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There are very few applications where a power supply will not require filtering to be applied. The type of filter and where it is located within the circuit design will depend on many factors. The most common type is input filtering, located between any external power source and the power supply control circuitry. Alternatively, filters placed at the output across the load can be more effective. One of the main concerns for basic power supplies...

Pi Filters are a type of passive filter that gets its name from the arrangement of the three constituent components in the shape of the Greek letter Pi (π). Pi filters can be designed as either low pass or high pass filters, depending on the components used. The low-pass filter used for power supply filtering is formed from an inductor in series between the input and output with two capacitors, one across the input and the other across the...

Electronics designers working in small design houses or in large enterprises often encounter a common set of challenges when interfacing with mechanical designers. For many new products, the mechanical form factor requirements will constrain the electrical design collaboration in terms of physical layout, location of interfaces, and component selection.  For many electronic products, flex and rigid-flex board designs require careful modeling of...

Did you know: if you’re creating a product with different options or capabilities, there’s no reason to create a whole new version of your PCB project! Variants can offer you the ability to quickly layer different options for single components on the same source file.  Watch this video to learn best practices and get into the details about setting up variants in your designs and speeding up your project development. Topics covered in the...

Did you know: if you’re creating a product with different options or capabilities, there’s no reason to create a whole new version of your PCB project! Variants can offer you the ability to quickly layer different options for single components on the same source file.  Watch this video to learn best practices and get into the details about setting up variants in your designs and speeding up your project development. Topics covered in the...

When designing electronics, there are many tools available to make the designer's life a lot easier. Complete designs can be modeled in intricate detail in the virtual world to allow the designer to check that their design will work and that the parts will all fit together when manufactured. In the past, circuits were prototyped, and enclosures were mocked up to validate designs, but now, a computer runs these checks in seconds. With the right...

Mention the word ferrite around some circuit designers, and the mind probably jumps to “ferrite bead”. These components are usually put into a design with a simple intent: block everything except for DC current. Very simply, ferrite beads, no matter their form factor, are intended to be a simple low-pass circuit. But what about other types of ferrites? How does their electrical functionality compare to a simple ferrite bead? There are several...

A designer faces far more challenges when dealing with devices requiring a power supply with high power output. For a start, they can’t opt for an off-the-shelf IC package for their converter/regulator requirements. In addition, the combination of high voltage and high current requires careful component selections and design decisions. Also, no power supply circuit is perfectly efficient, so the designer must constantly manage the heat produced...

Many power electronics and embedded systems will need a custom regulator circuit. Lighting boards, laser diode drivers, many analog systems, and other noise-sensitive systems need low noise power regulation, and some COTS components simply won’t meet application requirements. This is especially true in power systems requiring precise output at high voltage/high current with little to no droop (e.g., electric vehicles). These systems use SMPS...