At 10:49 PM 11/12/2007, you wrote:
>Vitaliy wrote:
> > I don't know which board houses you guys are talking about. We've 
> been doing
> > double sided SMT since 2005, and none of the board houses we have 
> contacted,
> > had any problem with the PCB being double sided. In our experience, the
> > additional cost is *not* significant (~$1/2 per board).
>
>Interesting.  But that still is *some* money, so you would put them all
>on one side unless you had a reason to do otherwise, right?  That seemed
>like the OP's question.

The PCB can certainly be smaller and possibly can have a better layout if
you put parts on both sides. This is particularly true when there are more
than two layers. Unless you are fixed to a certain size of board (eg. by
corner mounting holes, grooves or clips), the cost savings from reducing
the square inches of a multilayer board will likely overshadow
the additional cost of placing parts on both sides (eg. using the adhesive
method before reflow).

With 2-layer boards you may wish to do a quasi-single-sided
layout in order to maintain a partial ground plane under the parts.

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com



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