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Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

32 Pad and Via Styles Sneak-Preview Watch Video
22:01 Introduction To PDN Analyzer Webinar Power Delivery Network (PDN) Design Issues Low supply voltage at load components ​​ A low supply voltage at your loads Watch Video
Paste Interconnects and Paste Sintering with Chris Hunrath from Insulectro Paste Interconnects and Paste Sintering with Chris Hunrath from Insulectro Paste Don’t Plate! People are doing 90 layer multilayers with paste interconnects. Want to learn more? Find out about paste sintering from Chris Hunrath to learn more about its applications and benefits to PCB designers. What must designers consider and what are the advantages of Ormet’s products? Listen in for insights from the expert in this week’s episode. Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video Read Article
Compare PCB Design Software Features For Your Device to Move to Manufacturing Compare PCB Design Software Features For Your Device to Move to Manufacturing So you’ve just devised your new device that will revolutionize the world on the back of a cocktail napkin. Maybe your new medical device will have diseases running for the hills. Maybe you’ve got a great sensor for high-moisture environments. But how do you breathe life into your new product and finally implement your master plan for success? Those of us who have had such grand ideas are familiar with this dilemma. A PCB designer might know Read Article
Layer Stackup in Rigid and Rigid-Flex PCBs Layer Stackup in Rigid and Rigid-Flex PCBs Building multilayer PCBs is like building with Legos. The all fit together easily, but you still need to follow directions if you want your design to stay together. Nowadays, only the simplest PCBs use a single layer, or a pair of top and bottom layers. Multilayer PCBs are now the norm rather than the exception, and manufacturers can fabricate PCBs with up to 30 layers. Layer stackup strategies in these boards are important for a number of Read Article
PCB Design Guidelines for Controlled Impedance Routing PCB Design Guidelines for Controlled Impedance Routing In June 1831, Sir James Clark Ross discovered the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula in Northern Canada. While the term “discovery” seems to indicate that the North Magnetic Pole is static, the North and South Magnetic Poles, in fact, move continuously. The Earth’s magnetic field changes over time and as those changes occur, the positions of the poles also shift. Given the rate of movement at 55 km per year, we may have another meaning Read Article
Coupled Versus Uncoupled Inductors: Which is Right for Your Switching Power Supply? Coupled Versus Uncoupled Inductors: Which is Right for Your Switching Power Supply? I recently took a deep dive into the various types of topologies surrounding switching power supplies. This article examined the benefits and downfalls of some of the most common topologies and aimed to assist you in the process of choosing how to power your design. The SEPIC topology is a very common switching mode power supply that can operate as both a Buck and a Boost converter. In other words, the SEPIC can act as a step-down (Buck converter Read Article
Strong Design Software for Differential Pair Routing Strong Design Software for Differential Pair Routing Back when I lived in Portland, I used to commute downtown, typically taking the train to and from work. I was thankful to live in a city with a meticulously timed train system. There must be a valid reason to route train lines as differential pairs because I could always count on the trains being on time. Routing differential pairs on a PCB also requires specific rules and meticulous timing that can only be achieved using the best PCB design Read Article
Kick Your EDA Translators to the Curb: Choose Unified Design Kick Your EDA Translators to the Curb: Choose Unified Design Personal computing devices have significantly changed how bills are paid. And it’s getting better as utilities, banks, and medical enterprises get onboard with unified, intuitive user interfaces. Not long ago, moving from writing and mailing checks to using online banking for paying bills was excruciating. All the environments and web pages were slightly different. Even the simple process of paying a bill was inconsistent and there was no Read Article
Demonstrations for Multi-Layer Designs: Best Uses for Each Layer Demonstrations for Multi-Layer Designs: Best Uses for Each Layer In your career as a PCB designer, you will design a lot of different printed circuit boards to accommodate various design technologies that you’ll be confronted with. To that end, you will use a plethora of circuit boards with all kinds of different sizes, shapes, and layer counts. How you decide to configure your PCB layers and what you put on each layer will, of course, be dictated by what you’re designing. Stripline and microstrip routing will Read Article
Simulation Driven Design Can Solve Your PCB’s Signal Problems and More Simulation Driven Design Can Solve Your PCB’s Signal Problems and More If you work in the electronics industry or in research, there’s a chance that simulations are a regular part of life. While working in optics, we would simulate everything from wavefront aberration corrections to microscope images. I always fell back on simulations to better understand the complex systems we were building. Simulation-driven design is taking the idea of this same process comfort and applying it throughout the whole design process Read Article
PCB Ground Plane Design in High Performance Boards PCB Ground Plane Design in High Performance Boards Learn the best PCB ground plane design techniques to prevent signal and power integrity problems in this article. Read Article
Using Kirchhoff’s Law to Determine Sufficient PCB Trace Thickness Using Kirchhoff’s Law to Determine Sufficient PCB Trace Thickness For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of peanut butter. Back in elementary school, my mom limited my peanut butter intake to a thin spread on a slice of bread. This didn’t come close to satisfying my cravings so I’d sneakily add a generous inch of peanut butter on sandwiches without my mom’s knowledge. My peanut butter thickness preference, unfortunately, did not help with PCB trace thickness in earlier days of hardware design. It wasn’t Read Article
How to Systematically Organize Your Messy Schematic Design How to Systematically Organize Your Messy Schematic Design Even as a six-year-old, my son is great at organizing his toys and personal belongings. At that age, I used to chuck all my possessions into a huge storage box. My son, on the other hand, has a knack for orderliness that borders on obsessive. Although his meticulous attention to detail can be mildly frustrating at times, it means that I can always trust him to keep his play area organized. In PCB design, you need to exhibit the same level of Read Article
Medical Technology Innovations and the Electronics That Enable Them Medical Technology Innovations and the Electronics That Enable Them Ten years ago, who would have thought one of the world’s largest medical equipment manufacturers, General Electric, would look to exit the industry and sell-off its medical equipment business? It is also a fact of life that changes like these tend to drive companies to look for profit opportunities in other industries. In the 21st century, with a rapidly aging global population, you have the likes of aerospace giants, such as Lockheed-Martin and Read Article
Embedded Passives Technology (resistors and capacitors) with Bruce Mahler from Ohmega Technologies Embedded Passives Technology (resistors and capacitors) with Bruce Mahler from Ohmega Technologies Learn about Embedded Passives Technology with Bruce Mahler from Ohmega Technologies. OhmegaPly® embedded resistor-conductor material is popular, but it’s not new. Ohmega has been making this product since 1972. So why is it getting so much attention lately? It’s reliable and has stood the test of time for five decades--but emerging technologies are making it more relevant than ever. Tune in to learn more about embedded passive and embedded Read Article
WARR Hyperloop Pushes Last Year’s Design Concept Even Further WARR Hyperloop Pushes Last Year’s Design Concept Even Further WARR Hyperloop team with Elon Musk after their 2017 win of the Hyperloop Pod competition II. Judy Warner: Please share briefly about the history of the WARR Hyperloop and the Technical University of Munich. Martin Riedel: WARR Hyperloop started out as a group of six students in the fall of 2015 and has since grown to nearly 40 students that compete in the SpaceX Hyperloop Competition every year. WARR Hyperloop is part of a larger student Read Article