Eurocircuits Printed circuits blog

Eurocircuits is running production plants in Hungary an Germany. The capacity of both board-shops is sufficient for the European market and still leaves free capacity for the Eurocircuits business to grow. Why did we step into a venture to build a brand new production facility in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India? Eurocircuits is running production p ...

At the end of February I went to visit the new location of PCB Planet. PCB Planet is the PCB CAM engineering unit serving Eurocircuits . They also serve other board houses in Europe, Asia and the USA. This dedicated CAM unit was set u ...

We use our blog as a medium to provide useful information to the electronics engineering community. Most of our blog articles can be of interest for a long time after they are published, and we frequently got feedback from readers that they are not so easy to find back. In the blog interface you have the possibilty to see the blogs organised in ca ...

Visual communication enhances PCB procurement: Eurocircuits goes visual Go visual - why? Make real-life PCB information available to everyone involved in board design, procurement, manufacture, assembly and testing. Images are: Convenient – ease of use Clear – avoid misunderstandings Open to all collaborators  - not ev ...

Why lean production? Our main target is reducing waste (time is a major waste)  in the production and better (faster) serve our customers. The first step - "clear the clouds" We first needed to learn to see the real nature of our production processes. We learn to look through "lean glasses" to recognise the biggest waste items in our proces ...

Gold plating over edge connectors Eurocircuits offer two types of gold finish: Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold (ENIG) as a surface finish for the whole PCB, and hard plated gold over plated nickel for edge-connector fingers. Electroless gold gives excellent solderability, but the chemical deposition process means that it is too soft and too thi ...

To produce your board we use your design data in Gerber or EAGLE format and first perform the necessary front end actions as described in our white paper: "What do PCB fabricators do with your data before they make your PCBs?". When this is done and your board is ready for production, we save your board’s production data in your account.  Thi ...

Soldermask on via holes There are 3 ways our customers prepare their layouts with respect to covering via-holes with soldermask: Vias open (not covered by soldermask) on both sides of the PCB Vias closed (covered with soldermask) on both sides of the PCB Vias open from one side and covered from the other side of the PCB As necessar ...

On April 25, ACB organized their technology seminar….Eyes on the future, feet on the ground… ACB, known in Europe as leading manufacturer of High Technology & Quick Turnaround Printed Circuit Boards, organized its first technology seminar. The brand new CEO, Gilles Rigon, opened he seminar with explaining all about the ACB philosophy.  & ...

Large boards and pooling – new guidelines     Over the last 12 months we have received an increasing number of boards in our pooling services at the maximum size allowed 425 x 425 mm.  These are not genuine single circuits but panels made up of many smaller circuits.  To get around our specified maximum panel size 350 x 250 ...

Ordernumber E500000 reached on 12/11/2012 Twelve years after the start of Eurocircuits in 2000, we received order number 500000. That's a lot of orders we have processed online. This is a good occasion to thank  you all as loyal customers, and hope we can continue to serve you for a long time. We hope to come soon with the message that we re ...

Eurocircuits marketing strategy Historical background For our first 10 years we subscribed to the sales pitch “you name it, we make it”.  This was an expensive strategy which required heavy investment in plant, processes and expertise.  By 2000 – 2001 there was little or no added-value margin left to sustain the investment; the recessio ...

The Eurocircuits website - Then and Now - From website to online ERP system We have come a long way, the simple website we launched to let customers calculate and order the PCBs online has grown into a complete ERP system now. But the initial philosophy to create one unique platform where all information is available to both customers as internal ...

Presentation of the sales results 2011 Sales 2011 was a good year. For the first time our PCB turnover exceeded 15M€. The total consolidated group turnover including equipment sales amounts to 16.9M€. Overall sales increased 3.57% against  2010. Our online pooling services showed a healthy  growth in sales value of 14.14 %. ...

Eurocircuits annual sales meeting took place in Mechelen 11 - 13 January. Luc Smets and Dirk Stans, Managing Partners, opened the meeting with a summary of the company's results for 2011 which showed a healthy growth in turnover, number of orders and number of customers. They also outlined new developments for 2012 which will significan ...

Subscribe to “Firmware” electronics design digital magazine through your Eurocircuits account. “Why are Eurocircuits offering a link to a third-party technical journal? I thought you made printed circuit boards?” As specialist prototype and small batch PCB manufacturers, we see our role as more than just making PCBs. Our goal is “added-valu ...

“What do PCB fabricators do with my data before they make my PCB?”   “Why can’t they use my data just as I sent it in?” “Why do I need to know? I’m an electronics engineer and they are the board fabricators?”. Our new white paper, “Front-end data preparation”, answers these questions. An understanding of the front-end data preparatio ...

By now your job has already been through two of the three front-end data preparation stages : Analysis : we have checked your data to make sure that it complies with the service you have chosen.  If we have found any production issues we have provided you with detailed feedback. Single Image : we have rechecked all layers an ...

Have you ever wondered what we are doing to your data when the order status is Single Image? Here is the answer based on the instructions we give to our data preparation engineers. Many of the steps described below are automated for speed and accuracy but we have ignored this to make a clearer presentation. More information on our re ...

Eurocircuits integrates EAGLE CAD software Eurocircuits have been appointed pan-European Value-Added Reseller for CadSoft’s EAGLE PCB design software.  Now you can buy EAGLE CAD software licences and upgrades directly from our website on your Eurocircuits account – no need to set up new accounts and payment procedures.  How?   &nb ...

