PCB Mezzanine Connector Layout: Stacking One Board on Another 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 mezzanine connector layout gives you a practical advantage…

Stepped PCB Manufacturing: Cavity, Controlled Depth and Lamination A stepped board, also called a cavity board, is a multilayer construction in which part of the outer surface is machined away so that an inner layer becomes the top surface in a defined area. The purpose is mechanical: a tall component…

High-Speed Backplane Design: Link Budget, PINMAP and Materials A high-speed backplane is the board every other board plugs into. That single fact changes the design problem completely. A normal printed circuit has a defined function and a defined set of interfaces, but a backplane has to connect an entire system,…

Copper Core Substrate: Fabrication and Surface Finish Choice A copper core substrate is a middle ground between a conventional laminate and a ceramic. A metal plate carries the heat, a thin dielectric insulates it from the circuit, and the copper foil on top is processed like any other printed circuit.…

PCB Screw Terminal Selection: Wires That Stay Tight 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 screw terminal selection gives you a practical advantage when…

Drone Flight Controller PCB: IMU, Power and Vibration A flight controller takes data from gyroscopes, accelerometers, a barometer and a satellite receiver, performs sensor fusion into an attitude estimate and drives four or more motor controllers in a loop that runs hundreds of times a second. Every one of those…

Castellation PCB Modules: Design and Assembly Guide A castellated module is a small board with plated half holes along its edge, so that it can be soldered onto a carrier board like a surface mount component. It is the standard way to package a radio, a power converter or a…

Edge Computing Gateway PCB: Thermal, High Speed and Power An edge computing gateway sits between the sensors in a factory and the network that collects their data. It has to run a processor fast enough to filter and buffer a stream of information, it has to do so inside a…

Throwing Power and Plating Uniformity in Deep PCB Holes Plating a hole uniformly is harder than plating a flat surface, and the difficulty grows with the depth of the hole relative to its diameter. The reason is that the plating solution has to be exchanged inside the hole while the…

In-Circuit Test on PCBs: Fixtures, Test Points and Coverage In-circuit test checks the components on an assembled board one at a time: it measures a resistor, verifies the polarity of a diode, confirms that a capacitor is present and that its value is within tolerance, and detects a short or…