In Part 1 of this article Ethan Winer gave a general overview of modern PC board design using surface-mounted devices (SMDs). Part 2 continues with specific techniques and advice.
As explained in Part 1, unless your electronic device is fairly simple, a four-layer board makes sense because it offers dedicated ground and power planes in the middle, as well as a bottom layer for additional traces or power. This also avoids having to run both signal and power traces on the same layer that might complicate routing. Further, the inner layers avoid capacitive coupling between top and bottom traces that could, for example, cause a high-gain op-amp to oscillate if its input and output traces are opposite each other for much of a distance.
The top layer holds the component pads and most of the connecting traces, with the inner ground layer beneath. Then another inner layer carries power around the board, with the bottom layer available for any additional traces that can't fit on top. To my thinking, laying out the routing of a PC board is somewhat like playing chess. You not only have to solve the current problem of how to connect component A to component B, you also have to think ahead several moves: If I put R35 here, will that block pin 6 of the op-amp from connecting to C12 over there? Would it help if I rotate the dual NOR gate 180 degrees?
As Figure 8 shows, besides laying out the board traces, it's just as important that the component labels (R12, C14 etc) on the silk screen layer clearly identify their related parts. Especially with tightly packed boards like my current project.
This story is from the March 2023 edition of audioXpress.
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This story is from the March 2023 edition of audioXpress.
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