Epec's Blog | Electronics Manufacturing Solutions

Miniaturization in electronics drives the need for both component and printed circuit board designers to work within ever-shrinking footprints in order to remain competitive. The signal routing requirements for many ball grid array (BGA) components are such that through hole via drilling is becoming less and less practical. This makes it necessary in many instances to use blind vias to form interconnections between layer pairs.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) continue to shrink. As each generation of miniaturized components comes along, board designers find themselves able to work within ever-smaller PCB footprint sizes. While this is great news for consumers (compare the size of a 1994 portable phone to one of today’s models) it presents difficulties for fabricators.

Even though the last financial crisis was over 8 years ago, most engineering departments at electronic OEMs have never fully staffed back to the levels that they were before the economic disaster. That means that there are many engineers doing two or more jobs, all while their senior management still insists on meeting tight timelines with limited budgets.

As printed circuit boards continue to become smaller and more densely populated, design decisions made during PCB layout have a direct impact on fabrication, assembly, and overall manufacturability. Careful planning of via treatment, trace widths, spacing, and solder mask requirements can help reduce manufacturing issues, improve process margins, and support successful production.

Among the multiple layers of a printed circuit board (PCB) lies the PCB silkscreen layer. The placement of the silkscreen markings, whether on the top or bottom layer, in conjunction with the features of the other layers, could affect the final legibility of the printed circuit board markings.

Early on in the printed circuit board (PCB) industry, "quick turn PCB" was a very relative term. Purchase orders were faxed, confirmed with a phone call, and lead time was open for discussion. Quick turn PCBswere 7-10 days, maybe as low as 5-days for a fast PCB manufacturer. A 2-day PCB quick turn was a very rare order which designated a person to move through production from process to process, bumping every other board from the line.

Hot Air Solder Leveling (HASL) has always been the main staple of PCB surface finishes. In the late 1980s, 60/40 tin-lead reflow started to phase out of processes and was replaced with Hot Air Solder Leveling. HASL finish, the long running reliable surface finish, is still used today in military, aerospace, medical, and other applications.

When placing an order or requesting a quotation for printed circuit boards (PCB), it is extremely important to clearly state all of your requirements as completely as possible.

While this may seem obvious, it is surprisingly common for PCB fabricators to submit a pricing estimate to the customer based on information supplied within the request for quotation, only to receive additional information after pricing and delivery have already been agreed upon and a purchase order issued. If the new information affects the price and/or lead time, the fabricator must notify the customer of the changes in terms.

Two years ago I wrote about why printed circuit board (PCB) shops in North America were continuing to close. Now, in the last two weeks, we have seen two more shops (Dynamic & Proto and ITO Industries) cease their manufacturing operations.

As the former owner and operator of three domestic PCB facilities, I can sympathize with the management and the loyal employees that tried to make the company successful. However, much of the damage is self-inflicted as I previously discussed so rather than rehash past information I wanted to discuss some of the attributes that every customer should look for in their US PCB manufacturer.

IPC 4101 (Specification for Base Materials for Rigid and Multi-Layer Printed Circuit Boards) was released for publication in December, 1997. It was released as the replacement standard for MIL-S-13949. However, it contained a majority of the exact wording from the military standard. It maintained the “slash sheet” format appendix to the standard that specifies the resin and fiber system of different PCB laminates, along with testing parameters and properties. Initially there were 41 slash sheets, but as the industry opens up to “Lead Free” and “Green” processes, the slash sheets have increased to 66, the current revision.