Until fairly recently the use of flexible PC board material (flex) was considered only for specialized or exotic applications. As tends to happen with advanced technology, the "mainstream" has caught wind of flex. With so many Internet of Things (IoT)... Read more
Before parts are added, a typical printed circuit board (PCB) has four ingredients: substrate, metal, solder mask, and silkscreen. Each of those four ingredients comes in a host of variations, and each has varying degrees of “requiredness.” All four should... Read more
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. That often used (or yelled by my Jr High School football coach) statement has always struck me as being a bit odd. I’m sure my coach intended it to mean that... Read more
It's now the eve of 2019 and about all I'll say on the coming year is that we are in for a wild ride. The last few years have been pretty crazy, and 2019 looks to continue that trend, but... Read more
Let me be more specific. The end of the year 2018 is near. Some might argue that with air conditioning to keep us cool in the summer, heating to keep us warm in the winter and an industrialized global food... Read more
I sometimes spend my Tuesday evenings engaging in pub trivia. It's a thing here in Oregon - maybe in other places too. I do okay, but there always seems to be too many sports and contemporary pop culture questions. I'm... Read more
Most of the electronics design world is by now aware that we're in a very serious period of components shortages. The hardest hit seem to be ceramic capacitors, but other passives as well as a variety of connectors and silicon... Read more
As most of you likely know, I was recently interviewed by reporter Bill Thomson from the industry journal, AFI International. It wasn't one of my usual interviews focusing on usage of new component form factors, general design for manufacturing, or... Read more
It seems like not but just a year ago, I was already forgetting to write a new year's prediction blog post. If that didn't make much sense, then likely neither did my predictions post from a year ago. I started... Read more
In the past, it was usually pretty easy to find chips in both surface mount and thru-hole packages. Somewhere in the last decade or so, component manufacturers stopped introducing thru-hole versions of their newest chips as standard practice. In many... Read more
