Valley Services Electronics

PCB CMs understand both the fabrication and assembly side of manufacturing a circuit board, and they can choose the best PCB fabrication shop to work with to produce a high-quality board. Here’s how.

Flying probes have seen wide adoption over the past three-plus decades, especially in the realm of prototyping and other low-volume production runs. However, the advantages provided by a PCB flying probe test quickly erode when scaling for larger productions. An explanation of the PCB flying probe test, its benefits, drawbacks, and alternatives to the test are offered below.

PCBs also need to be tested, which require test points to be strategically designed into the board along with placing the components and routing the connections. Bare board continuity testing, in-circuit test, and flying probe testing all require the presence of test points on the board to facilitate their processes. Here we will look at the top seven PCB test points layout strategies that designers need to understand to build a fully testable circuit board.

Efforts are underway to reshoring semiconductor manufacturing, but the time it takes to design, build, furnish, and staff a foundry means these efforts will not bear fruit for several years. Stateside printed circuit board manufacturing possesses numerous advantages over traditional global fabrication and assembly chains, and some of the reasons are outlined below.

Thankfully, electronic CAD tools have numerous standard features to create redundancies that minimize errors during all stages of PCB design. These integrated suites help streamline design flow from schematic capture to documentation to fabrication and assembly through many clever and common functions. The following features will form part of the indispensable aid that electronic CAD applications offer designers to ensure designs meet their intended specifications at the outset.

Successfully navigating the semiconductor chip supply chain shortage requires a different set of skills than what PCB design groups have traditionally had to wield. Here are some ideas that your design group may want to consider to work around these supply chain difficulties.