Parallel Seam Welding Quality for Sealed Packages A sealed electronic package has to stay sealed. Where the lid is metal and the body is metal, the joint is made by welding, and the process used for most high reliability packages is parallel seam welding. Two electrodes roll along opposite edges…

PCB FMEA for A Board: Thinking About What Fails 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 FMEA for a board from the perspective of a PCBA…

High Speed PCB Versus Ordinary PCB: Where The Difference Shows The difference between a high speed board and an ordinary one is not a single feature but a set of decisions that ripple through the design, the material selection and the manufacturing process. An ordinary PCB is designed to make…

X-ray Inspection for PCB Assembly: What It Finds Optical inspection sees the surface of a solder joint. X-ray inspection sees through it, which is the only way to judge a connection under a BGA or ball grid array, a land grid array or a package with a thermal pad. It…

LED Backlight Driver Layout Design An LED backlight looks like a simple string of diodes and a resistor, but a display that has to dim smoothly, hold its brightness across temperature and stay quiet in an EMC test needs a proper driver. The circuit is a switching converter, and the…

Bringing Up A Signal Conditioner Evaluation Board An evaluation board exists to answer a question that a datasheet cannot: how does this device behave when it is placed in a real channel? For a signal conditioner, whether that is a redriver, a retimer or a buffer, the answer depends on…

Display Interface PCB Routing Guide A display interface is the place where high speed digital design meets a mechanical assembly that the designer does not control. The panel has its own timing, its own connector and its own tolerance for signal quality, and the board has to deliver a defined…

PCB Corrective Action Request: When Something Goes Wrong 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 corrective action request gives you a practical advantage when…

PCB Yield Analysis: Where the Good Boards Go 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 yield analysis from the perspective of a PCBA factory floor, covering…

Wave Soldering: Process Control for Through-Hole Assemblies Wave soldering remains the fastest way to attach a large number of through-hole parts, and it remains a process that punishes a board designed without it in mind. The defects it produces are predictable, and almost all of them trace back to a…