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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.

Carry Propagation Delay in High Speed Data Processing I sometimes get into text message conversations with friends that go completely haywire. It’s too easy to ask five questions back and forth in a single text, and trying to respond to everything causes our message chain to go completely out of sync. It isn’t until three text messages later that I actually respond to everything my friend asked, and by then we’ve moved on to a completely new topic. Signal delay between logic circuits in a PCB or an Read Article

Comparing Electronic Prices with Supply Chain Visibility Thankfully, I’m no longer a broke college student that has ramen every other day for dinner. But the spending and budgeting habits I developed during that period of my life have stuck with me and served me well into adulthood. I’m not eating ramen anymore, but I still keep an eye on my monthly budget. If you’re considering which components to include in your next PCB and are trying to formulate a production budget, you’ll need access to supply Read Article

Impedance and PCB Etching: Utilizing Altium Designer for Your Board Needs Today’s high-speed PCB designs require that the design engineer take charge of how the circuit board will be built. There was a time where PCB construction specifics were handled by manufacturing engineers in another department, or even in another company. How the board was built up didn’t have an important effect on the signal performance, and the purpose of the design team was to simply create electrical circuitry that performed the function Read Article

Preparing for Manufacturing with PCB Panelization Software If you work in manufacturing or you plan to produce a new product, productivity is the name of the game. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the focus has been producing more widgets per man hour, and PCBs are no different. When you’re bringing a new product to market, why pay more for your order than you need to? One way to improve productivity in a PCB manufacturing process is to use the proper panelization scheme. If you have the right PCB Read Article

Creative Design with Buried Vias in Your Next HDI PCB Once I learned how to use different types of vias on my PCBs, I found that my routing strategies greatly improved, and I was able to reduce my overall board size. Judicious use of the right vias lets you place connections only between the layers you absolutely need for your board to function, instead of making connections that aren’t necessary. As newer devices pack more functionality (and more components) onto a single board, vias are Read Article

Optimizing Electronic Product Documentation for Assembly and Manufacturing I’m the kind of person that can get overwhelmed with too much information. If my wife gives me a choice of restaurants to pick from when we go out to dinner, it feels like my head might explode. Burgers, pizza, tacos, chicken, deli sandwich, family style, Lo Mein, seafood, steaks… my usual response is to look at her and say; “what were my choices again?” She has learned over the years to instead say; “I’m hungry, do you want a burger or some Lo Read Article

Utilizing Layout Options for Rigid-Flex Design If you own an electronic device that folds, bends, twists, or deforms in some way, it most likely contains a rigid-flex PCB. These circuits contain many of the elements in any PCB, like traces, vias, and even components mounted on a flexible ribbon. However, getting started with a comprehensive design for these circuits requires the right software specifically built for rigid-flex boards. Form factors are becoming more specialized and demanding Read Article

Weekly Digest: Printed Electronics and PCB Design We’ve collected everything published this week to bring our readers resources to read, watch and listen to all in one place. This week we’ve explored Printed Electronics on the podcast by discussing materials and modern applications of the technology. We’d like to take an opportunity to share a few other recent resources on the topic: Printed Electronics Whiteboard Video with David Marrachki How to Design Printed Electronics in Altium Designer 19 Read Article

Impedance Controlled Routing for Boards Made in Altium Designer Computing requirements and applications require data be processed at faster rates than ever before. As communication bands start to fill and new wireless communication components hit the market, components need to transmit and receive at higher frequencies and then convert these signals to digital data. Specialized applications like 5G wireless will be operating with mmWave components (24 to 48 GHz). This means that signal integrity issues like Read Article

4:12:02 Lee Ritchey's Highspeed Design Class Learn everything you need to know about High Speed Design from Lee Ritchey. This class was recorded at AltiumLive Munich Watch Video

Accessing New Components Faster: Can the Cloud Make a Difference? Let’s face it — components matter. We conducted some research in the middle of 2018 that focused on the role of simulation and verification in the development of board systems. In that survey-based study, we included a question about the issues that were making board design more challenging. One of the top responses was the pressure to incorporate new components into designs. That, of course, shouldn’t come as a surprise. Requirements for board Read Article

Printed Electronics Applications and Innovations The use of printed electronics is on the rise, and Chris Hunrath from Insulectro is here to talk about how to design for it. Learn about the different applications and design possibilities that are available to PCB designers. The proliferation of more advanced printed electronics materials from polyester film, polycarbonate, to transfer film for fabric and flexible circuitry have enabled interesting new applications for printed electronics Read Article

1:31:06 Overcoming Part Selection and Sourcing Challenges with ActiveBOM Sign up to pre-register for AltiumLive next year or try Altium Designer today. Watch Video

34:38 Wind Tunnel Race Car Models and Custom Prototype Devices Design Have you never been asked to increase work efficiency when designing electronic prototypes? How did you handle your PCB design Watch Video

45:50 Design for Test: Determining the Value of the JTAG Interface During the Schematic Stage After a brief explanation about modern test methodologies and in-system programming capabilities via the JTAG interface on chip, board, and Watch Video

42:34 Power Delivery Analysis in Battery Powered Wireless Products Battery powered wireless devices can present a number of design challenges, especially the combination of being space constrained along with Watch Video

46:09 Injection Molded Structural Electronics: Creating Smart Surfaces with Electronic Functionality Learn about Injection Molded Structural Electronics and creating smart surfaces from the experts at Tactotek. View the presentation slides: Sign Watch Video