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As electronics engineers, we’re incredibly lucky compared to other engineering disciplines. Not only are electronics rapidly evolving and expanding in use and functionality, but our test equipment gives us the greatest capabilities to diagnose and investigate the devices we have built. While all disciplines of engineering have fantastic suites of simulation tools, being able to see how something is performing in the real world can provide a lot...

In the introduction to this series, we started work on testing all the different types of temperature available by building a set of project templates: one for analog sensors and one for digital sensors. You can find those templates and the sensor implementations for these NTC thermistors on GitHub. As always, these projects are open source, released under the MIT license allowing you to use them with very little in the way of restrictions.  In...

Your components won’t attach to your PCB without land patterns, and it’s up to the designer to create compliant land patterns for components. One common question from new designers is: what should the pad dimensions be? Technically, the only constraints on a PCB land pattern are those imposed by fabricator DFM requirements. However, many designers opt for land patterns designed according to the IPC-7351 standard. This important standard provides...

Any electronic product that is intended for FCC or CE certification needs to pass radiated emissions and EMC testing. If your product doesn’t pass testing, identifying sources of excessive radiated electromagnetic interference (EMI) can be difficult. PCB designers often resort to near-field probe measurements with an oscilloscope to identify offending components or board areas, as well as the frequency content of the radiated EMI. Designers...

Registration for AltiumLive 2020 is open, and for the first time in its history, it will be virtual and free of charge. All of the experts you’ve come to expect will be there: Dr. Eric Bogatin, Rick Hartley, Eli Hughes (TZero), Rula Bakleh (Graphcore, Inc), Istvan Novak (Samtec), Heidi Barnes (Keysight), Steve Sandler (Picotest), Jeremy Blum (Shaper Tools), and more. To discuss these exciting developments and to let you know what you can expect...

Much as we would like, the power input into a PCB is not always a clean DC or sinusoidal signal. DC coming from a rectifier will have some ripple from the output capacitor, and AC signals can contain noise or be less-than-perfect sine waves. There are some ways to correct these problems, either by choosing the right filtration circuit or by shaping the input wave to produce maximum power output to a load in the system. If you’re working with an...

In the broadest application of the term, “front-end engineering” refers to an engineering design approach used to control project costs and thoroughly plan for a project. The PCB product development process refers to all the steps taken prior to the board being moved from the design to the fabrication process. This article will review those steps, define what happens in them and what the critical elements are for each of them. Subsequent articles...

  OnTrack Newsletter September 2020 VOL. 4 No 3   AltiumLive 2020 Virtual Summit: Meet the Speakers Since announcing that AltiumLive 2020 will be a virtual event, our team has been busy assembling a world-class line up of speakers and industry experts to offer insights into the best...

Altium’s commitment to advancing electronic design extends far beyond the pale of great printed circuit board (PCB) design software. Altium features multiple educational initiatives designed to support high school Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teachers and students, along with programs to support college students and industry professionals. To further our efforts promoting high school STEM programs in the era of...