Fellow professionals (yes, you know who you are!)

For the past few years, I have been a manufacturing engineer involved with
the entire circuit board assembly process.  I have spent considerable
amount of time working with the PCB designers with SMT pad design,
component spacing, solder thieves, etc. to design a board that can be
manufactured repeatably to a high quality level.  I have used pad designs
and suggestions taken from IPC, SMT Plus, and numerous others in the field.
Things have gone great thus far, with process and quality improvements,
etc.

For the past few months, I have slowly become involved in a hybrid, or
thick film project within my company.  Much of the design work has been
done outside, and I have only become involved as problems have developed.
The SMT pad designs used by these companies are similiar to what I have
used in the past, but not as robust as those that I have helped develop for
past circuit board designs.  It is as if the SMT pad design clock had been
turned back about 10 years.  These companies are using smaller pads,not
using pads that will allow for component size variation or placement
variation, or having two components share pads.  In my opinion, pad designs
that are not robust, and are not pads that I would accept for boards I have
helped design.  Space is a limiting factor on this design.  My question is,
is there a different set of guidelines for SMT pads on a ceramic substrate?
  Can components share the same pad (end to end), and not be a problem due
to the different expansion characteristics, etc.

I appreciate any comments and suggestions

Ed Holton
Hella Electronics

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