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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.

PCB silkscreen Your Guide to PCB Silkscreen PCB silkscreen helps ensure your board is easy to read and test, and it aids assembly by clearly indicating component locations. Read Article
Voltage Derating for Ceramic Capacitors Voltage Derating for Ceramic Capacitors Operating just about any type of capacitor below its maximum rated voltage ensures a longer operating life. Such components’ performance will degrade in response to the application of voltages approaching their rated limit and exposure to high temperatures. By choosing to limit the applied voltage, such effects can be reduced. Ceramic capacitors are one of the most common types of capacitors that are in use today thanks to their compact packaging Read Article
Resistor Derating to Improve Mean Time Between Failure Resistor Derating to Improve Mean Time Between Failure All resistors have a specified power rating that determines the maximum energy they can convert without its performance degrading or the component failing. Read now to learn more. Read Article
Methods to Protect your Circuit Methods to Protect your Circuit Overvoltage, overcurrent, and heat are the three most likely events that can destroy our expensive silicon-based components or reduce our product’s life expectancy. The effects are often quite instant, but our product might survive several months of chronic overstress before giving up the ghost in some cases. Without adequate protection, our circuit can be vulnerable to damage, so what should we do? Or do we need to do anything? For instance, if Read Article
Low-Cost Verification for Digital and Analog Filters Low-Cost Verification for Digital and Analog Filters In Low Cost Solutions for Automated Hardware in the Loop Testing, we reviewed the idea of using low-cost testing devices to validate our hardware designs. In this article I want to zoom in on a specific application that can have a high barrier to entry when it comes to verification: Digital Signal Processing (DSP), specifically signal filtering. Rather than belabor the topic of DSP I will define it simply as “digitizing signals that come into Read Article
PCB fabrication notes Decoding PCB Fabrication Notes Your PCB fabrication notes contain important information that ensures your board can be manufactured exactly as you intend. See what you should include and what these mean. Read Article
AltiumLive Co-locates with IPC Apex Expo AltiumLive Co-locates with IPC Apex Expo Two executives are joining us in today’s episode. Ted Pawela of Altium and IPC VP Dave Bergman. Join us and learn what’s coming in AltiumLive 2022 and IPC Apex 2022. Read Article
connect grounds power supply How to Connect Grounds in an Isolated Power Supply PCB Layout Your isolated power supply PCB layout should still have connected grounds, but how can you physically make this connection? Learn more in our guide. Read Article
Power supplies - Buy, Outsource, or Design Power supplies - Buy, Outsource, or Design There is more stress on a power supply compared to most of the other parts of our design. Mark Harris addresses the most pertinent issues to consider and, in several places, adopt a checklist format for you to use. Read now. Read Article
PCB connectors shock-resistant Altium Designer Makes Connector Creation and Placement Easy See how you can select, find, and place shock-resistant PCB connectors in your layout with Altium Designer. Read Article
56:38 Designing PCBs 5x Faster Despite the Pandemic | Customer Success | Kinetic Vision Kinetic Vision, a Cincinnati-based design, engineering, and development firm, is an innovator’s one-stop shop for transforming even the wildest ideas Watch Video
MOSFETs in series Should You Use Power MOSFETs in Series? In this article, we look in greater depth at how to properly use combinations of MOSFETs in series compared to their use in parallel. Read Article
Comparing All Serial Communications Protocols Comparing All Serial Communications Protocols At the end of this series, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of each type of Serial Communication Protocol available to transfer information between microcontrollers, data-producing, and data-processing peripherals, and other intelligent devices. Read Article
Data-Driven Smart Manufacturing Data-Driven Smart Manufacturing In this episode, Andrew Scheuermann, CEO, and Co-founder of Arch, shares his company’s mission to drive digitization and sustainable innovation in electronics manufacturing. Read Article
multiphase buck converter RF power supply Designing a Multiphase Buck Converter for an RF Power Supply Consider a multiphase buck converter for the regulator stage in your RF power supply. Alongside envelope tracking, you can ensure high efficiency power delivery and transmission. Read Article
best circuit design software Use the Best Circuit Design Software With SPICE and Schematic Capture Use the best circuit design software to create your next electronic design and start your PCB layout. Read Article
Serial Communications Protocols - CAN and LIN Serial Communications Protocols - CAN and LIN In this article, Part 8 in our series of articles looking at different Serial Communication Protocols, we discuss the popular CAN and LIN protocols combined. Read Article