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Printed Circuit Board Laminate Material Trends

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Recently, we at Bay Area Circuits, have seen an increase in demand for Ventec’s laminate materials in part because of the proliferation of LED lighting and IoT (Internet of Things) products which often have greater than normal requirements for thermal …
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Introduction to IPC Inspection Guidelines

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Acceptable Quality Level Before discussing IPC Inspection Guidelines, it’s important to understand the meaning of the term Acceptable Quality Level (AQL), also referred to as Acceptance Quality Limit. It is an inspection standard that prescribes the range of the number …
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Bare Printed Circuit Board Electrical Test

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Visual inspections are performed following the manufacturing process of a printed circuit board to identify any potential problems. While that may work fine for a two-layer PCB, for multi-layer PCBs, it is almost impossible to visually inspect the internal layers …
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Solder Paste Stencil Basics

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Solder Paste Stencils In the printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) and manufacturing electronics world, solder paste stencils are not so different from the common stencils used to paint letters/numbers or draw shapes. Solder paste stencils are designed for a similar …
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Introduction to Drilling and Vias

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It wasn’t that long ago a printed circuit board was drilled using a simple drill press.  The operator had to manually move the panel to the correct x and y coordinate and then pull the lever to drill an individual …
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Advantages of the Gerber X2 Format

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In 2014, a new Gerber format was released call Gerber X2 (or version 2) by Ucamco, owners of the Gerber standard. If this is news to you, Ucamco has put together an excellent 5 minute intro video which can be …
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Reshoring of Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing

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For many people, the words “Made in the USA” have become a rallying cry. In fact, a survey done in 2012 found that 83% of US citizens disapprove of companies that manufacture their goods overseas and they are interested in …
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Bay Area Circuits Celebrates Manufacturing Day

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Bay Area Circuits, hosted a Manufacturing Day event on Friday, October 6th for the fourth consecutive year. The company opened its doors to give college engineering students a tour of its printed circuit board manufacturing operations and a look at the latest equipment upgrades and technological advancements in the industry.
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Basic PCB Design Tips & Tricks

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Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are made from fiberglass reinforced plastic with the copper wiring in trace form. All the circuit board components are held in position by soldering the components into place after drilling holes in the demarcated areas on …
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5 Electronics Design Tips for Beginners

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The topic of Electronics Design can cover a vast array of technical options.  This article will focus on some of the basics. A schematic drawing is only one part of creating a design in electronic engineering. Your schematic should be …
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An Introduction to PCB Arrays

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What is a PCB Array? What do you think of when you hear the word “array”? Perhaps you think of an antenna array, or possibly some type of mathematical array or maybe even Video Graphics Array (VGA like the adapter …
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Countersinks and Counterbores for Printed Circuit Boards

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In this post, we’ll introduce the concept of Countersinks and Counterbores and how these are used in Printed Circuit Boards (of course, countersinks and counterbores are not anything unique to printed circuit boards and are used in a variety of …
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Bay Area Circuits Annual Open House An Opportunity To Display Support For Education

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This year’s event featured solar and electric vehicles on display from 3 local universities, all sponsored by Bay Area Circuits, including: CalSol’s solar vehicle from UC Berkeley, UCD Formula Racing’s electric vehicle from UC Davis, and Spartan Racing’s electric vehicle from San Jose State. The vehicles are designed and manufactured by the student teams...
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Opening Doors And Minds On National Manufacturing Day

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“Last Friday, Fremont celebrated National Manufacturing Day by inviting students and jobseekers to attend 11 manufacturing facility tours across the City. We sat down with Stephen Garcia, President, Bay Area Circuits, a printed circuit board manufacturer, to debrief on the day …
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NASA Robotic Mining Competition – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Bay Area Circuits is proud to support many awesome student organizations with their printed circuit board projects, one of which is the IRIS Robotics Team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They recently competed in the NASA Robotic Mining Competition and we thought it would be interesting to share more about the group and their recent accomplishments.
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Announcing the Availability of PCB Creator v3

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We’re excited to announce the availability of PCB Creator version 3, an update to our popular, free PCB Layout and Schematic capture software! Here’s a quick Q&A that includes more details on this new release.
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