Dec 10, 2013

PCB Design Services For The Electronics Industry

By Jeannie Chapman


PCB design services require skilled designers who know how to come up with an optimum physical layout for a printed circuit board. They use cutting-edge CAD tools and other PCB design software that helps them create all kinds of board designs. No matter what sort of board and layout is required to be made, it's always going to be a multi-stage designing process starting with schematic capture.

Information about three key aspects of the project must be provided by the client to the designer. The schematic is obviously the most important thing. Note that it may also be in the netlist format. The netlist file contains the circuit's connectivity details and descriptions for the components.

Another thing the client is required to provide is the bill of materials (BOM) specifying each component used and its footprint. Designers are sometimes asked to help with component footprint capture. The client is also expected to provide the board outline. Once they have the schematic or netlist, BOM and the board outline, the designer should be able to do the rest.

Designers start with the netlist or schematic and use techniques such as library development, signal integrity checks, thermal simulation, stress analysis, EMI checking, etc. The series of intermediate steps lead to the development of a file in the gerber format. This is the final end product that designers hand over as a complete PCB image that is directly used in the manufacturing process.

The designer must be capable of coming up with solutions for complicated analog, digital, RF and mixed PCBs. Then there's also the type of board, which can be single-sided, double-sided or multi-layered. The board's size may vary, and so can the pin densities and component quantities.

There's also the question of deciding on the characteristics of the board. This refers to the method used to mount components and create the traces for the circuit. Surface-mount technology is the most popular technique used now for mounting components.

Under this method, end caps will be soldered on the same side of the board as the component itself. This is a huge improvement over an earlier system that made use of through-hole boards. These older boards required the leads to be inserted from one side and soldered on the traces on the board's other side.

Designing new boards is just one part of the services offered by PCB designers. They may also be asked to perform other functions such as evaluate designs, along with the components used and their footprints. Clients sometimes ask them to assist with procurement of prototypes and check for availability and pricing information against the BOM contents.

Certain PCB design services are required even after the client receives the finished product. Customers may seek changes to the design immediately or in future, and reorders are quite common. It works the other way around too, with designers asked to reverse engineer gerber files or film artwork into a netlist format or schematic. This is often required when complex circuits require heavy modifications at the most basic level.




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