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https://www.altium.com/ontrackIn this OnTrack episode, Zach and Phil of Phil’s Lab Youtube channel exchange ideas on how they can stay on top of their PCB design game or learn new things. Phil Salmony, a successful youtube creator with 64.6K subscribers, shares with us how he was introduced to PCB design, his early career, and what got him to start his own Youtube channel. This is a fun episode. Watch it through the end and check out the...

Pro circuit designers don’t just work with components in parallel and series when they design circuits. One way to build circuits is with circuit networks, which will have input and output ports. What happens inside each network can be analyzed in the traditional way (SPICE, by hand, etc.), but what is important is that the network maps an input voltage/current pair to an output voltage and current pair. Mathematically, this is quantified with a...

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Supply chain security and having access to trusted manufacturers in the US would be an ideal outcome of the Printed Circuit Board Act. IPC President and CEO John Michell talk about how the organization helps shape the current bipartisan proposal to help bring back PCB manufacturing in the US and how this can contribute to a globally resilient supply chain.  Listen to the Podcast: Download this episode (right click and save) Watch the video...

Once you finish your placement and routing in your PCB layout, it can be tempting to wrap up the layout and send everything in directly to manufacturing. The reality is that the board may still need some work before it is considered finished. The cleanup you perform at the final stage of PCB layout will help you catch any outstanding errors that can't be programmed into your DRC engine, and it gives you a chance to add any outstanding details to...

S-parameters are fundamental quantities in signal integrity, and an ability to understand them from measurement or analysis is very important. If you have a 3-port network, like a power divider or circulator, it may appear that you must use a 3-port VNA to measure these S-parameters. It is always acceptable to measure between two ports, but you need to know what exactly it is you are measuring. As it turns out, you can use a 2-port VNA...

Building a board means conforming to the manufacturing process for your layer stack and material selection. At some point, you will have to design the connections on your PCB, and even these have specific requirements as that are intended to ensure manufacturability. In this section of our DFM crash course, we'll look at some of the basic DFM constraints on conductive elements in a PCB, as well as the development of the surface silkscreen/solder...

Every design should begin with selecting the materials that will appear in the PCB stackup, as well as arranging layers in the stackup to support layout and routing. This section of our PCB manufacturing and DFM crash course focuses on selecting the right materials for your PCB design. Materials should be selected given the particular design requirements outlined in your specifications. For brevity of the new designer, we will be focusing...

One major benefit of using a version control system is comparing PCB design revisions against one another. If you’re comparing code, using a code difference tool is relatively straightforward. You’re just comparing text. But if you are comparing PCB designs, you need an electrically intelligent version control system. It’s important to know who made a change, and when they made it. Altium Designer® and Altium 365® make file comparison easy. You...