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John Stephens, Senior Vice President of Sales for ISU Petasys (pronounced “E-soo”), built his first circuit board in 1974. Like many others of us in the industry, he got a first-hand education in PCB design, and manufacturing and assembly by working in the aerospace industry. He explains, “I started in aerospace at Litton Guidance and Control Systems, where I worked in a process development lab that was basically a prototyping shop where we...

This is Part Two of my LTE GNSS Asset Tracker project. In part one, I identified the right components for the project and captured the schematics. In this part, we are going to finish the project up with the PCB layout and routing.  In the last article, I had stated my goal of making this board as small as possible with the intention of making a high density board, expecting I’d need 6 layers for the routing. However, a board’s total size is...

In this week’s project, I’m building an LTE-based asset tracking system that could be used for a range of objectives, such theft prevention (and recovery), delivery or transit vehicle tracking, as well as predictive maintenance if data that is collected is paired with a suitable machine learning service. All of my previous projects have been two layer boards without any space constraints, but I miss building really compact high density circuit...

There is a special feeling one gets when polishing off a Rev A design and ordering the first set of PCBs from a board house. While designers everywhere would likely not trade that feeling for anything, taking some of the uneasiness off the table would probably be a welcome change. Here are review steps that should prove more effective at settling nerves than an after-work visit to the bar—and infinitely more effective at preventing errors! There...

This 2 hour session will cover the using of Draftsman for design documentation, FAB/ Assembly house file generation and automating their creation using Outjobs generation.

No one wants to do a board respin because of inaccurate or incomplete manufacturing outputs confusing design intent. This on-demand webinar covers the information needed for PCB Manufacturing and Assembly, as well as, a simple way to communicate and collaborate with manufacturing. If you are interested in experiencing the world's finest PCB design product for yourself, request your free trial today and see why more Engineers and Designers choose...

Metrics are data, and statistically backed measures. It is always expedient to base decisions on data and metrics. But what if a metric doesn’t exist? Then you can create the next best measure: the Figure of Merit. The problem with opinions is that they are difficult to defend, and when used in conjunction with producibility, they often they vary from person to person. That is why the Figure of Merit process is so popular. For a small amount of...

If you do a search for “Hardware-in-the-Loop” testing, you will frequently find examples of complex, real-time systems. This article from National Instruments, for example, gives a nice explanation and background on what hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) is, and provides an example of testing electronic control units within an automobile. In this article, we will be focusing on a smaller, more bite-sized version of HIL testing concepts. What is...

We design products not just PCBs requiring effective collaboration between MCAD and ECAD engineers. We need to consider how we can reduce the likelihood of errors when placing critical design components. Component placement in the context of enclosures can be easily handled in an MCAD environment while it is more difficult to achieve in the ECAD domain. Learn how to place components from the MCAD side and synchronize them with Altium Designer...