PCB Kit Completion Check: Everything in the Bag 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 kit completion check gives you a practical advantage when…

PCB Work in Progress Control: What Is on the Floor 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 work in progress control from the perspective of a…

PCB Takt Time Planning: Matching the Demand 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 PCB…

PCB Design Workflow: Planning Before Layout Most of the effort in a board design is spent before the first trace is drawn, in deciding what the board has to do and how the space will be divided. A clear plan makes the layout a matter of execution rather than of…

Travel Converter: Travel Voltage Converter Design With USB PD A travel converter accepts any mains supply in the world and produces a regulated output for a laptop, a phone or a small appliance. Its difficulty is not the power level but the input range and the space it has to…

Flex Cracking in Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor Assemblies Multilayer ceramic capacitors are among the most reliable components on a board and among the most easily damaged. They survive decades of electrical stress, yet a few tenths of a millimetre of board deflection during depaneling can start a fracture that opens later…

MEMS Microphone Interface Circuit Design A MEMS microphone is a silicon device with a movable diaphragm and a fixed backplate, packaged with an application specific circuit and sealed with a lid that has a small hole. It is smaller and more consistent than an electret capsule, but it is also…

Floating Lamp Circuit Design: Solar, Battery and Light A lamp that floats on a lake or a harbour basin has to generate its own power, store it, use it efficiently and survive years of immersion. The circuit design follows from those four requirements rather than from the lighting specification. What…

PCB Engineering Change Order: Changing a Released Design 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…

Reflow Profile: Reflow Oven Maintenance and Profile Verification A reflow oven drifts. Zones lose calibration, the conveyor speed changes slightly, and the thermal mass of a loaded oven is not the same as an empty one. The profile that was developed on the first article is only valid while the…