Epec's Blog | Electronics Manufacturing Solutions

In front-end engineering, we must gather as much manufacturing information as possible from the printed circuit board data we receive. This includes customer service notes, customer emails, and the general spec, if available. Usually there is enough information to release a printed circuit board (PCB) package to manufacturing. However, I have found many gray areas that haunt our engineering department.

As custom manufactured cable assemblies have grown in complexity, it has become far more common to see various electronics integrated directly into the finished design. The inclusion of electronics into a cable assembly design can consist of adding a switch, PCB, LED, or a multitude of other components. Once added, these components offer a much higher level of sophistication to the cable assembly while allowing the included electronics the ability to withstand a much more rugged working environment.

EMI (electromagnetic interference) and RFI (radio-frequency interference) are disturbances generated by external sources that impact a cable assembly by degrading the assembly's performance or completely preventing it from functioning. These disturbances can cause problems ranging from an increase in error rates of the signal being transmitted through the assembly to total loss of any electronically readable signal.

A pure notch or band stop filter (also called band reject filter) works by creating a Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) resonance over a narrow bandwidth. This creates near total reflection over that bandwidth, while having very little reflection in the surrounding pass bands. By the nature of their creation, these notch filters are typically narrow band. Bandwidth comes linearly with added resonators, increasing size and loss.

Over the past several years there have been several instances where battery suppliers that manufacture the highest technology batteries have run into financial difficulties (think A123, Boston Power) or change their business model and no longer want to supply small/medium volume applications (Panasonic). This has created several problems for OEMs as they have designed these cells and have passed all of the certification testing for UL, EMI, CE and UN DOT 38.3.

The typical use of a diplexer (three-port device) enables source transmitters operating on two separate frequencies to use the same antenna. In other applications, the diplexer allows a single antenna to transmit and receive on discrete frequencies. Additionally, a diplexer will provide the ability for an antenna to transmit and receive simultaneously.

When designing and manufacturing passive broadband high frequency cascaded LC filters (inductor and capacitor), a lot of undesirable component interactions can occur if not properly managed. The goal is to minimize the difference between an RF microwave filter design constructed with ideal components and one using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and custom manufactured components.

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.

Over the last 25 years, the evolution of touch screen technologies has brought sweeping changes to how society uses human-machine interface (HMI) products. Originally touch screens were small, monochrome, and required a stylus and single touchpoint to operate.

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.