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-value service”. We recognise that time-to-market is critical for our user-community. That is why in 2011 we cut our base-line delivery for small batches (anything under 50 dm2 from 10 working days to 7.

But faster fabrication is only part of the story. Were there, we asked ourselves, other areas where we could help to speed time to market? We set up a direct link with EAGLE CAD so that designers could get prices and place orders in seconds without manual data entry and without leaving their CAD PC. We developed PCB Visualizer so that they could check their data the minute it was uploaded. We launched our bench-top stencil-printer and reflow oven which can cut in-house assembly times by 80% compared to manual assembly.

These steps can make a measurable quantitative difference, but what about a qualitative difference: could we help designers design boards that would get into production quicker and were easier, faster and cheaper to make? In January 2012 we stepped up the publication of technical blogs and white papers on our website. These deliver tips and advice on Design for Manufacturability and how to present clear, unambiguous and accurate production data. Within 8 months they had received more than 60,000 hits. We backed these with DRC templates for EAGLE and Altium so that designers could be confident that their designs would meet the requirements of the most cost-effective pooling service.

A third-party digital magazine offering in-depth treatment of design-critical topics is the next step to add yet more value for our customers. We looked for a journal with genuine technical content rather than continuous sales-oriented press releases. “Firmware” was our first choice. First published in 2005 by Inware Edizioni, “Firmware” has established itself as the leading technical publication for electronics designers across Italy. It is now being launched as an international publication and have arranged that our registered users can get the first 3 English language issues free of charge.

To access your free issues, log in to your account and click on the new “Firmware” tile on the left of the screen.

If you are not a registered user, click on the “Firmware” link here to get free access to 30 pages of each issue or to link to the Inware website and take out a subscription.