-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Managing Design Standards
October 31, 2023 | Patrick Crawford, IPCEstimated reading time: 1 minute
IPC provides a wide range of standards that cover PCB design, fabrication, assembly, materials, components, land patterns, and much more. Design standards fall under the purview of Patrick Crawford, so I asked him to share some background on the processes for developing and updating standards. Patrick explained which design, fabrication, and assembly standards PCB designers should be familiar with, and how standards can help designers avoid making costly mistakes.
Andy Shaughnessy: Patrick, as the manager of design standards for IPC, what standards do you think every new PCB designer needs to understand?
Patrick Crawford: I would consider the IPC-222x series of documents—IPC-2221, Generic Standard on Printed Board Design, and its sectional design standards—to be essential reading, although which sectional standard you invest in will depend on exactly what you’re working on. For example, if you’re working on a rigid-flex board, then a copy of IPC-2223 is probably required, and so on. I would also highly recommend a copy of IPC-7352, Generic Guidelines for Land Pattern Design, and IPC-2231 DFX Guidelines. The land pattern document will be invaluable as you begin to design lands for SMT and through-hole components, especially when designing in compact form—factors with electrical and mechanical clearances to consider. The DFX guidelines document is a higher-level design guide, in that it provides an overview of the entire design process and what to consider when designing or manufacturing, testing, end-of-life, etc. It’s written to be understood by designers of any level of experience, which is good for folks who are new to the industry.
I believe that even if you never pick up a soldering iron in your life—which you should, by the way—it is important to understand how components are joined to boards, how those joints are assessed for acceptance, and so on. Having a copy of IPC-J-STD-001, IPC-A-600, IPC-A-610, and the like is a good idea to have around the office.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the October 2023 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
Suggested Items
Indium Corporation to Showcase HIA Materials at ECTC
05/07/2024 | Indium CorporationAs an industry leader in innovative materials solutions for semiconductor packaging and assembly, Indium Corporation® will feature its advanced products designed to meet the evolving challenges of heterogeneous integration and assembly (HIA) and fine-pitch system-in-package (SiP) applications at the 74th Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), May 28‒31, in Denver, Colorado.
Siemens Delivers New Solido IP Validation Suite
05/07/2024 | SiemensSiemens Digital Industries Software introduced Solido™ IP Validation Suite software, a comprehensive, automated signoff solution for quality assurance across all design intellectual property (IP) types, including standard cells, memories and IP blocks.
Altair Acquires Research in Flight, Forging a New Path for Aerodynamic Analysis
05/07/2024 | AltairAltair a global leader in computational intelligence, announced it has acquired Research in Flight, maker of FlightStream®, which provides computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software with a large footprint in the aerospace and defense sector and a growing presence in marine, energy, turbomachinery, and automotive applications.
Happy’s Tech Talk #28: The Power Mesh Architecture for PCBs
05/07/2024 | Happy Holden -- Column: Happy’s Tech TalkA significant decrease in HDI substrate production cost can be achieved by reducing the number of substrate layers from conventional through-hole multilayers and microvia multilayers of eight, 10, 12 (and more), down to four. Besides reducing direct processing steps, yield will increase as defect producing operations are eliminated.
Hirose Launches Solution Partner Network to Address Changing Design Challenges
05/06/2024 | HiroseHirose, a leader in the design and manufacturing of innovative connector solutions, has established a Solution Partner Network that enables OEMs to quickly explore product design, specialty IP, and component fulfillment options that best suit their needs.