Solder Paste Selection for Assembly What Paste Selection Decides The paste is the material that becomes the joint, and its selection decides the printing behaviour, the reflow window, the residue and the joint’s properties. It is usually chosen once, early, and then treated as fixed, which is why a poor…

ESD Protection in Circuit Design How a Discharge Reaches the Circuit An electrostatic discharge arrives at a connector, a button, a seam or a cable, and from there it travels through the product to find a return. The current is short in duration but very high, and its path through…

PCB Copper Trace Coupling Capacitance: The Charge Between Traces 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…

Grounding Strategy for Mixed Signal Boards The Question and the Argument Grounding a mixed signal board is one of the most argued topics in layout, because both of the common answers can be defended. One camp splits the plane into an analogue part and a digital part and joins them…

SMT Reflow Solder Joint Mechanical Shock: The Hit the Joint Takes 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 SMT reflow solder joint mechanical shock from the perspective…

EMC Design for PCB Layout EMC Starts on the Board Electromagnetic compatibility is usually treated as a test that happens at the end of a project, and by then most of the cost is already committed. The behaviour that the test measures is decided by the layout: the size of…

Crosstalk and Signal Spacing How Crosstalk Happens Crosstalk is energy from one net appearing on another. It couples in two ways: capacitively, through the electric field between the conductors, and inductively, through the magnetic field that the current produces. Capacitive coupling injects a current into the victim that is proportional…

Mixed Signal ADC Layout and Grounding What the Converter Needs A high resolution converter resolves a voltage in the microvolt range, and the layout has to deliver that voltage to the input without adding noise or an error. The two things that ruin a converter’s performance are a noisy reference…

DC-DC Converter Layout Rules The Layout Sets the Performance A switching converter’s efficiency, its output noise and its electromagnetic behaviour are decided largely by the layout. The components are usually chosen from a reference design, and the difference between a good and a poor result is usually the placement and…

PCB Laminate Surface Resistivity: How the Board Resists Current 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 laminate surface resistivity gives you a practical advantage…