Sometimes the standards-steering-you-wrong aren't just in house, but come from Industry. Case in point the three-terminal linear regulator. Back when TO-220 packaged semiconductors were first hand chipped out of boiling lava, the LM7805 three-terminal voltage regulator established an informal standard... Read more
(https://xkcd.com/927) Some schematics get a single designer, start to finish, some get put together by a team working simultaneously, and some get handed from one designer to another mid-stream. Consistency and discipline are always important in the design process, but... Read more
Fun with LEDs, from the Screaming Makers LEDs are one of our favorite subjects here in the Screaming Circuits blog. Between inconsistent marking and... Well, it's mostly about inconsistent marking. In fact (or maybe in opinion), LEDs are one of... Read more
Engineers and designers are sometimes so quick to get their designs started and completed that they often overlook the obvious, who is going to build our boards? Every fabricator has different materials in stock, and different processes they employ. Work... Read more
The first answer to that question is probably going to be along the lines of: "put them on the board." But, sometimes you can't have reference designators on your board. Maybe it's too densely populated and there isn't room. Maybe,... Read more
Manufacturing, especially small volume one-time-only builds (like a prototype) is hard. It's not wise for most people to actively seek out chaos, but that's what we do, and we do it wisely. That's what we've been doing since 2003. We... Read more
There are many reasons you shouldn’t use via in pad. It’s not good practice, and those via holes act like little capillary straws and suck solder off of the pad or the BGA. That said there are some applications that... Read more
As a Maker, you really need a decent price, with good quality, and good service. Contrary to what many people think, you don't need to look outside of North America for this. You can keep your gaze West of the... Read more
As I mentioned in my prior blog, there are reasons to consider different packages than just physical size. Sometimes it is just space available on the PC board, but there may be other considerations as well. One of the first... Read more
The QFN (quad flat pack, no leads) has become my favorite integrated circuit package. It's very compact, yet is easier to use than a micro BGA. Micro BGAs of 0.5mm and smaller pitch become a bit more difficult and costly... Read more
