What Skills Are Needed to be a PCB Layout Designer? To readers who have been working in the PCB industry for most of your career, you have probably seen a very diverse group of professionals with varied skill sets and backgrounds. My own background is odd, having come into the profession from optics and lasers, and then focusing on analog and RF electronics. Other designers might get started as engineers or as technicians, and some designers learn how to create beautiful PCB layouts in university Read Article SpaceX and Other Advanced Technologies Require Multi Board PCB and CAD Software Innovations When I was in middle school I used to love to build and fly model rockets. We had a rocket club at school and except for the number of rockets that I littered the trees with, it was a lot of fun. One thing was certain though, although the rockets we launched went up, no one knew exactly where they might come down. Suspended by their parachutes (assuming that those chutes actually deployed as intended), they might land anywhere. Recently I watched Read Article Phalanx, not Failure: PCB Circuit Shielding to Protect Your Design During 7 B.C., Greek soldiers—or hoplites--carried a large, concave, circular pcb shield called the hoplon. Made from bronze and wood, the hoplon or Argive shield protected hoplites from chin to knee and—when overlapped—became the basis for the Greek phalanx. At the beginning of the 20th century, Ethiopians used their shields when fighting against an invading Italian army. The constant banging on the shields by the Ethiopians mingled with war Read Article PCB Designers for SpaceX and Beyond: Yesterday’s Fiction, Tomorrow’s Reality I’ve wanted a career in engineering for as long as I can remember. There were people who could MacGyver something out of nothing and I wanted to be one of those people. I’m sure that watching science fiction on TV added a lot to that. I mean, who wouldn’t want to manipulate technology and control immense power like “Scotty” on Star Trek? I found out that I’m not alone in those dreams—apparently, Scotty was the inspiration for much interest in Read Article Keep Your PCB Assembly and Production Processes Like Your Best Pants: Seamless I lost a button on an old pair of jeans the other day and I was totally unable to repair it. The seams were all sorts of wonky, and while normally you can find extra buttons along the waist there were none to be found. My mom taught me to always check the seams, but sometimes it’s easy to get lazy and forget to do some of the most basic procedures when you want to get an otherwise grueling experience done with. Some brands are more trustworthy Read Article IOT Security Modules: Modular Hardware for Software Engineers From PCB designed in CircuitStudio to Zymbit finished product The Internet of Things - Big Promise or Big Problem? By 2023 the IoT promises to be 50 billion connected devices strong, transacting $8 Trillion of economic value! That’s orders of magnitude bigger and much more complex than anything we have seen before, and current models of development, deployment, device management and IoT security don’t easily translate to this new world disorder Read Article Deterministic Solutions to Solve Skew Problems Avoid getting your design "skewed"! Today's guest is Z-Zero's Founder and CEO, Bill Hargin. Together we will dive into the cause of getting skews in your board. Watch now to get answers to your "skews" questions. Read Article Two 4 Layer PCB Stackups With 50 Ohms Impedance Need a 4-layer PCB stackup that can support high speed components on both sides of the board? Consider these alternatives to the typical 4-layer stackup. Read Article Design to Manufacturing with a Single Mouse Click Imagine if you could design your circuit board, run simulations, source your parts, generate an accurate BOM, generate your output files and simply press a “send to manufacturing” button all within your design environment? While that may sound like a far-off dream, this interview with Misha Govshteyn from MacroFab will give you insight into how they are partnering with Altium to make this dream a reality very soon. Judy Warner: Misha, please Read Article Microstrip PCB Ground Clearance Part 2: How Clearance Affects Losses In a previous article, I provided a discussion and some simulation results on the necessary clearance between impedance controlled traces and nearby grounded copper pour. What we found was that, once the spacing between the pour and the trace becomes too small, the trace becomes an impedance-controlled coplanar waveguide (with or without ground). We also saw that the 3W rule for the spacing between the trace and the grounded copper pour is a bit Read Article Buck Converter Regulator vs LDO for DC, AC, and RF: Which is Best? For small, low-current loads, LDO is usually the best option. What about a buck converter? Learn more about choosing between a buck converter vs. LDO in this guide. Read Article What is Signal Integrity? Learn about the basics of signal integrity and how you can ensure your PCB layout complies with best practices for signal integrity. Read Article MCAD CoDesigner - Rejection Comments MCAD CoDesigner now displays the complete history of accepted and rejected changes, along with any comments the engineer has entered if a change is rejected. The history of changes is shown in MCAD CoDesigner's panel, making the interaction between the electrical and mechanical engineers more transparent. As soon as changes are applied/rejected on one side, the engineer on the other side is notified, and any rejection comments are displayed Read Article ISM Bands Around the World ISM bands (industrial, scientific, and medical) are parts of the RF (radio-frequency) spectrum reserved for general use by, as the name suggests, scientific, medical, and industrial devices. Their creation was in response to specific demands by these industries for access to the RF spectrum to perform functions without having to compete with the traditionally intensive users of RF, the communications, and defense sectors. The critical thing to Read Article Project History in Altium 365 Altium 365’s Project History shows changes to the project's documents and the timeline since the project was launched. Read Article Interactive Commenting in Altium 365 With Altium 365 Interactive Commenting, your comments provide you instant access and complete visibility to any design changes, so your explanations are all in one place. Read Article Beginner’s Guide to ESD Protection Circuit Design for PCBs Circuit protection from transient voltages and currents can be applied with ESD protection circuit designs. Learn more about these circuits in our guide for new engineers. Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page43 Current page44 Page45 Page46 Page47 Page48 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More