Category Archives: Screaming Circuits Blog
BOMS Away
Yes, I’m talking about BoMs (bills of materials), not bombs. That would be silly and irrelevant. At least mostly irrelevant. If you make bombs, it wouldn’t be, but it would probably be all secret so we couldn’t talk about it. … Continue reading
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Tagged bill of materials, BoM, Gerber, IPC-2581, standards
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Let’s Get Small, as in 0.3mm
Not long ago, I wrote about a 0.3mm pitch wafer-scale BGA we received and were asked to place. The gist of that article was that those parts are very small and we d0n’t yet have a process that we feel … Continue reading
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Tagged 0.3mm BGA, Components, wafer-scale packages
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It (0.3mm) Finally Happened
Back in January of 2012, I wrote about the possibility of 0.3mm pitch BGAs being used here and there. I predicted that in a year, we’d see some 0.3mm pitch BGAs showing up. I was about three months off. Almost … Continue reading
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Tagged 0.3mm BGA, component placement, Land pattern, packaging
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Missing Mars Probes
Back in ancient times when multi-legged beasts ruled the earth, there were a lot more standards. Or maybe there were just fewer total things resulting in fewer total variations, which looks like more standards. In any case, if you got … Continue reading
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Reliable Assembly
For those of you at my PCB West session on the Sept. 27, thanks for attending. Here’s the final presentation as delivered: http://screamingcircuits.typepad.com/files/pcbwest2012-duanebenson-reliablemanf.pdf Duane Benson
Via in BGA Pads
The answer to the question “Is it ever okay to put open vias in BGA pads?” is simply “no.” It’s no, no, no, no, not ever!!! That makes it easy. No technique to worry about. No tolerances. Nothing. Just don’t … Continue reading
Via in Pad X 8
Here’s an interesting via in pad case. On the one hand, the footprint is very symmetrical and clean looking. On the other hand, it has open vias in the pads. At first glance, I thought this was a DIP footprint … Continue reading
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Tagged Layout, PCB design, solder mask, Via-in-pad
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Passively Annoying
Passive components can be kind of offensive sometimes. I can understand them in analog circuits or charge pumps. But the fact that we need to put them all over our digital logic is just rude. Technically, I understand why they … Continue reading
Posted in Screaming Circuits Blog
Tagged bypass capacitors, IPC, passive components, solder mask, thermals
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Robots on Mars!
And the Curiosity Rover has landed! People can be so cool when we set our minds to it. Touchdown at 10:14:39 Earth Pacific Daylight Time. Duane One small step for A robot. One giant leap for the rocket that got … Continue reading
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Cool Customer Application
It’s not all that often that we get to see or can talk about just what is done with the boards we build at Screaming Circuits. In most cases, it’s a proprietary product or some government thing. But, recently we … Continue reading