Plasma Treatment for PCB Surface Activation Before Coating Conformal coating and adhesive bonding both depend on a surface that the material can wet. A board that has passed through soldering, cleaning and handling carries an invisible layer of contamination that prevents that wetting, and the coating that looks continuous may…

Wave Soldering Process Guide for Through Hole Boards Wave soldering remains the standard way to attach through hole components at volume, and the process has changed less than the surface mount line beside it. What decides the result is still the flux, the preheat, the wave and the way the…

LDO or Switching Regulator: Choosing for Noise and Efficiency The choice between a linear regulator and a switching regulator is usually presented as efficiency against noise. The real decision involves the drop out, the thermal path and where in the chain the conversion happens. The Fundamental Difference A linear regulator…

Buzzer Driver Circuit Design Guide A buzzer is a small load that is easy to drive badly. The two common types behave quite differently, one draws a current pulse with a large inductive kick and the other looks like a capacitor, and using the wrong drive circuit produces a quiet…

Flyback Converter Design: Feedback, Creepage and Layout An isolated supply breaks the ground connection between the input and the output, which allows a measurement to be made across a potential difference and allows a circuit to be referenced to a point that is not ground. What the Isolation Provides The…

PCB Return Merchandise Authorization: Practical Process Controls 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 return merchandise authorization gives you a practical advantage when you…

E-Paper Display Driver Circuit Design An e-paper display holds its image without power, which makes it ideal for a battery powered label or a status panel. The trade is that the image is written with a high voltage waveform applied for a defined period, so the driver circuit is a…

PCB Packaging Specification: From Design to Repeatable Production 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 packaging specification gives you a practical advantage when you…

Input Protection: Reverse Polarity, Surge and Overvoltage Anything connected to a product by a user is a potential source of damage to it. Input protection is the set of parts that stand between the outside world and the circuit, and it is frequently the set of parts that receives the…

PCB Drill File Format: 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. This article…