RF PCB Design Workflow: From Schematic Capture to Fabrication Data Radio frequency boards fail in ways that digital boards usually do not. A trace that looks harmless on screen can behave like a small antenna, and a ground plane that is perfectly adequate at 10 MHz can turn into a…

How PCB Design Choices Reduce Manufacturing Cost A design that is electrically correct can still be expensive to build. Most of the PCB manufacturing cost is locked in before the first quote is requested, because it follows from geometry, tolerance, layer count and process steps rather than from negotiation. Engineers…

Android Core Board PCB Layout: Routing a Quad-Core Module An Android core board packs a cellular modem, a quad-core application processor, LPDDR memory, eMMC storage and a power management unit into an area smaller than a business card. The PCB layout for that kind of module is unforgiving, because high-speed…

Impedance Boards and How to Choose a Fabricator A controlled impedance board is a normal board with one additional requirement: the characteristic impedance of specific traces must fall within a stated band. That requirement propagates backwards through the whole fabrication process, because impedance depends on trace width, dielectric thickness and…

What Drives PCB Lead Time Lead time is one of the two numbers every buyer asks about, and it is the one that is most often misunderstood. It is not a measure of how fast the machines run. It is the sum of the time each step takes, plus the…

PCB Requirements for Medical Electronics Medical electronics is not a different kind of circuit design. It is ordinary circuit design held to a documented standard, with evidence that the standard was met. The board carries requirements that consumer products do not, not because the electronics behave differently but because the…

What Actually Determines PCB Quality Ask five people what makes a good circuit board and you will get five answers, most of them about price or delivery. The properties that decide whether a board works in three years are measurable, and they are all set inside the fabrication process rather…

PCB Antenna Tuning with A Matching Network: What Matters on the Production Line 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 antenna tuning with a matching network…

FPC Stiffener and Die-Cut Auxiliary Materials Guide Flexible printed circuits earn their place in products where a rigid board cannot go, but the flex circuit itself is only half of the finished assembly. A bare polyimide or polyester base bends, folds and rolls, which is exactly what designers want and…

PCB Prototype or Turnkey PCBA Assembly: Which to Order Every board goes through a prototype stage, but what arrives at the engineer bench at the end of it depends on what was ordered. A fabricator asked only for bare boards ships bare boards: drilled, plated, masked and silkscreened, with every…