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Defense contractors, military procurement officers, and contract manufacturers face a number of obstacles when designing and manufacturing PCBs for use in defense systems. Defense microelectronics and manufactured PCBs cannot be procured from just any company, and these components must meet rigorous standards that ensure quality and reliability. These components must also be traceable back to a compliant component manufacturer. Only Altium...

Any component includes a significant amount of design data. This includes electrical design data management software, electrical models, 3D PCB model components, and PCB supplier information. Your PCB design software should be allowed to take this data and integrate it with your MCAD tools. This allows you to create 3D body models from your PCB footprints and integrate them into a data library. Ensuring that this data stays up to date takes a...

Anytime you send your finished design data out for production at an overseas factory, you place yourself at risk of intellectual property theft. Unscrupulous workers can pilfer design data and sell it to a competitor. They can also pilfer finished boards and reverse engineer them. This theft of intellectual property undermines competitiveness and ultimately places a company’s survival in jeopardy. In addition to the problems surrounding third...

Any PCB that will be deployed in an environment surrounded by high voltage equipment or power sources is at risk of electrostatic discharge (ESD). Static electricity can also discharge directly into a board and ruin sensitive electronic components if a board is handled without a wrist strap. This induces a transient voltage in the PCB, which can cause damage to sensitive components. In extreme cases, such as lightning strikes or major power...

Whether or not you know it, embedded systems play an important role in providing broad functionality in a number of important applications, ranging from consumer electronics to military and aerospace systems. These systems must often gather analog signals and convert them to digital data, followed by using this data in complex calculations. There is plenty of other functionality to include in these systems in order to make them function as...

Electronic systems in industrial environments, in aircraft, in power distribution, and in many consumer products can be at risk of experiencing power surges. When a surge occurs, a large spike of current propagates into the board through a power connection or other connector, causing damage to components and potentially causing system failure. A related even is electrostatic discharge (ESD), which essentially creates the same effect but with a...

Military-grade PCBs carry stringent performance, sourcing, and manufacturing requirements that are encoded in a number of standards. Preparing your next printed circuit board for a military electronics system for manufacturing and assembly must also follow important sourcing and quality standards. Meeting all of these requirements is easiest when you have access to all your design and production planning tools in a single platform and Altium...

PCBs for military systems are high performing beasts that must meet stringent design and performance standards. Military systems that store and process sensitive data require extra layers of security that goes beyond locking them in a secure enclosure. You’ll need to design your Printed Circuit Boards to be extremely resistant to EMI, route data so that it cannot be tapped passively, and include blacked-out chips to prevent attackers from...

Avionics and aerospace engineers face a strictly regulated landscape when designing civil aircraft and the electronic systems that support them. You don’t have to be a professional aviation engineer to know that aircraft are extremely complicated mechanical and electrical systems. From withstanding extreme environments to rugged electrical and mechanical requirements, the Federal Aviation Administration defines standards for every aspect of...