Ultrasound PCB Design: Beamforming Front Ends and Medical Assembly An ultrasound board is an analog instrument built around a large number of nearly identical channels. A probe array presents 64, 128 or 192 elements, and each element needs its own transmit driver, its own receive path and its own delay,…

PCB Cold Plate Mounting: Bolting the Board to Metal 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 cold plate mounting gives you a practical advantage…

IC Package Types: From DIP to BGA and CSP Every integrated circuit reaches a circuit board through a package, and the package is often chosen long before anyone thinks about soldering it. That is a mistake, because the package sets what the board has to tolerate: how many pins must…

PCB Soldering: Tools and Technique for SMD Work Hand soldering still matters. Prototypes, rework, field repairs, and the occasional component that cannot go through reflow all land on a bench with an iron, and the quality of those joints decides whether the assembly works. PCB soldering of surface-mount parts is…

PCB Warpage at High Temperature: Causes and Prevention A board that leaves the fabricator flat can still arrive at the assembly line bowed. PCB warpage at high temperature is the result of internal stress and unequal expansion being released as the panel passes through reflow, and it shows up as…

Standard PCB Service Cost: Materials, Layers and Volume Most projects do not need the fastest board or the most exotic material, and the ones that do usually know it early. For everything else a standard PCB service, built with mainstream materials and mainstream process capability, gives the best combination of…

PCB Derating of Components: Running Parts Below the Limit 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 derating of components gives you a practical advantage…

Crash Survivable Memory and the Board Around It A flight data recorder is built to survive a crash and then to explain it. The board inside a recorder is therefore designed around two requirements that rarely appear together: it must acquire and store data reliably while the aircraft is flying…

PCB Thermal Resistance Measurement: Measuring the Path 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 thermal resistance measurement gives you a practical advantage when you…

PCB Power Dissipation Budget: Adding Up the Watts 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 power dissipation budget gives you a practical advantage when…