In this fourth article of our series about PCB design and manufacturing issues I’ll discuss keepouts, a design tool that when used correctly can save us from making costly mistakes. Keepouts are areas of the board where we ask our design tool to enforce some restrictions on what can and cannot be contained in that […]
We’re back with a third article in a series of six on PCB design and manufacturing topics. Don’t miss our future publications by following us on social media and signing up to our newsletter. Now let’s talk about annular rings. A very common feature of PCBs is an exposed round pad with a hole at […]
We continue our series on PCB design and manufacturing topics; this is the second article of six. Please follow us on social media or sign up to our mailing list to continue getting our publications. Now for today’s topic! When designing boards we naturally first focus our attention on electrical functionality. But we also need […]
Hello! This is the first article in a series of six where I cover PCB design and manufacturing topics: outlines, courtyards, annular rings, keepouts, fiducials, and copper fills. We will publish the series weekly as part of our ongoing Technology Thursday publications. To make sure that you don’t miss them please follow us on the […]
There are many different Impedance calculators for PCB designers to use, some are free such as the one available to Eurocircuits customers and some you need to pay for a licence or a monthly subscription. The aim of them all is to provide the necessary track/gap and isolation values for the layout and manufacture of […]
To protect the copper solder pads on a PCB from oxidation, contamination and to enhance their solderability, they need to be protected with a Surface Finish and these must conform to the European Union RoHS & RoHS2 (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directives. But which is the right Surface Finish for your PCB’s? In accordance to […]
Ever wondered what is Tombstoning and why does it happen? What is Tombstoning? Tombstoning also known as the Manhattan or crocodile effect is where one end of the component lifts from a pad of the PCB during reflow soldering process and affects mainly surface mount components such as resistors, capacitor and inductors. Why does it […]
Have you ever wondered why sometimes you have poor Solder joints on your PCBs? One of the main reasons is that the Solder Paste flows away from the pad on the PCB during Reflow, this is known as Solder Escape, Solder Wick or Solder Drainage. Why does this happen, well there are a few reasons […]
Eurocircuits launches SMS messaging for time critical orders Whenever you are in need of a very fast turn around time for your PCB order or when you have a critical delivery to be made and you want full instant control of the production flow of your board, you can initiate SMS-massaging for your order. By […]
The benefits of the Gerber X2 format Perfectly understanding customer data and not losing any PCB design information in data transfer, are key issues to seemlessly produce and deliver quick turn around PCB prototypes. In our BLOG section we already explained the history of the Gerber Format. We have written a white paper on which […]
In this section we will show you how the right component placement and routing can reduce the cost of 10 4-layer BGA PCBs from 740€ to 233€, and deliver a more robust finished product. Our customers regularly call us to say that they have laid out a PCB with fine-pitch BGAs. The layout looked OK […]
Can standard Gerber still be used to order PCBs? As you can read from Ucamco”s announcement, Standard Gerber (RS-274D) is declared obsolete as input format for their Computer Aided Manufacturing tools for PCB production. You can read the Ucamco statement here. Eurocircuits has for a long time promoted the use of Extended Gerber (RS-274X) for […]
