Multiphysics Simulation in Automotive Electronics Design There is an old division of labour in vehicle engineering: the mechanical engineer designs the machine, the electronics engineer designs the navigation system, and the civil engineer designs the road. Each discipline worked independently. That separation is no longer practical, because a modern product…

Press-Fit Pin Insertion: Setting Up the Push Into the Hole 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 press fit pin insertion setup from the perspective of…

Using the Smallest Components to Shrink PCB Area Sooner or later every board runs out of room. The requirement is usually stated as shrinking the product or adding function without enlarging it, and both resolve to the same problem: more circuitry per square millimetre, with the routing and placement difficulty…

PCB Connector Insertion Force Control: How Hard to Push 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 connector insertion force control gives you a practical…

10-Layer PCB Fabrication Challenges Explained A ten-layer board is not simply a six-layer board with four more sheets of material. Compared with a conventional product, high layer count work involves a thicker board, more layers, denser traces and vias, larger board sizes and thinner dielectric films — and every one…

PCB Cable Tie Point for Strain Relief: Taking the Pull 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 cable tie point for strain relief gives…

COM Express Carrier Board Layout Guide One way to shorten an embedded hardware programme is to stop designing the computer and start designing around it. A compute module packages the processor, its memory and the essential interfaces onto a small board with a standardised connector; the product-specific circuitry lives on…

Capacitor Selection for Automotive Electronics Choosing a capacitor looks like a two-parameter problem — capacitance and voltage — and it is not. Two parts with the same nominal value can behave completely differently at temperature, and one of them will be the wrong choice for a vehicle. Capacitor selection for…

PCB Staking for Heavy Components: Holding the Big Parts 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…

Automotive Power MOSFET: Voltage Ratings and Layout In the space of a generation, the power device in a car has gone from a single alternator component to a distributed population of hundreds of switches spread across dozens of modules. Windows, fuel injection, intermittent wipers and cruise control all became standard,…