The conference starts next week and I'm pretty pre-occupied with all the show details. Part of our booth is missing in the tradeshow warehouse but everything else seems to be ready. Even if the booth doesn't get found, we'll still... Read more
Until recently, Screaming Circuits had been piggybacking on the ISO certification of parent company MEC Northwest. Now, we are certified on our own as Screaming Circuits. This is just one of a number of initiatives we have underway to improve... Read more
We've all talked Euro-RoHS to death over the last year. Well, there's still a lot to learn but a lot has been said. Now we have the China RoHS to figure out and unfortunately it is different enough from the... Read more
Just a reminder - we will be down in San Jose, California on March 3, 4 and 5 for the Embedded Systems Conference. As a bonus, we'll have our friends from Sunstone Circuits in our booth part of the time... Read more
gCan you mix lead and lead-free when using BGAs? Well, no, and yes, sometimes or maybe. It would be nice if there were an easy answer, but there really isn't. At first glance, it's pretty safe to just say no,... Read more
Take a look at the two parts in these pictures and see if you can guess what the difference is. It's the same two parts in both photos, just a top and a bottom view. Click on the images for... Read more
Most of our RoHS discussions focus around surface mount parts: BGAs, GBGAs, QFNs, etc. Such components tend to be the most sensitive to process issues. It is important, though, to not forget about the lowly thru-hole part. Thru-hole component leads... Read more
Every morning before coming to work, I make myself a Latte with my little Krupp® espresso machine. I don't make great Lattes but they are pretty good and have lots of caffeine. Often, after being in the office for an... Read more
A while back, I wrote a post about loose parts (read it here). Basically, we can usually/sometimes deal with them for an extra cost. This photo here does a pretty good job of illustrating the potential problem. Of course, in... Read more
The electronic manufacturing industry as a whole has gotten much more comfortable with lead-free processing over the last six months. We've been offering RoHS processing for a year and a half now. Still, there are some challenges in areas such... Read more
