Micro Main Board Assembly for Wearable Devices The main board in a wearable device fits in a small area and still has to carry a processor, sensors, memory, power management, charging contacts and a board to board connector. For a project like this the question is not only whether the…

PCB Mixed Signal Grounding: Analog and Digital Together Mixed signal boards place quiet analog circuits next to fast digital logic on one substrate. The digital edges switch in nanoseconds, and their return currents look for the nearest path back to the source. That path often runs under an analog trace…

Automotive Electronics Development to Automotive Grade Standards The share of electronics in a vehicle keeps rising, from body control modules to intelligent cabins, from battery management to domain controllers, and the requirements have risen with it. A part that goes into a car is not a consumer part with a…

Signal Anomaly Investigation on a Data Acquisition Board A data acquisition board can pass placement and visual inspection and then show a drifting zero, excessive noise, or readings that differ between channels. Replacing the amplifier, the converter or the reference is the usual first reaction and usually the wrong one,…

PCB Stackup Planning for the Job: Practical Process Controls 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 stackup planning for the job from the perspective of a…

PCB Via Plugging Material Selection: From Design to Repeatable Production 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…

SMT Prototype Service for Design Verification Boards During development an engineer needs a small number of boards quickly, to find out whether the design works. Hand soldering is slow, and for a 01005 component or a ball grid array it cannot produce a joint that is worth trusting. A proper…

Rigid-Flex PCB Manufacturing and Bend Area Design A rigid-flex board combines a rigid printed circuit board with a flexible circuit in one construction. The rigid sections carry the components and provide the mechanical support, while the flexible sections connect between them and allow the assembly to be folded into the…

PCB Via Capping and Plating Over: Design, Process, and Quality Notes 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.…

BGA Fan-Out Design at 0.4mm Pitch Ball grid array packages have become the standard for high performance devices, from processors and programmable logic to memory, because they allow the pin count to grow without the package growing with it. Designing a board for one is harder than designing for a…