No Icebergs Here, Captain! Board Rule Checking for Bill of Materials Management You know the story of RMS Titanic and how just before midnight on April 14th, 1912, it struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank. What you may not know though is how one small item may have saved the ship from sinking. During the inquiry, one of the surviving crew members who was a lookout reported that they did not have a pair of binoculars to use in the crow’s nest. When asked if having the binoculars would have made a difference or not Read Article Don’t Get Caught Sleeping: Resolve Symptoms of Bad PCB Power Distribution in Networks and Designs I’ve got a heating problem at the moment—after 30 years of service to the various owners of this house, my furnace is finally throwing in the towel and no longer providing heat. Unfortunately, this has come at a, let’s say, inopportune time with it hovering just under freezing lately, and with nights being even more frigid. We installed an ad hoc heating system comprised of the gas fireplace and several space heaters; however, this is not a long Read Article Hide and Seek: Key Serial-Number Chips for PIC Microcontroller Code Protection One of my favorite games, when I was young, was hide and seek. I would play with my friends and it was always fun to try and find a good hiding place. As an older brother, I played the same game with my younger brothers, but with a twist. Instead of hiding myself, I had to hide my stuff from them. If I picked good hiding places, my stuff was safe. However, if I was lackadaisical and chose poor hiding places they were sure to find my toys or Read Article How To Use Version Control in CircuitStudio This video will cover how to setup and use the built in version control in CircuitStudio. Read Article How to Set Up Design Rules in CircuitStudio Read Article Completing a Pre-Layout Design Checklist Can Keep Your PCB Design from Crashing Many years ago I got my private pilot’s license, and there is nothing that I love better than being behind the controls of a small plane. When the plane leaps off the runway and into the sky, the feeling is exhilarating. Then, after executing a perfectly smooth landing, there is a sense of triumphant success. In addition to the pure joy of flying, there are also many ideas and lessons that I have taken from my time in the air. One of these has Read Article Don't Stay in the Tower: BOM System Communication and Component Pricing Costs Once upon a time, way back in the dark ages of the 20th century, there were three kingdoms: design, manufacturing, and purchasing. The royal design engineer’s process would look like this: they’d design the product, take their carriage to the manufacturing department kingdom where the designer would submit the design quickly and leave, trying to minimize as much chatter and cross communication as possible. The manufacturing engineers who receive Read Article Don't Let Lithography Issues Cast a Shadow on Your PCB Manufacturing Projectors can often be the most annoying piece of technology to work with. You could have a movie night you want to host with an old school projector and some nice, buttery popcorn but be unable to find a spot where the image projected isn’t crooked; you could be trying to give a highly-influential presentation to your peers and bosses, only to encounter that the projector has squished all of your images and graphs; you could be trying to teach Read Article Boats With The Current: Microstrip and Stripline Transmission Lines Trade-offs In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator, Nick Carraway, is torn between infiltrating the notorious elite social circles by attending his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s infamous mansion parties in Long Island, New York and establishing himself on the east coast in a finance career. It can be easy to have an understanding of The Great Gatsby through its context - the roaring twenties, flappers, prohibition - it wouldn’t do justice to any of Read Article Cross-Probing Electronic Components in PCB BOM Software with a 1968 Bel Air I have a friend who once bought a 1968 Bel Air that was in immaculate condition inside and out. There was one problem though: the engine ran really rough. Since my friend was pretty good at working on cars, he bought it for a very low price thinking that he could simply tune it up. It didn’t work though, and my friend came to realize why this beautiful car had come with such a cheap price tag. Then he took a closer look under the hood and was Read Article Old School Wisdom: Best Schematic Software Simplifies Schematic to PCB Synchronizing You’ve heard it said: “there’s no school like the old school.” Is that always true though? When I was a kid my “old school” taught me to type on a typewriter, not a word processor. If I was using that old school typewriter today, it would take me significantly longer to write this article. I wouldn’t have access to spell checking or any of the other helpful utilities that I’ve become accustomed to. I wouldn’t be able to easily backspace and re Read Article No, I Don’t Want to Make a U-turn: Guidelines for PCB Trace Routing Watching your old town grow up can be a lot like watching your favorite television shows ending, or watching a sequel years after a good movie was released. The town I grew up in was laid out on a grid with streets so wide you didn’t even have to parallel park downtown. It was a town so small that traffic jams were caused by two people in different cars stopping to talk more often than accidents. When I go back to visit, the town has grown; the Read Article Using Net Ties to Meet PCB Design Requirements The Net Tie is a Component Type that allows PCB Engineers and Designers flexibility when Handling a Variety of Design Challenges. This Paper Explores the Advantages to using Net Ties in Altium Designer to Join Multiple Nets (shorts) Into One Single Net at Very specific Locations in the PCB. Using Net Ties to Meet PCB Design Requirements: Defining a Net Tie component can just be a matter of specifying it in the Type field of the Component Read Article Facilities Management: Smart Buildings Combine IoT and Analytics for Operational Excellence Read Article Electronic Parts Obsolescence Management, It's Your Move I started playing chess a bit more seriously a few years ago and have since become quite capable of planning out moves several turns in advance with an accurate prediction of how my opponent will react to them. I wouldn’t even consider competitive with my chess skills, but there are professionals who can predict moves and match outcomes between 60 and 100 moves in the future. While it’s a strong practice to get into, being able to predict moves Read Article Forget Parking Frustrations with Capacitive Touch Sensing Keypad Design Sometimes it feels like the parking ticket machines are neglected intentionally to incur more parking tickets from people incapable or unwilling to wait for the machine to function enough to give them their ticket stub. I’ve had my fair share of frustration when coming across one with malfunctioning buttons on its keypad, forcing me to hunt the surrounding area for a machine which actually is working. Finding parking is hard enough in many cities Read Article Preventing Critical PCB Contamination: There Goes the Boom Ensuring chemical compatibility isn’t always as straightforward as avoiding throwing oil on a fire. When I was an undergrad, I worked in a lab with a heavy emphasis on etching. Processing steps use a range of chemicals, and sometimes these chemicals would not be compatible. One day, a student coworker of mine was hearing weird sounds while etching. After a few minutes, he pulled the fume hood shut and encountered a small explosion from Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page158 Current page159 Page160 Page161 Page162 Page163 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More