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By now, designers should be aware of some important behavior involved in power delivery to components in a PCB, particularly for digital components. All digital components produce and manipulate wideband signals, where the frequency content theoretically extends up to infinite frequency. As such, some radiation may propagate through your PCB, leading to resonant behavior that is not observed on the power rail. This behavior is better known as...

The above image shows a PCB with two large capacitors that might be used as the output caps for a VRM, which then can supply DC power to an integrated circuit. However, this board hides an important source of inductance: the power plane and power rails. If you’re working with a high speed digital component, there are some simple power integrity rules that should be followed. Using plane pairs, decoupling capacitors, and bypass capacitors are the...

Reliability testing and failure analysis of a PCB/PCBA go hand-in-hand; when designs are stressed to the limit, their failure modes need to be determined through thorough inspection and analysis. Some of these tests and potential causes of failure are handled by manufacturers as they might arise during bare board fabrication, while other potential problems with the PCBA should be addressed by a design team during prototyping and design...

In a previous blog, I issued a challenge to the PCB designer community.  How creative can you be when starting to think through a printed circuit board layout knowing that you now have the ability to design with 25-micron line and space, a significant density improvement over the traditional 75-micron trace and space, which has been a long-time limitation of the subtractive etching process for PCB fabricators. One interesting and creative...

There are some aspects of PCB design and layout that seem deceptively simple, and yet they have a complex answer that is related to many important aspects of manufacturing. One of these design aspects is the match between PCB via size and pad size. Obviously, these two points are related; all PCB vias have (or should have) a landing pad that supports the via and provides a place to route traces into a via pad. However, there are some important...

Decoding PCB Fabrication Notes A good friend of mine has a joke about planning a new PCB design for manufacturing: he’ll often ask “have you called your fabricator today?” to stress that you should engage with your manufacturing partner multiple times in the design process. This is something that designers often forget, and it can lead to major headaches ahead of full-scale manufacturing. The fact is, your board should go through multiple rounds...

The aerospace industry has driven the high-reliability design in the center focus. Juan Frias, our guest for today, is a very experienced PCB designer who has designed for Aerospace, Military, Industrial, Semiconductor, Communications, Medical, and Automotive; he will be sharing the tips for a successful design for manufacturability. We will also tackle Flex and Rigid-Flex design. This conversation will be fun and insightful, so watch through the...

Let’s set the scene: you’ve just installed your new PCB design program and you’re ready to jump into your first PCB layout. What should you do to get started? Most engineers are excellent at working with schematics and selecting their core components, but someone who is new to PCB layout might find the process overwhelming. PCB design software contains a lot of tools and follows a specific workflow, but it’s possible for a beginner to move...

Design professionals talk a lot about design for manufacturing guidelines, but what exactly are these and how are they implemented in your PCB design software? In PCB development, design for manufacturing has a very simple meaning: you should only implement design choices if you can ensure they are manufacturable with maximum yield. This deceptively simple explanation leaves out a lot, and it’s natural to assume your fabricator can manufacture...