Rigid PCB Vs. Flexible PCB Design
The products that your organization is preparing to develop call for printed circuit boards (PCBs) -- simple enough, right? Not exactly. Components and boards come in many shapes, sizes, and materials.
The products that your organization is preparing to develop call for printed circuit boards (PCBs) -- simple enough, right? Not exactly. Components and boards come in many shapes, sizes, and materials.
Tests for printed circuit boards (PCBs) come in many varieties based on cost, breadth, time, and other factors. There are many ways to test your PCB, but in-circuit testing, known as ICT, is the most advanced and accurate method.
PCB (printed circuit board) costs are a concern for any electronics designers or manufacturers -- both the materials that go into PCBs and the expertise required to make them safe and reliable.
There’s no perfect playbook to establishing and maintaining major transportation projects like subways, bus systems, and other transit developments.
Change management is usually a requirement in the electronics industry. This specifically relates to changes needed after the initial design of your project. In the electronics industry, an engineering change order (ECO) is the most common example of change management.
Understanding your marketing is key to a successful product run. That applies not only to your customers, but their home country as well.
“If it’s broke, don’t fix it” will never fly for public transportation, mining equipment, or many other high-impact electronics projects. An electronics OEM is expected to keep things running by replacing or fixing components or entire products -- whether it’s affordable to do so or not.
A tanker departed from Freeport LNG in September 2019 with the first export cargo produced at the Houston facility. The late-afternoon moment in which it left shore strengthened the United States’ position as a major global supplier of the super-chilled fuel known as liquid nitrogen gas (LNG).
When an OEM is sourcing out work -- let alone aerospace electronics manufacturing -- it’s likely to come across companies that boast about all sorts of certifications and capabilities.
There’s a certain need for speed in manufacturing circuit boards -- the electronics industry demands it, and your end users demand it. But how quick is too quick?
As electronics OEM engineers well know, the printed circuit board (PCB) is crucial to the proper operation of just about every electronics product manufactured today. And complex electronics products for important jobs like mining, medical devices, and aerospace must be 100% failsafe.
Modern electronics are evolving so rapidly that new becomes old in just a few years -- or less, if you’re an iPhone superfan. In fact, the average life of a new integrated circuit is less than 2 years.
Prototyping is just as important to the electronics manufacturing process as designing, engineering, and testing. Ignore it at your own risk.
NOTE: This article was updated on September 16, 2019 to reflect recent information regarding tariffs.
Two days after Independence Day 2018, President Donald Trump’s aggressive new tariffs went into effect, imposing an extra 25% tax on imported Chinese goods. This affected over $50 billion worth of “industrially significant technologies” used by U.S. electronics manufacturers and their buyers.
When user safety depends on equipment functioning reliably -- as is the case with many medical devices and handheld mining equipment, for example -- electronic components must be trustworthy.
Electromechanical PCB box build assembly services are one of the most important offerings of electronics contract manufacturers. In addition to the manufacturing and population of PCBs (printed circuit boards), this full turnkey production is a simple, all-in-one approach to addressing your manufacturing needs. This includes wire harnesses, metal fabrication, and sub-level assemblies.
PCB contamination testing is not for every project, but it’s a lifesaver for some.
There is no shortage of reasons to test a PCB assembly, and there is no shortage of ways to do it. Out of the many functional tests available, PCB microsection analysis has a pretty specific purpose.
For those in the electronics manufacturing supply chain, RoHS compliance is a big deal. Hopefully you’ve treated it as such well in advance of the July 22, 2019, RoHS 3 deadline.
Solder is what makes the electrical connections work on your printed circuit board (PCB). Solderability, then, measures how well metal is wetted by molten solder to secure those connections. It’s one of the most essential PCB testing methods.
In the constantly evolving world of technology, safety remains a top concern among engineers during development. Whether it’s a sensor in your car, your son’s handheld video game, or a surgically implanted medical device in your elderly neighbor, we need assurance that our products are intrinsically safe (IS) during use.
If you’re considering switching an existing electronic product design from through-hole technology to surface mount technology (SMT), you’ll want to do your homework first.
Two things are fairly certain about the current electronic component shortage: It’ll end, and it’ll someday return.
International Traffic and Arms Regulation (ITAR) came about in 1976 because of a need to control the export of military equipment and related sensitive information. Today, government enforcement of these regulations is far stricter than the Cold War days.
As today’s electronics designs become smaller and more complex, more engineers are relying on ...