mhoulroyd
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**broken link removed**
Many,many moons ago, as a young PCB designer, I remember my boss yelling at me to hurry up with my design. He kept barking "don't worry about the connector, we'll deal with it later, just put a keep out area in that location and run the signals to dummy IO points." There were so many more important things to consider: swapping gates, reducing packages, ECL stub lengths, differential pair signal lengths, flashing thermals on the power planes. Yikes.... I had enough to worry about, much less that stupid passive plastic device. It can wait.
Fast forward to now, each day I try to help MEs and EEs undo the damage caused by not knowing and/or not planning. I wonder out loud if any college engineering program even include connector technology? I suspect most consider it somewhat less important than focusing on logic devices.
I guess my argument will be based upon reducing product costs, for my examples: PCB fabrication for through-hole devices:
Short Receptacle: If my customer is trying to design an ultra-low profile leaded device and has height limitations, I will explore tail-less, low profile receptacles, as long as his pin spacing is generous enough to allow for easy trace routing. If the trace routing is limited by obstructions, then the customer is looking at adding PCB layers, which is never good for the budget.
Tall Receptacle: If my customer is using a high-density, high pin count leaded device such as a microPGA, then I will try to guide my customer to consider a pin tail receptacle that will only require typically a via size hole. This will allow the customer to maximize routing channels between pins.
Sometimes dismissing or ignoring the simple technology devices can bite back the hardest from your project budget. If I can help you further with this concept, please feel free to ask. Regards, Marty
Many,many moons ago, as a young PCB designer, I remember my boss yelling at me to hurry up with my design. He kept barking "don't worry about the connector, we'll deal with it later, just put a keep out area in that location and run the signals to dummy IO points." There were so many more important things to consider: swapping gates, reducing packages, ECL stub lengths, differential pair signal lengths, flashing thermals on the power planes. Yikes.... I had enough to worry about, much less that stupid passive plastic device. It can wait.
Fast forward to now, each day I try to help MEs and EEs undo the damage caused by not knowing and/or not planning. I wonder out loud if any college engineering program even include connector technology? I suspect most consider it somewhat less important than focusing on logic devices.
I guess my argument will be based upon reducing product costs, for my examples: PCB fabrication for through-hole devices:
Short Receptacle: If my customer is trying to design an ultra-low profile leaded device and has height limitations, I will explore tail-less, low profile receptacles, as long as his pin spacing is generous enough to allow for easy trace routing. If the trace routing is limited by obstructions, then the customer is looking at adding PCB layers, which is never good for the budget.
Tall Receptacle: If my customer is using a high-density, high pin count leaded device such as a microPGA, then I will try to guide my customer to consider a pin tail receptacle that will only require typically a via size hole. This will allow the customer to maximize routing channels between pins.
Sometimes dismissing or ignoring the simple technology devices can bite back the hardest from your project budget. If I can help you further with this concept, please feel free to ask. Regards, Marty
