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Building a printed circuit board requires a lot of data and information for your manufacturers. A circuit board is first fabricated, where the layers of dielectric material and metal interconnects are laminated together and then assembled where the components are soldered into place. Finally, the board will be fully tested before being shipped back to the customer who ordered it.

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.

Where’s your first stop when you enter the store to shop? If you’re anything like me, you’re a bargain hunter, and it’s straight to the clearance rack. Even when grocery bills aren’t soaring, I appreciate the simple surprise of trying a new product I’d otherwise pass over or stocking up on a favorite. This shopping mentality presupposes that the items you pick are more or less equivalent.

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.

Have you ever had a meal dining out that you were sure you could make better at home? I don’t consider myself a great cook. Still, there are the rare disappointing occasions at the restaurant when I realize I could’ve just stayed home and cooked something probably healthier and cheaper.