Zigbee vs Zwave

PCB Fabrication and SMT Assembly - 2

For a beginner in electronics circuit design, there is always a bit of confusion regarding the manufacturing costs of PCB. We will always be looking for a common place where we can find the costs involving PCB fabrication and also factors to be considered while designing the same. So, once the layout engineer is ready with his Gerber, the designers will start looking for various fab options. They will be sending the Gerber to fab houses to get a quotation for the PCB fabrication. During the information exchange between companies and fab houses lot of technical information gets exchanged which finally decides the PCB fabrication cost. Following are the few points you have to look at before the PCB fabrication cost is decided.

1. PCB dimensions

2. Quanity required

3. Layer count of PCB

4. Fabrication material

5. PCB thickness

6. copper foil thickness on the PCB

7. Any special treatment required for the PCB

8. Trace width and line-to-line spacing

9. Via count and dimensions

10. Special PCB sizes

CNC machine

Are you a start up in the electronics industry? Tired of turn around times for the PCBs from the manufacturing houses? Thinking of doing a PCB prototypes by yourselves with a small setup? Thinking that fabricating a PCB using chemicals can be a messy job? Then CNC machine must be one of your choices.

               CNC short form for computer numerical control. These types of machines work automatically as per the instructions provided by the user. The manual techniques used in high production environments are long one and are replaced by CNC machines. Consider the PCB fabrication process where milling is done to create the signal routing patterns. PCB drilling, routing and engraving are done using CNC machines which can bring the prototypes out quickly and at a very low cost if done in-house. The CNC machine comprises of the mini computer or the microcomputer that acts as the controller unit of the machine. The existing CNC machines involve inputting a PCB Gerber where in the complete PCB process will be automatically done through a single machine. The entire process can be monitored over a well-defined GUI. The options when using a CNC machine is used involves checking of PCB material to be etched, drill bit to be used on the machine, the PCB tools (in fact output of PCB tools) supported by the CNC machine. the drill depth can be automated in the tool. The drill position is controlled through a well calibrated motors which meant no chance of any error. The RPM of the machine can be up to 110,000. Copper clad board is used instead of photo-resistant board. Here we are eliminating hazardous chemicals during the process. The process with CNC machine might be slow than normal etching but is always a quality and better environmental friendly option.

Few CNC machine vendors are:

1. Indus, INDIA

2.  Zen Tool works

3. Accurate CNC

4. Sahajanand

5. Advanced Technocracy Inc.

There are several manufacturers from China to check out.

High speed Designs - Part 3

Transmission lines is the first term when you hear while starting to work on high speed designs. Transmission line In PCB terminology, transmission line is a trace that connects various chips on the board. The transmission circuit is generally visualized as RLC circuit. The frequency response of any circuit depends on the R-L-C elements and they become predominant when used at high frequencies. 

Traditionally, engineers used interfaces like SPI, I2C, UART which are low speed interfaces. These interfaces didn't have issues with transmission line effects of the PCB traces. Unless the signals are routed over permitted lengths, there is no issue with maintaining the integrity of the signal. As signal frequencies increased, beyond 100MHz, with interfaces like Gigabit Ethernet, DDR, PCIe, etc the transmission line effects have to be considered. We generally read in design guidelines that the signal can't be routed for example, more than 1 inch and also the signal should have a recommended routing in the PCB, etc in the case of high speed signals. So, for a high speed signal even if you route shortest but don't take care of the recommended PCB routing guideline, you might end up with signal having signal integrity issues. Some of the major issues that we come across while working with high speed designs are:

Impedance mismatch

Reflections - overshoot, undershoot, ringing

cross-talk

Radiation

The basis of signal transmission comes from Maximum power transfer theorem of electrical circuit. This theorem states that the maximum power will be transferred from source to load when the source impedance matches the load impedance. If there is a mismatch, then power transferred to load gets reduced which meant there is more loss. In high speed design, when such scenario comes up, the source tries to send the signal to load and load will not be able to absorb the complete signal. Some part of the signal is reflected back to the source. This is what causes the reflections on the PCB. the signal when reflected back travels to source is reflected as there is a mismatch again. The signal hence forth travels between source and load while degrading over time. When these occur, the reflected signal adds/negates with the original signal causing the actual signal amplitude to increase/decrease. This is what we call undershoot/overshoot in high speed domain.