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When creating an effective parts placement, many concerns have to be considered, including signal performance, power integrity, accessibility, and manufacturability. And although you may have to make compromises between these different requirements, some rules must be followed, especially when placing surface mount parts. Here are some SMT component placement guidelines that can help.

As with any manufactured object, circuit boards can also be plagued with unexpected defects. OEMs can trace PCB defects back to many causes, which is why it is so important to detect these problems early on before they become unmanageable. Fortunately, there are many methods available to designers and manufacturers for PCB defect detection, and we will look at some of these methods here.

Designing on paper certainly has a nostalgic charm, and many of us learned circuit design using simple drafting tools. However, circuit board design has become more complex since the good old days of using a drafting board. If you are still using pen and paper, you miss out on some beneficial functionality available in even the most simple schematic drawing software tools. Let’s compare pen and paper schematics with CAD schematic capture systems and see some of these differences.

The strategy of using a protective covering is not limited to combat tactics and can also help in protecting electronics. For years, mission-critical circuit boards operating in extremely stressful and harsh environments have benefited from a protective coating. Now, more consumer electronics are considering applying a conformal coating to their PCBs. Here we’ll look at what PCB conformal coating is and when you should consider using it to protect your sensitive electronics.

It is crucial to take basic steps to ensure design integrity before converting the schematic to a PCB layout.

The physical design of a printed circuit board, or “layout” as it is colloquially known, typically has a set pattern of steps that designers must use. And while some of these steps are narrowly focused on an individual layout, such as tool usage or each corporation’s design workflow, some basic global steps must be followed. Here we’ll detail those basic steps in an easy-to-follow PCB layout guide that can help those unfamiliar understand the circuit board design process better.