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When it comes to the process of receiving and inspecting manufactured PCBs, there are two dominating factors: Specify as much as you can on the fab drawings you provide to the PCB manufacture, and thoroughly inspect your first builds to ensure that all of those specifications have been satisfied and that no errors have crept into the fabrication process. This article provides an overview of the receiving and inspection process; the things that...

As noted in many previous articles, controlling crosstalk is one of the key goals in any PCB design. In most instances, when we talk about crosstalk, it’s in reference to the unwanted interaction of the electromagnetic field traveling on one transmission line with a neighboring transmission line. But crosstalk can also occur in the connector pin out. It is especially of concern in today’s high-speed designs where there is no isolation between the...

Tomas Chester is back for a Part 2 episode. This time he shares the importance of being involved in the PCB design community through organizations like the Printed Circuit Engineering Association™ (PCEA). He will also explain how the Materials Library in Altium Designer will benefit you as a designer and other stakeholders, including your fabricator.  Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video: Sho...

As pointed out in previous articles, design is the first step in the PCB product development process, so the board designer needs to understand how the downstream processes will impact his design processes/selections/decisions, and this understanding needs to encompass both technical and financial considerations. These deliberations are viewed and weighted as trade-offs. What might make sense from a technical standpoint may not always make sense...

As noted in many previous articles, due to high-speed and high data-rate designs, most modern products utilize differential signaling. If utilizing the right design protocols and design toolsets, handling differential signaling in standard, rigid PCBs is easily doable. But utilizing differential signaling in flex circuits creates another set of issues, questions, and design challenges. This article will address how differential signaling is...

The moment you push your Gerbers to a manufacturer for a DFM inspection, it can be a nerve-wracking experience waiting for a response. Once I push a totally new design to manufacturing, I spend a few sleepless nights waiting for a pro forma quote to come through and the design to pass qualification. It’s not until I get working boards that I breathe a sigh of relief. But before you receive your working boards, there will likely be some back-and...

In almost modern circuits, especially whenever digital circuitry is involved, you will find some kind of clock source. All clock sources present a series of tradeoffs regarding stability, reliability, size, power consumption and cost. Luckily for us, such tradeoffs are relatively simple and can be explained almost fully within this single article. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each clock source, from the RC in a 555-powered oscillator, to a...

In engineering, we often adopt hundreds of mental shortcuts in order to keep the complexity of the topics we tackle to a manageable level. If we were to run a quantum-physics simulation every time we flash an LED, we would never get anything done. Yet, many of these shortcuts and rules-of-thumb were created in times past , when the electronics industry was radically different than what it is now. Today, we are going to unlearn what a capacitor...

Introduction As engineers, we sometimes sit high on our pillowy chairs, looking at the nitty and gritty of the industry — such as the fabrication of the PCB — with a bit of nonchalance. The truth of the matter is, when studied in-depth, PCB fabrication is an extremely complex technological topic that deserves recognition as the most fundamental part of PCB engineering. Unless connectors, conductive adhesive, wire-bonding, or zebra-tape are used...