PCB Design Outsourcing: When an In-House CAD Team Is Not the Answer The most common arrangement in a small or medium hardware company is that the hardware engineers do the layout themselves. The reason is understandable: they know the circuit, they are available, and the layout tool is on the…

Why PCB Design Quality Decides Whether a Project Succeeds A low price is not a competitive advantage in a market where the product has to work. In electronics it is not even a saving, because the board is a small part of the total cost of a project and a…

Ten Golden Rules of PCB Design That Still Apply Semiconductor integration keeps improving and complete systems on a chip are available off the shelf, yet most products still need a board of their own. That board is the physical platform on which the rest of the design is built, and…

Pin Count for a PCB Design Quote: Where the Numbers Come From Layout services are usually priced by the pin, because the pin count is the closest thing to a measure of the work. It correlates with the number of connections to be routed, the number of pads to be…

Board Level ESD Protection: Chassis Ground, Guard Rings and Placement Static charge arrives from a person, from the environment or from another part of the same equipment, and it arrives in a few nanoseconds carrying several amperes. What it does to a semiconductor is varied and mostly permanent: it punctures…

DDR4 SDRAM Design Points and Their Layout Consequences Fourth generation memory changed the layout problem rather than only the data rate. The supply fell to 1.2 V, the bus moved to a point-to-point arrangement with on-die termination, and a set of training routines moved into the controller to absorb the…

24 Tips for Noise Reduction and EMI Control in PCB Design Noise control on a board is not a single technique; it is a collection of small decisions that each remove one path for energy to travel. Every one of them closes a route by which electromagnetic interference leaves the…

PCB Membrane Switch Design: Switches Printed on a Sheet 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 membrane switch design from the perspective of a PCBA factory…

PCB Flexible Circuit Adhesive: What Holds the Layers Together 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…

EMC Test Items Explained: What Each Test Applies to a Product Every product that is sold into a regulated market is measured against a list of disturbances, and the list is fixed well before the design starts. Knowing what each item applies to the product, and how it stresses the…