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Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Relative Permittivity of PCB Substrates: High-k or low-k dielectrics? The relative permittivity of water makes this pencil appear bent If you’ve paid attention to refraction, then you know something about the physics of relative permittivity. The semiconductor industry has managed to continue scaling to smaller technology nodes by using materials with high dielectric constant (so-called high-k dielectrics), but can you see similar benefits in your PCB with similar substrate materials? What about the use of low-k Read Article
Advanced Electronics: Understanding Design Challenges for Space Applications Part 1 Electronics design for space applications is a subject I’ve always been passionate about, and understanding the reasons particles can damage circuitry has always fascinated me. In this article, we’ll discuss how a Beta or Gamma particle can create—for a short period of time (usually referred as SEE or Single Event Effect)—a large current in your design which could lead to permanent damage if ignored. We’ll discuss a technique I have used in my Read Article
Mike Buetow on PCB West Mike Buetow, the Editor in Chief and Vice President of Printed Circuit Design & Fab magazine as well as Circuit Assembly’s magazine, joins us to talk about PCB West. The publishers UP Media put on PCB West every year in Santa Clara, this year’s will be September 9th to 12th, 2019. We talk about what you can expect from the show, how it got started and some colorful history from their background. Altium is also a sponsor of the show this year, and Read Article
ECAD-MCAD Collaboration - Bridging the Communication Gap Let’s face it, there are things that we do the same way every day, simply because ‘we have always done them that way’ and we are used to them. Due to schedule pressures and outside demands, there is rarely time to think about how to make these things better, never mind try to actually implement something new. This makes the motivation to invest in exploring different methodologies challenging. Our general tendencies lean more toward continuing to Read Article
How does Altium Designer improve PCB design workflows? One of the great pleasures in my life is to be the grandfather of—as of now—five grandkids. It’s interesting to watch them go through various stages of learning. There is Caleb, who is four, and Ashley, who is five (though she loves to remind everyone that she is NOT five, but five and seven months). Both are in different stages of learning. Ashley’s question for everything is “WHAT”, and Caleb, his question is “WHY.” What are we doing? Why is Read Article
Major League Hacking Fuels Passion for Engineering Students Judy Warner: Jon, please share briefly about your background and what inspired you to co-found Major League Hacking. Jonathan Gottfried: I grew up tinkering with technology, but when I went to college to study Computer Science it was so much more academic than the creative building that I loved to do. I switched majors to history, started doing programming work as a consultant on the side, and ended up graduating and becoming a Developer Read Article
Kitting out an Electronics Lab from Scratch Having moved country multiple times, and having worked at several companies (or divisions of) without a strong electronics engineering team, I’ve had to set up more than a couple of electronics labs for myself and my clients. Some of these have been on very tight budgets, while others I’ve had a couple of million dollars to play with. I’m going to try to cover a range of budgets in this article, so whether you are a hobbyist, a large company Read Article
Engineering Laptop Buying Guide Mid 2019 Previously, I covered buying a desktop computer for engineering purposes in The Definitive Engineering Computer Buying Guide Mid 2019. I only touched on engineering laptop/notebook computers at that point, if you’re looking at buying an engineering laptop this is the guide for you. If you’re looking for a laptop specifically for engineering work, my expectation is that you are traveling a lot or are a student. Either way, you’re not looking for a Read Article
The Definitive Engineering Computer Buying Guide Mid 2019 If you’re looking for a new PC for engineering (electronic or otherwise), you don’t need to break the bank. This guide is for those of you more focused on engineering than keeping up with the latest PC hardware. Laptop vs Desktop Unless you plan on moving around a lot, or just don’t have a place to put a desktop computer, buying or building a desktop computer instead of a laptop will save you a lot of money and give you significantly better Read Article
Selecting the Best Flex Fabricator What are the key things to consider when selecting a fabricator for flex and rigid flex? When a designer is embarking on their first flex or rigid flex layout the challenge of learning a new material set and new design rules is often compounded by the added challenge of researching and selecting a new fabricator who has the capability to manufacture flexible materials. It really isn’t surprising, there are many fabricators that work with both Read Article
The Impact of Stackup Design on Signal Integrity As noted in several of my blogs as well as those of others, signal integrity is one of those elements within a high speed PCB design that has to be factored in from the start of the design concept. From its inception, signal integrity is carried through from design to board fabrication and final assembly. But, there are aspects where signal integrity is not always at the forefront of the design process, including the creation of the PCB stackup Read Article
Validation Structures for Signal Integrity Let’s say you’ve just received a populated switch or GPU PCB from your favorite PCB fabrication and assembly site. You sit down at your computer and start up your GUI or console to begin transmitting data. Trouble begins—the protocol to bring up the link isn’t working. What do you do? Checking the voltages and jumper positions is easy enough, but what about the signal integrity of your channel? Assuming that you did all of the required Read Article
Building the Right Team for Electronics Design: An Introduction Building and growing the right team for electronics design in today’s job market can be quite challenging. We sometimes feel that as our company grows the talent pool dwindles. We embark on a search for the perfect designers, seeking out individuals who can “do it all.” For some, we idealize this knight in shining armor as a senior engineer, armed with his HP calculator in one hand and electronics textbooks in another. For others it is the whiz Read Article
Avoid Holds for Common Data Package Errors Ever had one of your data packages placed on hold by your fabricator? If so, you are not alone. A significant number of new flexible circuit or rigid flex designs are placed on hold for engineering questions and clarifications almost immediately after the order is placed with the fabricator. Tara Dunn reaches out to Director of Engineering at Summit Interconnect Technologies. His current position is focused on cutting-edge high-density Read Article
Top Tips for Flex Designers from a Fabrication Perspective Sometimes, it can seem like designers and fabricators are speaking two different languages, and maybe they are! But both are working toward the common goal of producing a high quality, reliable, and repeatable printed circuit board. “Back in the old days,” it was common for designers and fabricators to meet face-to-face on a regular basis. Designers became familiar with and understood the basic fabrication processes, including where different Read Article
Mark Forbes on the Evolution of Chip Technology and Origin Stories Welcome back to the OnTrack Podcast. Today we speak with Mark Forbes, Director of Product Marketing at Altium, about the history of IC development and how that directly impacted you and will continue to impact you and your design practices. Capturing some of the history is important so that we know why we do things that we may not have known happened 30 years ago - you’re really going to enjoy this deep dive into what’s happened over the last 30 Read Article
Why Your Root Cause Analysis Starts with Component Traceability At this point, we’ve reached a significant milestone. Having followed through the last article, we now have a very stable and, more importantly, reliable PCB library. Since we can safely use the data in designs, many people decide not to go beyond the review process. You should, however, continue to the fifth pillar if you want to ensure success. So, why the fifth pillar? Because although we have a great structure, we must take the information Read Article