PCB Design Resources and Information

Explore Altium's Resource hub to discover content from blog posts and design guides to technical white papers, all gathered together for your convenience and written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

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What They Don’t Teach You About Fluxes Introduction As engineers, we sometimes sit high on our pillowy chairs, looking at the nitty and gritty of the industry — such as the fabrication of the PCB — with a bit of nonchalance. The truth of the matter is, when studied in-depth, PCB fabrication is an extremely complex technological topic that deserves recognition as the most fundamental part of PCB engineering. Unless connectors, conductive adhesive, wire-bonding, or zebra-tape are used Read Article

LearnEMC CEO Todd Hubing on Engineering Consulting Services Kella Knack interviews Dr. Todd Hubing a top EMC expert. They discussed topics about the design challenges in Automotive Industry and tackled EMC concerns at the board level. Read Article

Build the Best CAD Computer for 2020 In search of the best CAD computer? In this blog post, expert Mark Harris shares his top picks of high performance and best value for money CAD computers. Read Article

Thought Leader Article, Dave Huntley, PDF Solutions In an ideal world where ideal products are developed, we would never have any issues resulting from any step in the design, fabrication, assembly, test and field operation processes. But in the real product development world that we inhabit, it is a fact that some level of undesired quality and reliability issues will occur. We continually look for novel ways to address these manufacturing issues especially as the components and the PCBs where Read Article

Interference Amplitude Distortion I’ve talked about COM and channel analysis in previous blogs, and I’d like to continue the discussion with more visual aids and some example code to enable readers to do some analysis themselves. To start, let’s review what COM is and a high level overview of how COM is calculated. COM is a signal-to-noise ratio of voltage at a point in time. The point in time is the sampling point, and the available signal is the voltage of the pulse response at Read Article

Tips for Updating Old PCB Designs with New Parts Follow our tips for updating old PCB designs with new parts. Altium Designer helps you stay productive and design successfully. Read Article

Build a Buck Converter PCB - Student Project

Build a DC-DC Buck Regulator - Student Project In this article, Mark Harris will go through the implementation of power supplies in a PCB Design project with a student. Curious how it turned out? Read now to learn more. Read Article

Tips for Getting Started In Compact PCB Design How do you tackle a high-density layout PCB design project? Mark Harris gives you a head start in acing your compact PCB design. Read and learn from the expert here. Read Article

PCB Cost Drivers and Designing to Cost Whenever I’m engaging with a client that wants to understand board design and manufacturing costs, they often get surprised when I tell them the major PCB cost drivers and start giving some ballpark estimates. For a startup hardware company, or even a major enterprise that does not normally engage in electronics manufacturing, the numbers can be surprising, especially for low-volume runs. There is this perception that electronics production is Read Article

What Is Thieving In PCBs And Why Is It Done? In this Article, Expert Kella Knack describes thieving, to what sections of the board it is applied; at what point in the fabrication is it done, how it relates to plating operations; who is responsible for adding thieving to the outer layer artwork and its shortcomings and benefits. Read Article

Avoiding Noise when Interfacing with Remote Sensors In this blog post, expert Mark Harris tackles the best and cost effective approaches to avoid and reduce noise when Interfacing with Remote Sensors. Read now to learn more. Read Article

Keeping Your Circuits Dry What do you do if the fantastic new device you’ve designed needs to work in a humid, damp, or dripping wet environment? Expert Mark Harris answers how you can keep your circuits dry. Read now to learn more. Read Article

Transmission Line and PCB Track Design Digital designs fall broadly into two categories: low-speed and high-speed. The category “high speed” does not necessarily mean a high clock rate. Rather, it refers to the rise time of the signal during switching, which leads to propagating wave behavior on long PCB tracks. When a PCB track gets too long, it needs to be designed like a transmission line, not just a simple conductor with DC resistance. Understanding how to design transmission Read Article

How to Find the Transistor Parts You Need for Your Circuit Board Transistors are fundamental devices for everything from power supplies to high-power integrated circuits for embedded computing. Many power electronics products, sensors, low-power analog systems, and other systems requiring high-power switching need transistors to operate properly. When you need to find and place transistors in your new design, you need a complete set of PCB supply chain tools for finding transistor parts for your design. When Read Article

PCB Relay Selection, Design, and Layout are Easy in Altium Designer Circuit protection is vital for user safety and for protecting a board from electrical damage. Whether you’re working with a small, moderate power PCB or a large, high voltage electromechanical system, power surges or faults can destroy components and create hazards for users. The best way to ensure your next device remains safe from high voltage ESD or large current surges is to use a simple PCB relay. Compared to large relays that need to be Read Article

Spot Copper Connection Errors in Design Rule Checks

Instantly Check Every Copper Connection With Rules-Driven PCB Design Tools It’s easy to find errors in most simple PCBs. Simply scan through your critical nets and trace each copper connection from source to load. Today’s printed circuit boards are not so easy to inspect and validate by eye. Even relatively simple low-speed boards can have hundreds of components packed into a small space, and it’s easy to get lost in a complex PCB layout. Today’s modern designs demand modern design tools. Altium Designer users have Read Article

Design RF PCBs With a Coplanar Waveguide Calculator RF PCBs can be complex boards that need careful interconnect design and layout. If you’re designing an RF PCB for microwave or higher frequencies, controlled impedance routing should be top of mind to ensure signal integrity. You can choose from many routing styles, but whichever routing style you choose, it should provide isolation against noise and crosstalk. A coplanar waveguide routing style is an excellent choice for RF PCBs as they can be Read Article