Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1525004
16 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2024 limit it to as little of the board as possible and make sure your vendors are aware in advance of starting the build. If you don't follow the standards, you risk an expensive or unbuild- able board. Speaking of vendors being aware, one key to saving cost and time is to ensure that com- plex designs have preliminary reviews early on by the fabricator and assembler. Nothing is worse than spending months on a design only to find out it is not buildable, it is incred- ibly expensive to build, or can only be built as a one-off with low yield. Review and validate your design rules early and perform a DFM check with representative data as early in the design as possible. It is common to have fabri- cation vendors approve a preliminary stackup, via structures, and spacing only to realize that once they see the density of the design or the impedance requirements that it is not possible. is requires redoing the design which adds time and cost. If you know a design will ultimately be a smaller form factor, design your earlier versions to that so you aren't wasting hours redoing the design. Even if you can get away with some shortcuts in prototype runs, avoid them, or you will have to redo the work when you get to the production version. Do it right the first time. is can be a very hidden cost that the designer isn't initially aware of. Ask your customer what their final plans are for the design so you can design to that from the beginning. If they will eventually build to Class 3, set your vias and spacing up accordingly from the beginning. Otherwise, you could be looking at a costly redo to try to add larger pads in a dense design. is brings us to one of the most important topics and a good closing point: Communi- cate early and oen. Make sure you know all the requirements up front, including mechani- cal, electrical, budgetary, schedule, and so on. Designers must make a lot of decisions as they are working. If you make them without real- izing there are unknown requirements, like keep-outs, high-voltage areas, mounting holes, or testing requirements, you may have a lot of work to redo. We all know time is money. In this case it also can be a sacrifice to quality in an attempt to salvage work done that would have been done differently if the requirement had been known in the first place. Take the time to tell your customers what can be done to make the design better and save them money. ey hired you to be the expert, so be one. DESIGN007 Jen Kolar is the vp of engineer- ing at Monsoon Solutions, a PCB design service bureau in Bellevue, Washington. Two different versions of the same problem: The pins on this part didn't match the hole. Attempt 1 (left) we were able to Dremel the pins and fit in the holes. Attempt 2 (right) we ended up gluing the part on the board and soldering wires on the pins and board to jumper it together. In this case, customer did the layout and didn't include pads for the 4 outer pins of the connector. We had the option of having the shop scrape off the solder mask and manually work the connector in, DNP, or scrap. For this build they chose DNP to salvage it and not spend more cost on the rework.