Another tale from the sometimes kind of kooky world of prototypes. I think what happened here is that the board was originally laid out for caps with a smaller voltage rating (or even a smaller capacitance value). We’re seeing things like this more often these days due to availability issues. The part gets swapped at the last minute because the exact one is out of stock. Operationally, it won’t hurt and if the board had been laid out with more space, this wouldn’t have caused any issues at all. Of course, then, it may not have fit in the box.
The moral of this story is that with last-minute swaps, don’t forget to double check things like the part package and board spacing. This board works fine, but it won’t be meeting up with any IPC standards as long as these parts are like this.
Duane Benson
Parallel parking is hard. I’d much rather diagonal park.
This is most likely a package with a ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘X’, etc. package size designation and the engineer called out the wrong package size (was this done on PADS?). If you’re using a centralized, controlled schematic tool, this rarely happens. My engineer likes to change things on the fly (outside the controlled system), and unless I double-check this has happened.
Another possibility: didn’t DRC for part-2-part clearance – OOPS
Another: part outline is wrong in the library – OOPS
All in all, you mention PROTOTYPE to start the article. It happens.