Complex Circuit Boards for Large & Small PCBs

Whizz Systems designs complex circuit boards for both large and small PCBs. Whether you are working on military, medical, telecommunications, IoT, computing and networking, or consumer electronics products, you will find our guidelines useful for developing high reliability products that meet your specifications and requirements.

Complex circuit boards are those that have multiple layers, high component density, fine pitch components, high speed signals, mixed signal types, or special features such as blind or buried vias, flex or rigid-flex substrates, or embedded components. Designing such boards can be challenging and requires careful planning, analysis, and verification.

Some of the steps that we follow when designing complex circuit boards for large and small PCBs:

1. Define the design objectives and constraints. This includes the functional requirements, performance goals, environmental conditions, regulatory standards, cost targets, and manufacturability considerations. You should also identify the critical components and signals that need special attention or protection.
2. Choose the appropriate PCB technology and materials. Depending on your design objectives and constraints, you may need to select a specific PCB technology (such as multilayer, HDI, flex, etc.) and materials (such as FR4, polyimide, ceramic, etc.) that suit your needs. You should also consider the thermal management, mechanical stress, electrical characteristics, and compatibility of the PCB materials with your components and assembly processes.
3. Create the schematic and layout. This is where you capture the circuit design and place the components on the board. You should follow the best practices for schematic capture and layout design, such as using a consistent naming convention, avoiding crossing wires or traces, minimizing trace lengths and loops, avoiding acute angles or stubs, placing decoupling capacitors close to power pins, etc. You should also use design rules and constraints to ensure that your layout meets the electrical, mechanical, and manufacturing requirements.
4. Perform design analysis and verification. This is where you check the functionality and performance of your circuit board using various tools and methods. You should perform design analysis such as signal integrity analysis, power integrity analysis, thermal analysis, electromagnetic interference analysis, etc. to ensure that your board can handle the high speed signals, power delivery, heat dissipation, noise immunity, etc. You should also perform design verification such as design rule check (DRC), electrical rule check (ERC), layout versus schematic (LVS), etc. to ensure that your board matches your schematic and meets the design rules and constraints.
5. Generate the fabrication and assembly files. This is where you prepare the files that are needed for manufacturing your board. You should generate the fabrication files such as Gerber files, drill files, solder mask files, silkscreen files, etc. that contain the information for creating the physical board. You should also generate the assembly files such as bill of materials (BOM), component placement files, pick and place files, etc. that contain the information for placing and soldering the components on the board.
6. Test and debug the board. This is where you verify that your board works as intended after manufacturing. You should test and debug the board using various tools and methods such as multimeter, oscilloscope, logic analyzer, in-circuit tester (ICT), functional tester (FT), boundary scan tester (BST), etc. You should also troubleshoot any issues or errors that you encounter during testing and debugging.

By following these steps, Whizz designs complex circuit boards for both large and small PCBs in order to develop high reliability products for military, medical, telecommunications, IoT, computer networking and consumer electronics.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us.