Tag Archives: parts libary

What is Your Supply Chain Telling You about Packages?

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Have you purchased any electronics components lately? Have you tried and failed to do so lately? Allocation is the word of the day and substitutions are your friend.

Many, many parts are in short supply, or unavailable with extraordinarily long lead times. Sure, that happens every now and then in this industry. It’s a periodic nuisance, but what should you do for the long term? We’re are getting some interesting stories from component suppliers that might help. 

What we’re hearing is that many passive manufacturers will be trying to move their customers to smaller sizes. They want to consolidate on as few packages as is possible. That means we may be seeing the end of 1206, 0805, and maybe even 0603 form factors for many passive values.

It kind of makes sense. Right now, there might be several dozen different varieties of 0.1uF, 16V capacitor. Does the industry need that? And if there isn’t enough fab capacity to make all of the variations, why not consolidate and run more of fewer variations? It won’t surprise me if we start seeing fewer voltage ranges as well. In most cases, a 16V part will be just fine if you’re calling for a 6V or 10V part.

The chip industry has been doing this for a while. Many of the newer components just come in BGA or QFN packages. Fewer and few leading edge parts come in large through-hole or SOIC packages.

Consider using smaller components, like standardizing on 0402 parts. I know it can be a pain to use smaller parts, but any potential for future proofing your design now can prevent delays or otherwise unnecessary redesign cycles. You might just be able shrink your board size and save some money on the board fab too.

Keep approved substitutions close by, and look for newer chips that are more likely to stay in production. For microcontrollers, pick parts that have multiple memory capacity or speed range variants all in the same package.

This looks to be a pretty extreme allocation cycle, and I have a feeling that the industry will be different when we come out of it.

Duane Benson
Which is worse
Being the missing link or the weakest link?

 

How to Build a Footprint

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Well, not really how to build one in a technical sense, but some thoughts on how to better ensure that you get it right. In theory, it shouldn’t be that difficult. You download the datasheet and build the land pattern based on the information in the datasheet. That usually works, but not always.

I had a through-hole battery holder that didn’t match up with any of the land patterns in my library, so I modified one that was close. That worked mostly okay, but there was one measurement in the data sheet that was a little ambiguous. I ended up with the mounting holes being off by a millimeter or so. Not too much, but enough to make the fit difficult.

I went in and shifted the leads over by the same amount, used it again, got another PCB fabbed and discovered that I had shifted the pins the wrong way! Then it hit me. In the first application, I had the battery holder on the bottom side of the PCB but I had looked at it through the mounting holes from the top side of the PCB. D’oh! One reason why I’m not a professional designer.

The other part was a little tiny SMT trim pot. Since there are pretty close to a million different little trim pots, the likelihood of me finding an exact match in my CAD library was precisely zero. I didn’t want to Gieger VR mistake close re-invent the little zig zag resistor symbol, so I just found a part that looked the same. Well, it was almost the same. The footprint I found is for a 4 x 4mm part and the part I ordered is 3 x 3mm. That’s a tiny trim pot. Somehow, when looking at the datasheet, I got the measurements wrong. Once the part came in the mail, it was quite obviously too small.

The pad pretty much ends right at the edge of the trim pot. We won’t be able to reflow that part. No solder paste would be touching the pads on the trim pot. I’ll see if our guys on the floor can figure out how to get the thing soldered on there. If they can’t, I’ll need to look for a larger part to put in it’s place.

Fortunately, I physically looked at the part and the PCB before assembly. Unfortunately, I got the measurements wrong. If at all possible, get some sample parts before you order your PCBs. Then you can print out a 1:1 image of your PCB and lay the parts out on it. That would have saved me in both of the above cases.

Duane Benson
Is it “datasheets” or “data sheets”?

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/