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From Tesla to consumer devices, Mihir Shah has been a PCB among the best. Now, as Director of Special Projects at Royal Circuit Solutions, he is pioneering ways to make manufacturing easy for printed circuit board designers. Meet Mihir and Jon Lass, co-founder and VP of Engineering at Royal Circuits, and listen in as they discuss manufacturing best practices and share various insights on symmetrical stackups, solder mask, and copper weights...

Hardware design and development is a difficult area to work in, largely because it can seem so opaque for a new designer. Most engineering companies do not open their doors for anyone to show up and start learning about hardware development. It's very hands-on and sometimes there are not enough resources for new designers. Hobbyist level hardware design is much easier to get into, largely thanks to the number of development products and off-the...

Neutron stars seem like the stuff of science fiction. Imagine stars as large as the sun exploding in a blinding supernova. Better yet, consider how the spectacular explosion peels the outer layers of the star away and leaves a small, continually collapsing dense core. Gravity pushes the dense matter together to the point of protons and electrons combining into neutrons. As the star’s gravity becomes 200 billion times stronger than the Earth’s...

Rectangular PCBs are old-school. Newer devices are more likely to use an odd-shaped PCB that closely conforms to its packaging or a rigid-flex board that moves with the device. 3D visualization tools have become essential for PCB designers, especially when designing rigid-flex boards with unique shapes. Using CAD software, you’ll want to have a Sketchup that ensures printing is easy to achieve. Managing board shapes for use in rigid and rigid...

Brain games are a good way to stay sharp. One of my favorite ways to implement this is by doing daily puzzles. Although I love the crossword puzzles where you complete the words from a given clue, I think puzzles that require you to put the pieces together can be the most challenging, especially when it is a group activity. It reminds me of one of the more daunting problems for engineers and PCB designers, which is multi-board design. Not only...

At our house, creating a grocery shopping list can become a multi-day event. Stage 1 of the extravaganza involves a careful but not well-planned review of all available grocery store ads. Stage 2 moves on to the analysis of those advertisements. One never knows where bargains may lurk. Then, Stage 3 takes us to the pantry for a study of our available resources while Stage 4 measures our budget against our needs. When we eventually stroll...