PCB Via Reliability Under Thermal Cycling: Surviving the Heat 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 via reliability under thermal cycling from the perspective of a…

Is That PCB Factory Reliable? Signals Worth Checking Every buyer of boards wants the same three things: the board that arrives matches the data that was sent, the date that was promised is the date that is met, and any problem is reported rather than discovered. Whether a particular shop…

PCB Layer Registration Accuracy: Lining Up the Layers 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 layer registration accuracy gives you a practical advantage when…

Screening a Contract Assembler: A Purchasing and Engineering Checklist Screening a contract assembler is a different exercise from comparing prices, and it is usually split between two people who ask different questions. Purchasing wants to know what the order will cost and when it will arrive. Engineering wants to know…

PCB Drill Bit Wear and Hole Quality: When the Bit Goes Dull 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 drill bit wear and hole quality from…

Choosing a PCB Fabricator for Prototypes and Pilot Runs Choosing a PCB fabricator for a prototype is usually treated as a purchasing decision, made by comparing the price on two websites. For a simple double-sided board that is the right approach, because the fabrication is standard and the differences are…

Small Batch SMT Assembly: What Separates a Good Factory At small volumes the choice of assembly partner matters more than the price. A few dozen boards look like a low-risk order, and the temptation is to take the cheapest quotation. What usually follows is a batch with poor joints, shifted…

Surface Finish Selection: HASL, ENIG or OSP The surface finish is decided at the design stage and then forgotten until something goes wrong at assembly. It is the layer of metal on the pads that protects the copper and allows solder to wet it, and the choice between the common…

SMT Assembly for Wearable ECG Recorders on Rigid-Flex Boards A wearable ECG recorder has to fit signal acquisition, storage, communication and power management into a space the size of a wristband. The board that results carries small passives, QFN devices, board-to-board connectors and a flexible tail that reaches the electrodes,…

Layout Shortcuts and Automation That Speed Up PCB Design Layout is a long series of small, repeated operations, and the time a design takes is largely the time those operations consume. Two engineers with the same circuit and the same deadline will finish days apart, and the difference is almost…