Wearable PCBA: Micro Placement in Small Batch Runs The difficulty of a wearable PCBA is hidden in the word small. To reduce the size of the product, the design uses 0201 passives, fine pitch QFN devices, miniature connectors and densely packed components, and the pad spacing that results leaves very…

PCB Panel Drawing and Notes: What the Fabrication Needs to Know Electronics manufacturing has become a discipline of small details. Solder paste volumes, placement accuracy, temperature profiles and inspection limits all add up to the final result. This guide looks at PCB panel drawing and notes from the perspective of…

PCB Design Rules for A Factory: Rules for Your Factory 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 design rules for a factory gives you…

Precision Instrument PCBA: Small Signal Consistency A board that measures something is judged by different criteria from a board that switches something. A control board can work correctly while its measurements drift slightly; an instrument cannot. The quantities it produces are the product, and a small offset that would be…

PCB Layer Count Decision: How Many Layers You Need Electronics manufacturing has become a discipline of small details. Solder paste volumes, placement accuracy, temperature profiles and inspection limits all add up to the final result. This guide looks at PCB layer count decision from the perspective of a PCBA factory…

PCB Footprint Library Management: One Footprint, One Name 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 explains…

Outdoor IoT PCBA: Conformal Coating Done Properly Equipment that lives outdoors is judged by a different standard from equipment that lives in a cabinet indoors. A board that passes its factory test and then spends two years in a roadside enclosure, a buried chamber or a coastal installation faces moisture,…

PCB Design Version Control: Which Revision Is Which Electronics manufacturing has become a discipline of small details. Solder paste volumes, placement accuracy, temperature profiles and inspection limits all add up to the final result. This guide looks at PCB design version control from the perspective of a PCBA factory floor,…

PCB CAD Data Exchange Formats: Getting Files Across Tools Electronics manufacturing has become a discipline of small details. Solder paste volumes, placement accuracy, temperature profiles and inspection limits all add up to the final result. This guide looks at PCB CAD data exchange formats from the perspective of a PCBA…

What to Send for an Accurate SMT Assembly Quote Two factories can be asked to quote the same board and return figures that differ for reasons that have nothing to do with their margins. One of them assumed a single-sided build and the other allowed for two passes; one counted…