Fresh PCB Concepts: Engineering Copper Coin and Copper Pedestal Technology With IPC Design Interpretation
Target Condition: Signal Integrity Without Borders
Elementary, Mr. Watson: PCB Education in the Midst of the Storms
Rigid flex circuit board manufacturer, Printed Circuits, Inc. purchased a CITS880 controlled impedance tester from Polar Instruments.
Polar Instruments’ software and testing equipment is the most popular solution in the PWB manufacturing industry, for predicting and verifying controlled impedance circuits in circuit boards.
Polar’s Speedstack software allows PWB Designers to model impedance on every layer of a PWB, using the dielectric values of the materials and trace geometries, PWB designers can predict and model impedance values throughout their PWB’s. PWB fabricators can then use Speedstack to verify the predicted values, and export coupons that are added to the production panels.
Once the boards are complete, Polar’s CITS880s can test the coupons in the production panel to verify that the desired values were met.
Ken Tannehill added, “The value in upgrading to the 880s, is that it has four channels. Our previous unit had two. We sent our old unit back for calibration and Polar lent us a demo unit. It became pretty clear that this is the way we should go. The extra channels allow us to test characteristic and differential at the same time, without swapping probes, saving time and energy testing impedance coupons, particularly on boards that have a large number of values to verify. Most of our work has controlled impedance circuits – which must be modeled both in the rigid section and the flexible section of the boards. This helps us speed up the process of testing the impedance coupons.”
About Printed Circuits Inc. (PCi)
Printed Circuits, Inc. is a US manufacturer of multilayer flex and rigid flex printed circuit boards with over 38 years of experience building circuits typically used in high reliability applications such as medical, military and commercial electronics where customers place a premium on reliability, package density, and weight. For more information, click here.
