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PCBA buyers looking to purchase assemblies should know the potential risks they face with different service levels from an assembly house. A buyer's job is to take the engineering specification and keep it inside, as well as the completed printed circuit boards, and consign these items to a PCB assembly house. Once the assembly process begins, buyers should be aware of all the factors that could increase cost or lead time, as well as watch for...

As PCB designers, we spend a lot of time focusing on the high-profile aspects of Ultra High Density Interconnect (UHDI) technology: tight trace widths, sub-50 micron spacing, stacked microvias, and advanced material sets. But there’s another layer that doesn’t get nearly enough attention and, in many cases, can make or break the manufacturability of your board: soldermask. In UHDI designs, where line-and-space geometries are pushing the lower...

In aerospace, the margin for error is razor-thin. A misaligned connector or overlooked clearance can mean millions in redesign costs, months of certification delay, or worse, a system failure in the field. Regulatory bodies like the FAA (DO-254) and defense standards such as MIL-STD-810 exist to minimize these risks, but compliance is only as strong as the design process itself. Increasingly, aerospace companies are embracing ECAD-MCAD co-design...

I’ve been prototyping and playing around with Arduinos since the first Arduino Uno came out. I was just starting college and I fell in love with the device from day one. Fast-forward a few years later, and I needed to rapidly put together a prototype for my senior design project. To move fast, the Arduino was the only platform out there at the time that came with lots of modules/shields, libraries out of the box, and a simple IDE to pull a...

There is a lot that can go wrong during PCB assembly. When procuring printed circuit boards and PCB assemblies, simple things like incorrect BOM line items and footprint mismatches can force an assembly to be delayed, reworked, or scrapped. Some of the features in a PCB layout can also increase the chances of defects which will require a fabricated PCB to be scrapped. PCB fabricators will put a design through a DFM review, but a DFM review is not...

When analog signals need to be monitored, the most common components used for this task are ADCs. There is nothing wrong with ADCs for many different functions, but they are best used when precise measurements of a voltage level are needed. When a simpler measurement is needed, such as when a signal exceeds a certain voltage level, the typical approach is to use a comparator or a window comparator. For example, one common application in power...

In previous articles, we have discussed the importance of requirements management in engineering projects and the necessity of designing products with manufacturability in mind. It is essential to recognize that the design of an electronic product involves not only electronic design tasks but also a series of activities spanning multiple disciplines, such as mechanical design, firmware and software development, programmable logic design...

It’s no lie that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a game changer in the landscape of software development. One shot generative AI was helpful but introducing thinking models and agentic workflows has completely disrupted the world of code generation. Probably one of the most frequent questions I get from fellow colleagues is how to squeeze as much efficiency out of an AI agent as possible, increasing efficiency by 5-10x. In this article...

Few challenges hit harder in electronics than component obsolescence. In 2022, nearly 750,000 parts went obsolete. While that staggering figure declined in 2023, last year still saw over 470,000 components reach end of life (EOL). And for many companies, the problem comes down to one thing: lack of preparation. With technology evolving at breakneck speed, engineers need the foresight to see years into the future and build products that can stand...