Costs of Hiring Your First Electronic Engineer Several years ago, one of my top consulting clients was interested in bringing me onto their team as a salaried employee. They did not have any electronics design/testing capability in-house, so they needed to set up a lab to allow me to work for them in their offices, rather than from home. Hiring your first electronic engineer or technician can be a big step for a company that has been outsourcing all of its projects. The company that was Read Article Singularity in PCB Design Keeps the Team On the Same Page S.M.A.R.T. Rule First Pillar - Singularity "If we fail to plan then we are planning to fail." -Benjamin Franklin Given a professionally diverse readership composed of many people with differing company structures and situations, my intention isn’t to give a ‘sole’ method or plan that will magically fit everyone’s situation. Rather, I want to give a detailed explanation of how it “could” be done. I aim to give the bird’s eye view of this whole Read Article Extended Life and High Reliability: What would a Fabricator Want You to Know? Do you need to work with your fabricator every time you start a design? Maybe not. Do you need to work with your fabricator early in the design process for flex and rigid-flex? Yes, I think so, especially if flex and rigid-flex designs are new to you. If you are well-experienced in flex and rigid-flex and have worked closely with your fabricator to understand their materials, preferences, and processes, you probably don’t need to reach out every Read Article Chasing a Minimal Power Budget If you’re working on a battery powered project that needs a long service life between charges or battery replacements, you’ll quickly find that every last microwatt of power starts to add up over months of operation. I have worked on some projects in the past that needed to run for months on a single charge of a secondary battery, or a single primary battery that was small enough that simply running the microcontroller at full power would drain Read Article Carl Schattke - Designing Complex Boards Carl Schattke gives us a sneak peak of his keynote ‘Making and Breaking the Rules’ at AltiumLive 2019 in Frankfurt. He also shares what he considers the best tool every PCB designer must have. Read Article Designing Printed Electronics with Altium Designer 19 As far as I know, Altium Designer 19® is the first electronics design tool that effectively supports printed electronics design. With this tool you can create printed electronics designs in the same level as with capabilities parallel to standard PCB designs, and to do that, Altium created electronics design features specific to printed electronics. With Altium Designer 19 you can define design rules according to production capabilities that will Read Article Closing the gap between Electronics (ECAD) and Mechanics Users of modern devices expect manufacturers to design new generations of products that exceed their demands and expectations—high-quality products which provide amazing user experiences. With regard to product design that offers the best user experience, PCB design software is expected to provide engineers with specific features enabling the seamless collaboration between the electrical and mechanical engineers. To efficiently meet the above Read Article Ceramic Capacitors - Why Voltage and Capacitance Ratings Aren't the Full Picture Ceramic Capacitors - Why Voltage and Capacitance Ratings Aren't the Full Picture The true capacitance of ceramic capacitors rarely matches what is stated on the specifications once they’re installed in end applications. Depending on what frequency, voltage, and dielectric you’re using, true capacitance can be vastly different from what you’d expect. This guide walks through the common misconceptions and demonstrates how to select the right Read Article Designing For The Mil-aero Market Segment—Navy When it comes to PCB design for a particular market segment, often times the design methodologies readily transfer from one market segment to another with very few, if any, significant changes. Other times this is not the case and designing products for a particular market segment requires specific design practices, materials and testing procedures. This blog is the first in a series addressing design strategies for specific vertical market Read Article Getting Started in Altium Designer: The Schematic A schematic is a way to record an idea. Schematics are drawings or diagrams that are used to communicate electronic ideas to others. You may have never thought about it, but anyone who understands electronics can look at your schematic and understand your idea, no matter what language they speak! Schematics are a universal “language” for recording and sharing electronic ideas. Here’s the official definition from IPC-T-50 (Terms and Definitions) Read Article Unique Flex Termination Methods I think it is important to know that basically any connector you would select for rigid printed circuit boards can also be assembled to a flexible circuit. Traditional thru-hole and SMT connectors, high density circular connectors, D-subminiature connectors, pin and socket connectors, leaded and unleaded, are all options to consider with flexible materials. That said, I am going to veer slightly off topic with the caution to NOT forget to review Read Article The Value of Rapid PCB Prototyping Raspberry Pi, Arduino, off-the-shelf “maker” boards, and custom PCBs all play a part in rapid PCB prototyping. Read Article Newer PCB Materials If you are hearing about the newer, higher density HDI-PCBs used by Apple called SLP, and their processes like SAP, or uSAP or mSAP (Semi-Additive Processes) recently, these are the printed circuits that are getting down to 30 micron and 25 micron (1 mil) traces and spaces. HDI is now estimated to be over 250 million square meters produced per year-and still growing! But SAP is not NEW! We used it early in the 60’s and 70’s when we were making Read Article 46:06 Design and Library Migration to Altium Designer Watch Video 15:18 Exploring Project Releaser in Altium Designer 19 Watch Video Reading Impedance Profiles of High Speed Backplanes Impedance remains a confusing topic in the signal integrity community. By definition, impedance is the ratio of voltage to current. That doesn’t really paint a clear picture to anyone. Getting more specific, the term impedance can mean several things. Step response of broadband reflection coefficient in ohms Impulse response of broadband reflection coefficient in ohms Time domain Z-parameters Frequency domain Z-parameters Signal Integrity Read Article Bob Martin Goes From Prototype to Production with an Arduino Board How to go from prototype to production seamlessly? Listen or Watch today's OnTrack podcast with Bob Martin The Wizard of Make. He will share some info about his keynote at AltiumLive 2019 in San Diego Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page100 Current page101 Page102 Page103 Page104 Page105 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More
