Tips and Considerations: Learn to Improve Your PCB Design Skills

mwcms on April 26, 2021

Are you a printed circuit board (PCB) engineer wondering how you can learn or improve your PCB design skill? Well, you are in the right place, as this post will give you a brief insight into tips and considerations that can help you polish your skills. 

Most engineers are good at PCB designs. However, they lack some basic professional and personal skills they must master. You must begin with the basics and learn to practice your PCB designing skills with consistency day-in and day-out. 

5 Tips to Improve Your PCB Design Skills

Here are five basic tips to improve your printed circuit board designing skills.

  1. Learning more about the Layers

In case you wish to master the skills of designing a multi-layered PCB, you must have a clear understanding of printed circuit board layers. You must learn to revise your basics and learn about the latest standards and trends to ensure that your PCB design meets all the industry and global standards. 

  1. Remembering the Design Rules

There are numerous design rules that every PCB design engineer must follow. Some of the most essential ones are as follows. 

  • Aim for noise reduction
  • Remember the EMI/EMC considerations
  • Remember the thermal integrity considerations, i.e., dissipation of heat because of the power circuits. 
  • Remember the power integrity considerations, i.e., power loss in its path
  • Learn to design for test and add test points at several stages of design. 
  • Follow the design for manufacturing ideology. Always consider track width, drill size, clearance, etc. 
  1. Learning to Use PCB Designing Software 

As designing technology has evolved, using PCB design software is common. In case you are not good at using software, you must polish your skills to draw components, schematics, and printed circuit board layouts. 

There are several PCB designing software solutions available in the market. However, you must pick a few that are common in your industry. If you are enthusiastic about learning more than one design software, then this will give you a competitive edge over other designers and engineers when searching for a new job. 

  1. 3-D Modeling

While you learn to design a printed circuit board on software, do not forget to add a 3-D modeling feature into it. This will allow you to see an almost real depiction of your PCB design before manufacturing it. 

Moreover, this will also allow you to detect any design errors and help save back-and-forth revisions with the PCB assemblers. This will translate into lower cost and time efficiency. 

  1. Learning to Review Thoroughly

So, you have learned the standards. You know the layers and know how to use software to create a 3D model of your printed circuit board. What is next? 

You must always learn to improve your attention to detail. This is very critical if you wish to get your PCB design right the first time. This will again save you from a lot of hassle in the future because the tiniest flaw in the design may result in several revisions and sometimes the overhauling of the entire printed circuit board design. 

Here, you can also learn about the basics of documentation and aesthetics. This will allow you not only to write how the components’ placement should be but also customize how the PCB design must feel and look. 

The documentation part will allow you to clearly label where each component and connector must go and how it must look on the printed circuit board

 The Take-Away

Learning all of the above skills will allow you to improve your PCB design skills as well as learn how to document the guidelines for the assemblers. The more elaborate you are in your design, the better the results.  At Nova, we are always updating and improving our skills. Reach out for a consultation today.

There’s more than one Reason to Make a Flawless Printed Circuit Board

mwcms on April 12, 2021

A printed circuit board (PCB) is a very critical part of our modern-day electronic equipment. Your basic printed circuit board usually consists of large active and passive components. These components have side-to-side connections with each other that you can see via traces on the board. 

You can actually create larger circuits using smaller printed circuit boards using small-sized components. However, you must ensure to make a flawless PCB to make them a perfect choice for any manufacturer of electronic components, equipment, and instruments. 

Let us dive right in and see how making a flawless printed circuit board can help. 

7 Reason to Create Flawless Printed Circuit Boards

Here are seven of the fundamental but essential reasons why you must create flawless PCBs. 

  1. Saves Time and Energy

While traditional circuit board connection methods can take longer to connect each component, the PCB takes less time to assemble a circuit. 

  1. Compact Size 

If you are designing a characteristically printed circuit board, it will include numerous electronic components.  Instead of using current-carrying wires, you use copper tracks to interconnecting the components on a PCB. This gives your PCB finesse, compact design, and lightweight. 

A perfect PCB design will offer you a simple platform to arrange sophisticated electronic components in an efficient manner. This compactness enables you to create complicated and bigger electronic circuits in smaller form factors. 

  1. Preventing Lose Connections and Short Circuits

Creating a flawlessly printed circuit board will allow you to use copper tracks. This means there will be no chances of any short circuits or loose connections. 

  1. Ease To Repair

In case your PCB incurs damage, you can easily run a diagnostic on it to check and replace the failed components. The properly designed printed circuit board has clear labels for each electronic component mentioning their polarities. 

This also allows you the convenience to install and/or repair the board and its components. 

  1. Reduced Electronic Noise

A printed circuit board produces less electronics noise. The reason is that the organization of the component is so precise that the electrical current’s path between them is as smaller as possible. This translates into low radiation as well as reduced pick up of any electromagnetic waves. 

This also ensures minimal crosstalk between any of the electronic components and their varied traces. This is actually a big concern in traditional circuit boards. The electronic noise usually releases in the form of radiation, heat, and flickering sounds. 

  1. Cost-Effectiveness and Reliability 

Printed Circuit Boards are very cheap to manufacture, especially during mass production. Moreover, they offer reliability to the performance of your circuits. 

  1. Fixed Components

One of the most important advantages of designing a flawless printed circuit board is that all the components are firmly fixed to the board. The manufacturers use solder flux, which ensures that the components do not move from their place irrespective of how much you move the board.

Conclusion

Manufacturing a printed circuit board will cost you money. Therefore, you must ensure that you design a flawless specimen instead of getting issues from the assemblers or clients. It would be wise to involve your printed circuit board assemblers’ team from the beginning. 

This will allow you to gain valuable insight into how you can start making an impeccable printed circuit board design. Moreover, the assemblers can also give you valuable information about the new practices, trends, and materials to make flawlessly printed circuit boards. The more knowledge you have, the better your printed circuit board will be. In case you are looking for international standards. You can check out the Institute of Printed Circuits (IPC), as they are the global entity setting standards for printed circuit board designing, manufacturing, and assembly. We are also available to consult with you on any of your PCB needs.