Like many of us, I’ve been following the “return to the office” or “remain remote” debate. My place of work has settled into a hybrid situation. People physically runn
Month: September 2022
Solder Mask of Many Colors
It wasn’t that long ago when solder mask was something to be used and not seen. It had a utilitarian purpose, which was to protect the metal from oxidation and control the deposition of solde
VIA IN PAD REFRESHER
It’s a good time for a via-in-pad refresher. It’s not quite as hot a topic as it has been in the past, but it’s still a very important consideration. It’s always a bit contr
On-demand PCB Assembly and Electronics Manufacturing
What is on-demand manufacturing, and why is it so important these days? Well, to begin, on-demand manufacturing is about allowing you to work and prioritize based on your schedule, not ours, and to
A FEW DETAILS OF NOTE ABOUT SOLDER MASK
I’m going to oversimplify this, so my apologies to our colleagues over at Sunstone Circuits, but a PC board basically has four parts: metal, substrate, solder mask and silk screen. I mig
WEEKEND WISDOM AND YOUR WORKSPACE
Weekend Wisdom and Your Workspace, or: What do you have on your desk? I was involved in an interesting discussion the other day about workspace cleanliness. It seems there are about three main camp
Inspect those parts pulled from the drawer
Now that more of us are taking advantage of the cut strips in the parts bin that we just knew “we might use someday”, it’s a good good idea to put out a reminder to look for bent
Creating a Good Parts Kit
We’re seeing more and more of our PCB assembly jobs come in as kitted orders. In the past, it was often more convenient to buy all new parts for an assembly job and ignore the spare cut strip
QFN Footprints to prevent Float
The QFN (quad flat pack, no leads) package has long been the staple of the small PC board. In fact, with the wafer scale BGA, it’s one of the more common packages for new chip designs and is
Electronics Manufacturing Options
Electronics manufacturing can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and that can make the vendor evaluation process a bit daunting when you just want a couple of PC boards built, or if you’