ECS Headquarters - behind the scenes of R&D - Page 3

The next step is the design process which will take place in the above office floor. Here's R&D is gathered up. The engineers, BIOS team, CAD team, QA analysis but also the regular stuff like box design etc takes place here.

• Schematic Diagram design
  • In this process there's data researching, datasheets design and IC component usage. Schematic product diagrams are created by CAD, verified and then corrected if needed.
• PCB (Printed Circuit board design by CAD)
  • The first step here is to determine what the PCB stack up will be, here's where is decided how many layers are needed due to surface area restriction. Here they calculate the impendence of tracers for signal integrity, followed by placement and layout. All PCBs are created in ECS's own factories. Currently ECS has two factories in China.
• Samples manufacturing (engineering samples)
  • This is the stage where the BOM (Bill of Materials) for manufacturing is compiled and send to the fabric. The first run will be called the pilot run, where engineering samples are made and returned to R&D.

Once engineering sample product return from the factory here's where QA really begins.

• Product testing and debugging
  • Once the engineering sample products return to R&D they will go through a series so tests. Simply functional testing, signal quality measurements (we'll show you this in the videos), power measurements, stability testing, compatibility testing and EMI measurements.

If they detect fault components in the SMT (surface mount) soldering room they can easily take of ICs and reattached new ones for further testing and analysis.