Written by: David Duross on November 5, 2011.

How does one identify the shelf life of a printed circuit board?

By convention the printed circuit board fabricator shall mark the printed circuit board with a four digit date code. The date code consists of a two digit week number ranging from 01 (the 1st week in January) to 52 (the last week in December). The year code would be 99 for the year 1999 or 01 for the year 2001. Commercial fabricators use a week/year format. Date code 0199 would be the first week of January of 1999. Military fabricators use a year/week format. Date code 0152 would be the last week of December of 2001. The printed circuit board fabricator shall place the date code on what is traditionally referred to as the circuit side of the printed circuit board.

What is the circuit side of a pcb?

To understand the term circuit side, you need to learn a little history of the printed circuit board industry. In the beginning

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