Tag Archives: PCB

What Goes Around

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Taiwanese printed circuit fabricators are feeling the pain of the currency crunch as their South Korean competitors have been taking advantage of the cheap won (and, in the cases of Samsung and LG, the home court advantage) to woo new orders.

As of today, one Taiwanese dollar is worth 38.1 won, down from a 12-month high of more than 40 won but still up 4.4% from the low. In the cutthroat world of PCB pricing, a 4% or more currency advantage is huge.

What’s interesting, however, is that Taiwan has noted South Korea’s government is intervening to keep the won cheap, which is precisely the argument the US government has made against China with its currency.

Oh, and most major Taiwanese board fabricators have plants in China. Few South Korean fabs do.

 

Riding High on Design

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The herd is riding on the EDA vendors, almost all of which are at or near 52-week high share prices.

In the past week, Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys hit or were trading just pennies off their yearlong highs. National Instruments and Ansys both traded much closer to their highs than their lows. Even Altium closed in on a high, but that’s a bit deceiving because it’s a penny stock and lightly traded on the Australian exchange.

So, is it the investor herd driving up an industry? Or is it a sign that the EDA market, which topped $5 billion for the first time in 2011, is geared up for a sustained run?

 

Electronics Assembly in Action

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Folks,

Struggling to find a good, royalty-free, video of electronics assembly, my Dartmouth ENGM 185 class on manufacturing processes decided to make our own. I think it is pretty good considering our limited ($0) budget.

It was filmed at PCM in Springfield, VT. The young woman in the video is my ENGS 3 student from last summer, Ruthie Welch. The entire ENGM 185 class participated in the production.

As an aside, PCM’s assembly process uses lead-free solder paste.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

The Media (Us) Gets Social

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Besides this blog, we at CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY are active in a number of other social media related forums.

You can follow Editor-in-Chief Mike Buetow’s steady stream of late-breaking news on Twitter (@mikebuetow).

Or join our LinkedIn groups: CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY, SMT Processing, PCB Test and Inspection, PCB Cleaning, and EMS — Electronics Manufacturing Services.

Finally, you could friend us on Facebook: search CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY.

Each vehicle is different, and each offers access to a somewhat different audience. Twitter tends to be a one-way, or two-way at most, type of communication. We use it more to relay important breaking stories, both reported by us and others. The LinkedIn groups, most of which are new, are more expansive, and intended to drive in-depth technical and market-related conversations. Facebook is less formal, in my opinion, than LinkedIn. The discussions there tend to be simpler in nature.

They all have their place, however, and we’d love to see you engaged in any one of them.

 

 

 

Loopy Ground Loops

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A while back, I posed a question about using flood fill (AKA copper pours). I’ve been reading a lot about ground loops lately which brought me back to that original question.

LED scroll ground plane Some people suggest segmenting your ground plane between analog and digital sections. Some people suggest segmenting the ground plane for individual critical ground return paths. The follow on to my original question is: On non-exotic designs does segmenting ground planes really help? There’s actually two questions, with the second being: At what clock speed does it make sense to start worrying about issues caused by ground return paths/ground loops? There are probably more questions. Those are just the two rattling around in my head at the moment.

Interestingly, though, when I wrote the original post, there didn’t seem to be a clear “most common” between pour and no pour PCBs. Today, I’d have to say that the majority of designs we see here at Screaming Circuits do use flood-fill ground planes, either internal or external.

Duane Benson
You can solve ground and noise problems by just not hooking up power

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

The Smallest Satellite

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How’s this for smaller, faster and lighter?

As reported by The Engineer and others, US scientists plan to test printed circuit board technology mounted on the International Space Station exterior, a first step toward creating a new generation of satellites that are essentially self-contained microchips. 

PCU Goes Live!

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As “Dean Pete” (I think Professor Pete sounds better) intimated earlier today, we have just gone live with Printed Circuit University, the industry’s first online e-learning and training resource for professionals involved in the engineering and design of printed circuit boards and related technologies.

Printed Circuit University is built on the robust, established and time-proven beTheSignal e-learning platform, and features instruction by SI guru Dr. Eric Bogatin.

Pete and VP of Sales and Marketing Frances Stewart are demonstrating Printed Circuit University this week at DesignCon in the Santa Clara. Be sure to stop by and take a look at what promises to be the future of printed circuit board design education and training.

Embedded Down

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Schweizer Electronic has filed for a patent for producing an embedded component multilayer circuit board, becoming approximately the 4,381st company to do so.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Embedding actual components — actives or passives — has been a technology that not only was conceived (and patented) years ago, but has been in production for years in high-reliability (read: missile) technology.

The literature is full of articles explaining how to design, fabricate and test such boards and devices.
Yes, there are slightly different processes for achieving the end-result, but none such I am aware of that at this point would qualify as truly novel.

Here’s a thought. Instead of creating even more potential barriers to entry by muddying the IP waters even further for this important technology, let’s all call a truce and set out to help build what the OEMs want: cheaper, faster, lighter products.