The purpose of this project was to develop a set of design guidelines to be used for the development of all new Circuit Card Assemblies (CCAs) using Surface Mount Technology (SMT).
All future designs for Honeywell/Sperry will use new SMT components. The SMT components are smaller than through-hole technology parts, which allows for much higher packing density. As the density of the CCAs increase, so does the testing and manufacturing problems.
If the required testability and manufacturability are to be maintained, the design philosophy must change, and new design techniques that have been proven to work with SMT must be used.
A new set of design guidelines must be compiled for use with all new SMT designs. The guidelines must specify everything that is different between designing with through-hole and designing with SMT. It must also contain the recommended design practices that the design engineers and the electrical engineers must follow in order to produce an SMT CCA that will not only work as designed, but will also be reliable, testable, and maintainable.