For CuClad protos that have to look nice, I spray both the board and box with clear acrylic before building it. Acrylic is easy to solder through, and stays nice looking for a long time.
I have a box fan in the window next to me while doing it, though!
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Right. Surface flatness is the main issue (not conductivity), and a micron of gold won't change that.
The bottom side of a trace on a conventional PCB is a horror; peel one up and see. Most of the e-field energy is on the bottom.
but the Ni barrier between the Cu and Au can be a disaster in microwave circuits.
cheers, Gerhard
It's deliberate, too, for reasons of adhesion.
At high power? Are there low power issues?
Am 22.07.19 um 20:56 schrieb John Larkin:
Frequency dependent losses. Kills the Q, forget about stripline filters.
I have made small stamp size boards for 10EP & friends.
10EP has a consistent pinout. One side is inputs, the other side is outputs. Power, Vbb etc are on the same locations. The input side has Thevenin terminations, there is the standard decoupling and the bottom side is GND only. With 2 or three stamps, you have the entire family.Twisted AWG30 wrapping wire has about 100 Ohms, ok for wiring differential between the stamps. I just solder the stamps onto a clean FR4 board. I admit, gold has more style. I also have 1mm HF-50 coax cable. That makes test circuits quite fast & easy.
BTW I wonder why you did choose a XOR gate. That is 2-level logic. An or/nor/nand is probably faster.
Cheers, Gerhard
I think our ENIG boards all have bare copper traces under the solder mask. Only the pads are plated. Solder dissolves the gold but (may?) leave the nickel there.
The EP08 is rated for 3 GHz, which is a bit faster than many other EP parts. And we have it in stock and in the PADS library. I can play with input levels and use it as a mux, too. It's faster than the EP57 mux.
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required