Practical Notes on IQC Quality on a printed circuit board is not created by a final inspection. It is built into the process at three separate gates: incoming material, work in progress and finished product. In the industry these are IQC, IPQC and FQC, and the reason they are separate…

PCB Fiducial Placement: Mark Point Design for Assembly A fiducial is a small copper mark that the placement machine uses to find the board. Without it, the machine relies on the panel edges and the tooling holes, and any variation in routing, lamination shrink or conveyor position is transferred directly…

Practical Notes on VIPPO VIPPO is one of those manufacturing terms that appears on a stackup drawing without explanation and then decides whether a dense BGA can be assembled reliably. The acronym stands for via-in-pad plated over, and it describes a specific sequence: a via is placed inside a component…

FPC Copper Foil: Rolled Annealed vs Electrodeposited Copper foil is the conductor in every flexible circuit, and the way that foil was made decides how the finished part behaves when it is bent. Two production routes dominate: rolling and annealing a cast ingot, and electrodepositing copper onto a rotating drum.…

Practical Notes on Audio Amplifier PCBA An audio amplifier PCBA is a board where the measurements look simple and the listening experience is unforgiving. A switching amplifier can post excellent distortion figures and still hum audibly, because the hum comes from a ground loop or from a supply coupling that…

PCB Fuse Trace Design: A Track That Is Meant to Fail 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.…

Practical Notes on Powertrain PCB A powertrain PCB lives in the harshest environment a production vehicle offers. It sits near combustion heat or on an inverter, it sees vibration from the driveline, it cycles between ambient and operating temperature every time the vehicle is used, and it must survive for…

PCB Silkscreen vs Solder Mask: Two Layers, Two Jobs Two layers sit on top of the copper on a finished board, and they are often confused because both are printed. The solder mask is a functional dielectric coating that protects the copper and controls where solder may go. The silkscreen…

PCB High Voltage Spacing: Room for the Spark 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 high voltage spacing gives you a practical advantage when…

PCB Via Current Capacity: Where the Current Squeezes 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 via current capacity gives you a practical advantage when…