How to prepare the PCB before the industrialization - 1 views
started by kbojezhang44 on 18 Apr 20
started by kbojezhang44 on 18 Apr 20
started by kbojezhang44 on 18 Apr 20
started by kbojezhang44 on 18 Apr 20
Nowadays technologies are driven by the development of both software and hardware. However, if software program writing is related to the programmers' skills, hardware crafting requires more technical specifics to be optimized, especially concerning electronic hardware.
Thus, as the basis of electronic hardware, Printing Circuit Boards (PCBs) crafting necessitates particular processes to be efficiently performed.
The expert will explain the inner working of PCBs manufacturing :
In this article, I will be talking very much on the surface, covering all the important steps involved in the electronic development process in order to make it understandable for all.
"My perception and experiences with PCB suppliers and manufacturers led me to determine an approach to craft my own PCBs in 3 phases: prototyping, design, and industrialization."
However, this article will be focused on the two first phases.
Prototyping:
The 1st phase of PCB manufacturing is the Prototyping which is the most important base of electronic development. Any development starts with an emergence of new idea or improvement of some existing solutions/products.
In any case, you need to validate your idea in real-time. The very first step is the choice of Electronic Development Board (EDB) and is followed by the associated components like sensors, actuators, power modules, and connectors, etc.
EDB
The choice of EDB usually depends upon the following parameters :
· Microcontroller or FPGA : this depends upon the choice of your architecture and also your comfort of working, price etc.
· IO Pins : The access to the outside peripherals, it depends on the number of peripherals you want to communicate with.
· Clock Speed : This is one of the factors which decides the processing speed.
· System on Chip (SoC) facilities (Eg. Bluetooth, Wifi etc).
· Kind of use/ application
· Availability of technical information and support
· Ease of embedded programming or Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
(Be more specific about the involvement of the parameters, you could draw up a list of questions the engineer must ask himself (e.g. In which case Microcontroller is better than FPGA? )
Components
Once the EDB choice is done, the next step is to choose your components. Thus this is important to :
· Read the datasheet very carefully; mainly supply voltage, communication protocol etc, so that you can easily interface the components with your EDB
· Be careful of the power consumption and/or operating current. For example, actuators often need more power than EDB capacity. In that case, you need to use separated power supply and some interfacing power transistors/ MOSFETs (e.g. TP120)
Electronic Prototyping mainly consists in the following two phases:
The Functional Validation phase
The Testing and Debugging phase
This simply means realizing in real-time the hardware of your idea and make it work. In most of the cases, electronic circuits won't work because of one specific parameter.
For example, voltage supply changing, radio noise/ interferences, overheat, embedded software performances or power consumption problems are factors that work in interaction with the others, which means you have to configure each component taking into account all the other components.
In that case, you need to test and debug all these problems one by one and iterate the test methods until the final objective is reached.
Circuit Design
Circuit design mainly consists of
· Schematic Design
· Simulation (Either partial or for full circuit)
· PCB routing and design.
Schematic Design
Once your prototype is functional then it comes to circuit design. A basic electronic prototype includes :
· Bread Board
· Components
· Connecting wires
· EDB
· Power Modules
· Wireless Modules
· Antenna
· Antenna Circuitry
Now you need to transform all these into one single circuit. In order to do that we must start with the circuit of EDB and study in detail microcontroller or FPGA datasheet. Generally, in an EDB there are many electronic components that are not used for your circuit because these boards are designed for generic use.