PCB Designer Mike Brown Offers Advice: Stay Hungry, Keep Growing, Nurture Relationships Mike Brown is a PCB Design Consultant. He caught the design-bug at the tender age of 17 and has never looked back. Recently, he shared the story of his career path from being a young, to design manager, to entrepreneur and finally selling his company, Interconnect Design Solutions (IDS), last year to the Maryland-based contract manufacturer, Zentech Manufacturing. Warner: Mike, looking back, what indicators can you see from your childhood that Read Article PCB Design Basics to Help You Get Ahead PCB Design Basics in a Growing World Between the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable electronics, PCB design requirements are becoming more and more advanced. You need to keep your eye on the design techniques that can make PCBs smaller, faster, and more flexible in order to keep up with the times. In addition to keeping abreast of design trends, you will likely need training in how to implement the techniques they require. Do you Read Article The Worst PCB Design Advice I've Ever Heard: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: The Worst PCB Design Advice I've Ever Heard. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you think in the comments Read Article How To Use A Modular Approach: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: How to Use a Modular Approach. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you think in the comments below. Read Article Ubiquitous Internet of Things Devices Will Mean More Work in the PCB Design Industry What do iPhones and iRobot have in common? Come on, the ‘i’ is too obvious. They both involve us surrounding ourselves with computers. While I think the future will certainly involve lots of computers, I doubt most of them will be quite as nice and shiny. They also hopefully won’t try to kill us. The ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) is giving birth to a world where everything will have a computer inside of it. In a world full of PCBs, the PCB Read Article LiDAR Bringing Autonomous Vehicles into the Mainstream Market One of my favorite movies from the 2000s was Minority Report. As an engineer, my favorite genre is Science Fiction, and Tom Cruise was my favorite actor. I imagined myself riding in one of those sleek autonomous cars, watching Tom try to outrun his fate. Those cars must have been pretty far in the future because I didn’t see any giant LIDAR arrays on them. New advances in technology could turn Science Fiction into reality. LIDAR developers are Read Article Designing PCBs for IoT: How to Plan for FCC Certification and Testing Learn key steps for planning FCC certification in PCB design for IoT devices to ensure successful market entry. Read Article Electric Vehicles: PCB Designers Mitigate Heat Using Glass-Reinforced PTFE In the demanding world of electric vehicles, PCB’s must provide power conditioning, voltage conversion, and battery management in addition to their usual roles in the automotive context. Unfortunately, these same PCB’s must cope with stringent thermal requirements without heat sinks or fans. PCB designers, however, have found a lasting solution. Board substrate materials with high thermal performance allow PCB’s to avoid or minimize their use of Read Article How 3D Printed Prototypes are Changing the Landscape of PCB Design PCB Printers - 3d Printers for PCBs are now a reality and not just for PCB prototypes It’s no surprise that you hate waiting for PCB prototypes. In the time it takes for the test board to arrive you could probably invent a new method for fabricating prototypes. Lucky for you, someone already came up with a new method. New 3D printers use nanoparticle technology to suspend metals in ink (I don’t know how this works, so don’t ask) in order to print Read Article Drawing Creation with Draftsman Technical drawings for a printed circuit board include a graphical representation of the product design along with information relevant to fabrication and assembly. PCB documentation and fabrication drawings are created in a variety of formats, including Gerber files, ODB ++, IPC 2581, and file formats from other CAD vendors. Any of these documents need to correspond to data directly from your PCB layout. In addition to these fabrication drawings Read Article Protect Your PCB Design: How to Avoid Counterfeit Electronic Components Just like Gucci or Coach handbags, counterfeiting electronic parts is big business overseas and it causes major problems in the printed circuit board component supply chain. Counterfeit electronic components that are sold as genuine can affect everything from your new electronic alarm clock to mission-critical military systems, such as thermal weapons sights, missile guidance systems, and aircraft. Whenever electronic parts are relabeled or Read Article Managing PCB Design Data: Reducing Risk by Breaking Down Silos Thorough PCB design data management is essential to minimizing the amount of risk associated with introducing a new product into the market and ensuring that this process is successful. Based on the experiences of over 175 executives responsible for PCB design, Best-in-Class practices provide insight on how other companies may incorporate these systems into their own processes as well. Key findings include: There are many consequences that result Read Article PCB Design: Improving Profitability with PCB Design Best Practices Having an optimized PCB design process allows companies to stay competitive in an already challenging, demanding, and fast-paced electronics market. Based on the data gathered from over 175 respondents as well as observations of Best-in-Class practices, there are five main areas of PCB design which can be optimized for overall improved performance. Key findings include: The electronics industry is rich with competition. Product differentiation Read Article Streamline Product Development in Process Manufacturing Implementing an integrated product lifecycle management (PLM) solution allows process manufacturers to stay competitive in the ever-growing global market. By outlining the manner in which Best-in-Class companies do this, it is shown how others can adopt these practices to better meet their production budget, quality, and time to market targets. Key findings include: 50% of process manufacturers cited market demand for higher quality and higher Read Article Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Data Management: Maximizing Development Productivity Implementing an integrated computer-aided design (CAD) data management system allows companies to most effectively enjoy the benefits of their CAD solutions. Best-in-Class practices illustrate how adopting set CAD data management processes can lead to a more successful product release across several key metrics, including cost, quality, and time to market. Key findings include: 40% of all respondents said their top CAD action was to train users Read Article Making Complex Wire Assemblies Simple with Integrated Harness Design Software Manufacturers can optimize their performance by adopting an automated wire harness design solution. Data from Best-in-Class companies demonstrates how using an automated solution allows them to outperform their peers in and maximize their efficiency. Key findings include: As wire harness complexity increases, so do component numbers and density. Despite this increasing complexity, wire harness design remains largely a manual process Read Article What Does Digitalization in Manufacturing Mean Now? The digitalization of manufacturing has created a plethora of opportunities for technology companies to improve and advance their business in an increasingly demanding market. Looking at three technologies which rely on digitization- the Internet of Things (IoT), the Cloud and big data analytics- it is demonstrated how Best-in-Class companies use these technologies to optimize their operations, as well as how others can follow suit. Key findings Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page185 Current page186 Page187 Page188 Page189 Page190 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More
