PCB

ESD Sources for IC on PCB

Himadri Mukherjee — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:14:18 +0200

Let's see the ESD sources for ICs on PCB (printed circuit board).
ESD or electrostatic discharge can create serious problems in functioning of PCBs. Charged boards as well as personnel may create ESD problems that can become quite serious for the integrated circuits (ICs) that are mounted on the PCB. ESD can impact ICs and the completed equipment like computers having the ICs.

DIY - Soldering BGA IC on PCB

allankliu — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:51:47 +0200

DIY: soldering BGA ICs on PCB in your garage/lab without professional facilities. It is a headache to have a BGA IC mounted on the PCB if it is a small project. Today I want to share something about soldering.

Printed Circuit Board (pcb): All You Need to Know

Emanuele — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:01:19 +0200

"A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, or traces, etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. Alternative names are printed wiring board (PWB),and etched wiring board." from Wikipedia - Printed Circuit Board. In its more pure form it is simply a normally flat plastic or ceramic substrate in which alternative layers of insulators and conductors are grown sequentially to form isolated conductive paths to transfer signals and current in and out of electronic components.

KiCAD a Free and Open Source EDA Tool

allankliu — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:38:37 +0200

KiCAD a free and open source EDA tool was designed and written by Jean-Pierre Charras, a researcher at "Laboratoire des Images et des Signaux".
The EDA tools are usually under commercial licenses and very expensive. That increases the investment of electronics engineering and brings many other issues. One of my friends used the hacked EDA tools for his projects. Unfortunately, one of the tools was infected by CIH virus and all of his projects on the hard disk were in vain on that big day. It is important to get free (or low cost) EDA tools for electronics engineering.

PCB (printed circuit board) Layout and EMI (electromagnetic interference)

John Artiuch — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:44:28 +0200

PCB (printed circuit board) layout optimization to avoid EMI (electromagnetic interference). A PCB layout should not only strive to prevent the emission of noise but also have good noise immunity from outside sources. One should have an understanding of potential sources of noise and have a strategy for dealing with these problems.

Housekeeping on dev.emcelettronica.com

Emanuele — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:28:09 +0200

The design diary - dev.emcelettronica – was born on December 1st 2006 with “Hello World!” based on WORDPRESS. The main idea was to exchange solutions and projects between designers. After the first month of life we read the statistics and we were astonished when we realized the importance of our blog analyzing web statistics.

Reducing Design Cycle Times

Chris — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:44:24 +0200

By John Isaac, Mentor Graphics [ Courtesy of Assipe ]
In today’s competitive electronics industry, getting to market ahead of the competition can mean the difference between a successful product and one that misses its market window. Design cycle time plays a big part in determining a product launch schedule and the PCB layout portion of this process often is called upon to make up for early design phase schedule slips. One designer and one computer at a time can be a limiting factor.

The PCBs' finishing (H.A.L. Vs Chemical's Tin)

Chris — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:13:33 +0100

The printed circuits boards(PCB) for the production, are realized with a finishing process named H.A.L. (Hot Air Levelling) while the prototypes' realization, usually, with a finishing process named "chemical tin". But which are the differences and especially, considering the prices, the process' quickness and the normative in force that bans the lead employment (RoHS), which is the best to be used and why?

If I had done this, I would have been FIRED

Chris — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:09:21 +0200

Looking for iPhone curiosities, in my web surfing, I have discovered an interesting scoop.
The battery is soldering to the phone (no standard connector) !
OK, there is an interface (PCB) but the soldering is handsmade!!
Probably the Apple's reasons are valids, I don't know if they follow Assembly strong specifications or is only a battery marketing operation...

Q16Key

Chris — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:24:27 +0200

16 KEYS capacitive keyboard

This plan was realized in order to be used like a hidden push-button panel to the edge of the monitor. In fact the card has been inserted in a fissure in the wood, therefor hidden, and the activation of the keys happened for a capacitive effect from a distance of 1 cm (thickness of the used wood). The signalling of the pressed key it is sent to a further elaboration device both in SPI format and in UART (to convert in RS232 in order to read the key pressed directly on the PC with Hyperterminal).