Clearance and Creepage on a PCB: Spacing Rules in Practice Spacing rules for high voltage are not the same as design rules for signal integrity. They are derived from safety standards, they depend on the environment the product will operate in, and they are written to prevent a hazard rather…

PCB Shift Handover: From Design to Repeatable Production 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 shift handover from the perspective of a PCBA factory floor, covering…

PCB Setup Reduction: A Practical Manufacturing Guide 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 explains PCB…

PCB Classification and How Each Type Is Made The word printed circuit board covers a very wide range of products. A single sided board in a power supply and a twenty layer backplane share the same manufacturing logic but almost none of the same process steps, and a flexible circuit…

Solder Joint Voiding: Causes, Measurement and Acceptance A void is a gap inside a solder joint where the metal did not form. It looks alarming on an X-ray image, it is present in almost every joint to some degree, and the difficult part is knowing which ones matter. Where Voids…

What Is Solder Mask And What Does It Do? Solder mask is the coloured layer that covers most of a finished circuit board, and because it is so familiar it is often taken for granted. It is a polymer coating applied over the copper and the laminate, with openings where…

Solder Mask Loss: Why Adhesion Fails And What To Do Solder mask loss is the failure of the polymer coating to stay where it was applied. It appears as flaking around a pad, a blister that lifts after reflow, or a patch that peels away when the board is handled.…

Squeegee Pressure and Print Speed on SMT Printers Squeegee pressure and print speed are the two settings that operators adjust most often and understand least. Turn the pressure up and the deposit looks fuller; run the blade faster and the cycle time drops. Both adjustments feel like improvements until patches…

ADC Reference Noise and Layout Design Every conversion an ADC performs is a comparison against its reference, so the reference is as much a part of the measurement as the input itself. A stable input with a noisy reference produces a noisy result, and a reference that takes too long…

PCB Bottleneck Analysis: Design and Assembly Considerations 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 bottleneck analysis from the perspective of a PCBA factory floor, covering finding…