V-Cut Scoring PCB Cost and Design Guide How a Board Becomes a Panel Almost no board is manufactured one at a time. Small and medium boards are arranged several to a panel so that the fabricator and the assembly line can handle them efficiently, and the panel then has to…

Copper Based PCB Price: Cost Structure and Drivers A Substrate Chosen for Heat and Current A copper based board replaces the FR-4 core with a solid copper plate. The dielectric above it is a thin thermally conductive insulator, and the circuit layer sits on top. Copper conducts heat at roughly…

Taconic PCB Manufacturing: Materials and Process Guide When FR-4 Stops Being Enough Below a few gigahertz, FR-4 is a reasonable substrate and the cost advantage is enormous. Above roughly 6 GHz the picture changes: dissipation factor starts to dominate insertion loss, dielectric constant drifts with frequency and temperature, and copper…

Telecom PCB Price Guide: Materials, Layers and Volume Why Telecom Boards Sit in Their Own Price Band A telecom board is not simply a large digital board. It usually carries a mix of high speed serial links, a microwave or RF section, a dense power distribution network and a backplane…

Medical Device PCB Price Comparison: China vs Global Price Is the Easy Part of a Medical Board A medical device PCB is specified differently from any other board. The laminate has to be traceable, the process has to be documented, the acceptance criteria follow IPC Class 3, and the supplier…

CCTV Camera PCB Manufacturing Price Guide Four Boards in One Housing A modern surveillance camera is not one circuit board. There is an image sensor board, a main processor board that carries the SoC, memory and network interface, a power board that produces the rails and often drives IR illumination,…

SMT Stencil Cost: Laser Cut vs Chemically Etched The Cheapest Part of the Assembly, and the Most Influential A stencil is a sheet of stainless steel or nickel with apertures that match the pads on the board. Paste is printed through it, components are placed on the paste, and the…

8 Layer PCB Quick Turn: Prototype Build and Lead Time Why Eight Layers Arrives So Early A four layer board with a solid ground plane handles a surprising amount of digital design, and six layers handles more. Then a design shows up with a BGA that needs two rows of…

RF Test Equipment PCB: Design and Manufacturing Guide The Board Sets the Noise Floor A spectrum analyser, a signal generator or an EMC receiver is judged by measurements it makes at the edge of its own sensitivity. The front end amplifier, the mixer and the ADC usually get the credit…

PCB Press Fit Pin Repair: Fixing a Pin Without Solder 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…