whatever the product needs,…

Analog and Digital Ground: When to Split and When to Connect Almost every mixed-signal layout review eventually reaches the same argument: should the analog and digital ground be split, or joined under the converter? The advice available online is contradictory because the correct answer depends on frequency, current paths and…

PCB HALT Testing for A Product: Pushing Until It Breaks Buyers and engineers often focus on the finished product and forget the production line behind it. In practice, most field failures can be traced back to process decisions made during assembly. Understanding PCB HALT testing for a product gives you…

PCB Prototype Flow: From Design Files to Shipped Samples A prototype order is not simply a small production run. It is a manufacturing task with different economics, different risks and a much tighter feedback loop, because the purpose of the build is to answer questions rather than to ship volume.…

Solder Mask Ink Composition and the Properties That Matter Solder mask is the layer most engineers think about only when something goes wrong, yet its formulation decides how a board behaves during printing, curing and years of service afterward. Knowing what goes into the ink makes it easier to specify…

PCB Technology Trends: Embedded Components, HDI and Additive Processes Component embedding, finer HDI lines, additive copper and higher-temperature laminates are the four PCB technology trends reshaping how a board gets built, and each one changes what a designer can reasonably put into a stackup. Watching those shifts is not academic:…