Eurocircuits is organising workshops on PCB prototype assembly and soldering. These workshops are presented by Ben Verwaest from ARCOSS and Uwe Dörr from Eurocircuits. We refer to earlier blog articles to get an impression of what is happening during these workshops. Ben is an expert in the field of PCB assembly. He is frequently consulted by pro ...

An assembly solution for the wider electronics engineering community At Eurocircuits we are already well-known for our powerful offer manufacturing prototype and small batch PCBs for electronics engineers.  We have already extended this back into the design process with our links to EAGLE and to Altium.  But what about assembly? We are ...

Why would we develop a solderstation? During our recent seminars on reflow soldering we had many questions about hand soldering as well. Of course there are many good hand soldering systems in the market today. But we would like to offer a soldering station designed specifically to meet the requirements of our prototype PCB customers.  This w ...

Overview of our first seminar 22-03-2012 and dates for future seminars. We started with a warm welcome and the registration of our participants accompanied by a cup of coffee. 19 out of 20 preregistered participants found their way to ARCOSS for our first seminar on reflow soldering of SMD PCB prototypes. Dirk Stans spoke a word of welcome and ...

eC-workshop - Belgium  March 22, 2012 Eurocircuits are organizing a workshop on using the eC-reflow-equipment for the reflow soldering of SMD PCB prototypes. Already 160 Eurocircuits customers throughout Europe are using our eC-reflow-equipment, the eC-stencil-mate and the eC-reflow-mate. Let us convince you of the ease of use, the quality a ...

E&A exhibition - Jaarbeurs Utrecht - 28-30 may 2013 - booth 8E042 Also in 2013 you will find Eurocircuits at the E&A exhibition. Many visitors have already registered for a free entry ticket and for the gadget "Helios". The last 3 editions of the show (2007-2009-2011), Eurocircuits customers visited the show and our booth in great numbers. ...

Perfect prototype soldering with the eC-reflow equipment – a lively Eurocircuits workshop in Augsburg. On 28 – 29 November 2012 Eurocircuits GmbH ran two one-day workshops in Augsburg, Germany. The topic was SMD assembly. A total of 36 people attended. Our hosts were Claudia and Benedikt Sauter, the owners of embedded projects GmbH, a young com ...

Eurocircuits and CadSoft run their first EAGLE workshop for electronics engineering apprentices. On 29 – 30 January 2013 Eurocircuits and CadSoft organised a joint workshop on PCB design for engineering apprentices at SMA Solar Technology AG in Kassel, Germany. SMA Solar Technology leads the market in Germany for solar power installations.  ...

On 10 December 2012 we joined with CadSoft to run our first workshop on their highly successful EAGLE PCB layout package.  The meeting was hosted in Augsburg by our old friends and customers embedded projects GmbH.  Despite the sudden onset of winter 14 participants braved the snow and ice to attend. Benedikt Sauter, Managing Director ...

At the end of November our factory in Eger, Hungary organized an  ’Open house’ for our Hungarian customers. About 50 visitors were welcomed by Gabor Wachter, the managing director of Eurocircuits Kft. starting the day with a warm welcome and the details of the program. Jozsef Lengyel,  our technology manager gave a detailed pr ...

PCB Visualizer gives you complete control over the critical transfer of data from designer to fabricator. You leave nothing to chance. A brief on-screen check gives you 100% confidence that the board we are going to make is the board that you want – confidence and peace of mind so that you can concentrate on the next design without worrying about ...

Today we release an update for our PCB Visualizer and PCB Checker automatic analysis tools. We have also doubled the processing capacity of our analysis software tool so that we can process more jobs in less time. Due to the rapid increase in the number of jobs we need to process in PCB Visualizer, the waiting times got too long to be comfortable. ...

The feedback we received on PCB Visualizer has been very encouraging. The tool is very much appreciated by engineers, and gives major advantages over conventional Gerber viewers. For example, you can: Load all the data in a single .zip file Input native CadSoft EAGLE V6 .brd files as well as Gerber data See your PCB “live” as it will be ...

Eurocircuits launched PCB Visualizer beginning of July. This first release gave you the opportunity to view the data you uploaded into your shopping basket and check that it conformed to the board you wanted to order. User reactions so far show that this functionality is highly appreciated. We have received a lot of useful feedback and this has e ...

U kan nog tot donderdagmiddag, 30-08-2012, voor de PCB Visualizer van Eurocircuits stemmen! Tijdens de week van 25-28 september is het weer zo ver en kan u ons vinden op HET Instrument 2012, in Amsterdam, Hal 1 stand B031. Deze beurseditie hebben we besloten mee te dingen naar de nominatie: "Noviteit 2012 van de branche Industriële Electronica (I ...

The new generation eC-reflow-mate reflow oven delivers better soldering control and more comfortable operation. Since we shipped the first units in April 2011 we have delivered more than 300 eC-reflow-mate reflow ovens to designers, SMEs and research establishments across the whole of Europe.  At Eurocircuits we strive to make continuous ...

Most people here in Belgium say you need to wait till  December 6, because that is the feast day of Saint Nicholas "Santa Claus". In every family it  is different. Therefore, no specific day or schedule is set for when to decorate your tree. Some people will choose to go with family tradition, others choose a random day where they have e ...