Tag: PCB

How to Get an Accurate PCBA Quote

A procurement lead forwarded a quote that looked 30% below the field. Two weeks later the invoice arrived with a stencil charge, an expedite fee, and a component overage they had never seen. An accurate PCBA quote starts long before the price — it starts with the files you send. Send four things upfront and […]

PCB Process Edge Design: SMT Rail Clearance Guide

A 0402 capacitor sits 2 mm from the board edge. During SMT assembly, the conveyor rail clamps down and crushes it before reflow even starts. This happens more often than you’d think. In our builds, we see this failure when designers treat the PCB process edge design as an afterthought rather than a first-order constraint. The fix […]

PCB Via Types: Cost, Design Rules & Selection Guide

A 0.65mm pitch BGA sits on your layout. You need to escape 800 pins, but through-holes eat every routing channel they touch. Do you jump straight to PCB via types like microvias, or can a smarter stackup save the budget? We review over 200 via specifications weekly, and roughly 40% of boards specified with blind or buried […]

PCB vs PCBA: Key Differences for Electronics Buyers

A purchasing manager once sent us a request for “500 PCBs” with a BOM attached, expecting fully functional units. We had to clarify that they actually needed PCB vs PCBA distinction understood before production started. This confusion happens more often than you’d think in electronics procurement. A Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is just the bare foundation, while […]

Common PCB Problems: 5 Defects Your Manufacturer Must Avoid

A single sharp corner on a copper trace can trap etchant during production. Weeks later, that trapped acid eats through the conductor from the inside out, causing an intermittent field failure that no functional test caught. This is just one of many common PCB problems that slip past inexperienced fabricators. In our builds, we have learned that […]

PCB Gerber Files: Formats & Manufacturing Use

A missing aperture definition in your PCB Gerber files can halt a production line for days. We have seen entire batches of bare boards scrapped because the solder mask layer did not align with the copper pads, all due to a corrupted vector coordinate in the output zip. These files are not just digital paperwork; they are […]

Conformal Coating Exclusion Zones: 5 Parts to Mask

A fresh batch of industrial controller boards just failed field testing. The root cause? Conformal coating seeped into connector contacts during processing. This scenario repeats constantly in conformal coating exclusion zones management. Many engineers assume full-board coverage equals better protection. Actually, unmasked functional areas create invisible failure points that surface months after shipment. Understanding which components demand […]

PCB Thermal Management: Vias and Copper Pours That Work

A MOSFET on a 5 W buck converter runs fine on the bench. Bolt it into a sealed enclosure, however, and the same part climbs past 110 °C within minutes. PCB thermal management is what separates a board that survives field use from one that cooks its own solder joints. Actually, heat is not a […]