Q&A with Dirk Stans

Today, a wide variety of designers are interested in PCB services: pro engineers, makers, and even students. Business is booming. Eurocircuit's Managing Partner Dirk Stans talks about his company's high-quality PCB services, its close relationship with Elektor, and the international PCB market.

Today, a wide variety of designers are interested in PCB services: pro engineers, makers, and even students. Business is booming. Eurocircuit's Managing Partner Dirk Stans talks about his company's high-quality PCB services, its close relationship with Elektor, and the international PCB market.

Seeed Studio Fusion offers top class prototyping service for PCB Manufacture, PCB Assembly, 3D Printing, PCB Layout and CNC Milling starting at only $4.90 for 10 two-layer PCBs up to 100 x 100 mm in size. Elektor e-zine readers get 10% OFF all Fusion services for a limited time only!

Even as a hobbyist you should be just as concerned about your health as about the nasty smells your housemates associate with your “scientific” activity in the basement or circuit cellar. Three ways exist basically to get rid of the smells you love but others hate: 1. Egocentric: place a small ventilator close to your work area. Like 12 V and/or from a PC. This will pull the fumes across a distance of about 10-15 cms so at least it does not get in your eyes and cause irritation (sensitivity differs between people). But in your room… it will remain, as will the smell, just weakened. Not recommend even if you can open a window very close by. 2. Considerate: ditto with the ventilator in place but connected to a dryer hose to exhaust the polluted air preferably to outdoors. Cheap. 3. Responsible: use a device that not only removes the polluted air from your workspace but also cleans it i.e. catches the offending particles in a filter. Provided a strong cleaning activity is guaranteed b

Besides the many electrical, mechanical, cost, size, etc. advantages that come with using SMT parts, just the fact that you can solder a board in about three minutes is enough reason to switch to as-much-SMT-as-possible designs. Meet the eC-reflow-mate.

Although PCB designers go through a lot of effort to make board assembly as easy as possible, who hasn’t run into a PCB with an incorrect footprint or has had to use a bill of materials (BOM) that was missing a few parts? Indeed, it is not easy to get everything right the first time, and PCBs and BOMs have to be debugged too. The PCB Assembly (PCBA) Visualizer by Eurocircuits is a great tool to find such problems before the board is being made, saving you money and lots of time.

Where SMD parts are involved in assembling new boards or in repairing damaged boards, the drag soldering methode has become common practice. Sure, a microscope can help (especially when you’re done soldering and checking for bridges) but as the demo clearly shows the magic word is flux.