The shortage of materials has worsened further; there is no relaxation in sight. That’s why the everyday heroes are our purchasing staff. For weeks, our team has been giving its all to bring in the electronic components so that we can deliver your PCB assemblies as quickly as possible. We explain the unprecedented situation on […]
Designing PCBs with ball-grid array (BGA) packages on them can be tricky; getting them manufactured can sometimes be even trickier! Here we’ll discuss what to consider when designing with BGAs in a way that makes them easier to manufacture and often also cheaper. Important: all figures in this article are correct for the time of […]
Electronic components are increasingly difficult or even sometimes impossible to source. The only way to help overcome this situation is to use our Parts Reservation service. See our article below. Even with these challenges our production will continue throughout the summer and our customer support team will be available and ready to help when you […]
Components, connectors, cases, cables, modules, and other things that get attached to our PCBs may require space that isn’t a simple round drill hole. For those special gaps we create cutouts. Let’s first define what we’re talking about because there’s no industry consensus on some of these terms. We can distinguish between two types of […]
Because our heart beats for the European electronics industry, we are involved in Working Groups, the Promotion of Young Talents and are actively involved in Electronics Community Events. It is very important for us that we share our knowledge and use it to support you. In this newsletter, we have also compiled tips and tools […]
When we design a PCB we think of its final thickness in discrete values: 0.2mm, 0.8mm, 1.55mm, 2.4mm, and others. But the reality is that we will almost never get a PCB back with those exact thicknesses. Here I will discuss why that is, the many factors that affect boards’ final thickness, the tolerances we […]
All functional circuit boards have tracks that guide electrons from one place to another in order to complete a circuit that ― hopefully! ― does what we want. These tracks have length, resistance, capacitance, and inductance with a magnitude that depends on their physical attributes, relationship to other conductive and non-conductive materials nearby, and the […]
Conductive carbon ink is added to a finished PCB in order to provide a robust and long-lasting electrical interface with another mechanical component, such as a key or dial. It does that in two main ways: it raises the shallow copper contact above the surface of the PCB; and, it protects the PCB contact from […]
Vias are plated holes that connect signals between layers, and are typically smaller than ordinary plated holes that are used for soldering through-hole components. What also makes them special is that they’re usually not the destination of a signal, so they create a physical ‘interruption’ that sometimes makes an impact on functionality. Types of vias […]
Castellations— or castellated edges, plated holes on the board’s edge, plated half-holes — are rampart-like structures along the edges of a printed circuit board. Their main advantage is that they allow an electrical connection to another board through the side edges of the board, without additional components. Pretty neat! Castellations are manufactured by creating ordinary […]
More and more customers are ordering not only their PCBs from us, but also assembled boards. Ordering prototypes from a single source has decisive advantages: In addition to the normal data needed to manufacture your PCB we require these data files: The BOM is usually an Excel file. It contains information on the components such […]
The young engineer Paul Eisler didn’t like the tangle of wires that connected the tubes, coils and resistors in the radios of the 1930s, aptly named bird’s nests. The ingenious idea of the inventor, who had emigrated from Vienna to London, was to print a clear system of conductive paths on a single plane suitable […]
