Relay from Hardware Designer
The PCB Engineer is educated as an electrical engineer and possesses comprehensive knowledge, competences, and experience within layout of printed circuit boards. When the hardware developers have completed Schematics and Bill of Material BOM, the PCB Engineer takes over the next step in the development process. He performs a sanity check of the hardware design by looking at the dimensions and the functionality of the printed circuit board.
Form and facts must adapt to your specifications for the printed circuit board and often require fine adjustments to the dimensions of the design. In some development projects, the PCB Engineer might have a talk with your mechanical designer to adjust the dimensions of the design, if it makes sense. Common to many products is that the printed circuit board often needs to be as small as possible to fit into the mechanical product design and be adapted to interfaces. The PCB Engineer layouts and visualizes your printed circuit board in 3D for use when checking mechanical integration.
The functions on the printed circuit board should preferably be located as logically as possible on the printed circuit board while at the same time the electrical signals are as optimum as possible. The PCB Engineer adapts impedance with the correct ratio between voltage and currents in the electrical circuit to the correct dimensions in relation to the space on the printed circuit board.
Production Maturation of PCB Layout
Before production of the first 0-series and the ongoing electronics production of your electronics products, the NPI Engineer conducts a review of the printed circuit board. The NPI Engineer checks that everything is optimized for an efficient production of the printed circuit board. The finished printed circuit board must be practically ready for production with SMT assembly and leaded assembly.
The NPI Engineer checks that the selected components can be mounted and soldered in accordance with applicable standards from the Institute for Printed Circuits IPC. Besides he thoroughly checks all drawings and technologies on the raw printed circuit board to ensure that the basis with production data is in order. After this he releases the fully developed printed circuit board and reports it ready for final production at the selected Electronic Manufacturing Services EMS partner.
The electronics manufacturer can now order printed circuit boards and components for the ongoing production of your developed electronics products.
Final Dialogue Meeting
During the development process, the PCB Engineer and the NPI Engineer align the interdisciplinary disciplines so that they harmonize optimally. But of course, always in constructive co-operation with you as our customers about product development of the most optimum version of your new electronics products. At the end of the development process, we hold a dialogue meeting with you, where we make sure that the ends meet and complete your development project.
“The close dialogue between hardware developers, PCB Engineer, and NPI Engineer is a great advantage in the development process of your new electronics solutions. The result of the constructive co-operation in the development team and with you as our customers is in many development projects a significantly faster process on to production and subsequent testing and verification of prototypes.”
Jakob Bjerre
CSO, Develco
