Using PCB Thermal Simulation and Analysis Software in Your Design Workflow Streamline your PCB thermal analysis workflow with Altium Designer and Altium 365. Read Article A Review of PCB Thermal Resistance Management with Thermal Vias Design of PCBs and thermal management are intimately linked as thermal problems are known to significantly reduce the useful lifetime of a circuit board and components. Heat that is generated in a circuit board by active and passive components tends to be confined near the components, leading to a high-temperature increase due to the low thermal conductivity of most circuit board substrates. Frequent cycling of a circuit board and components Read Article Thermal Relief Design Guide The CAD tools in Altium Designer are ideal for thermal relief design for SMD pads and through-hole pins. Read Article PCB Thermal Resistance: Theory and Management The thermal conductivity of your PCB material stackup and arrangement of copper conductors are important factors that determine the thermal performance of your circuit board. You will likely need to include strategically placed thermal vias, a heat sink on each active component and power electronics, and active cooling measures near any other heat source on your circuit board. Copper in printed circuits has high thermal conductivity, while FR4 Read Article Thermal Conductivity and Thermal Management for Printed Circuit Boards The physical properties of your PCB substrates and copper conductors are the primary factors that determine how it will perform under pressure. Thermal properties, rigidity, dispersion, relative permittivity, and more will affect signal integrity, thermal management, and mechanical performance of your circuit board. When it comes to thermal conductivity, choosing the right substrate can help you combat temperature rise in your board with Read Article Managing Your Circuit Board Parts in Altium Designer There’s a multitude of component manufacturers, and each produces a huge number of components. No one can keep track of all information for every circuit board part. PCB components contain more information than just electrical specifications. Your PCB components also contain pin layouts, schematic symbols, SPICE model information, and even 3D models. Today’s PCB design teams need solutions to help them keep their circuit board parts and libraries Read Article Design by Finding RF Interference Analysis with Altium Radio frequency interference analysis is one important task in high frequency and high-speed PCB design. Interference at radio frequencies can arise due to many simple design errors, but these problems can be easy to spot with the right PCB design tools. When you need to identify areas of a design that can create RFI problems, an automated rules-driven toolset can help. If you’re unclear on what RFI is or how you can spot areas in a design that Read Article PCB Routing: How to Ensure PCB Impedance Control with Formulas and Resources High-speed signals and high-frequency signals both have one thing in common: the need for impedance-controlled routing on low loss, low dispersion interconnects. PCB impedance control can be difficult to achieve without the right set of routing tools and an integrated impedance calculator in your design tools. Most impedance calculators use a basic equation that does not accurately represent real traces on PCB substrates and does not correctly Read Article How to Design and Route Your RF Filter PCB Layout RF PCBs and mixed-signal systems are challenging for many designers. Careful attention must be paid to the PCB stackup design, process for designing transmission lines, placement of components, and floorplanning the PCB layout to ensure predictable return path. Many RF PCB layout designs will include printed elements, like an RF filter, antenna, isolation structures, and unique waveguide geometries. RF systems can make copious use of RF filters Read Article PCB Heat Sinks: Thermal Pad vs. Paste in Your Circuit Board Design Using thermal pads vs paste is an important decision when deciding how to best attach a heat sink to a power-hungry component like a CPU. Each of these materials gives the important benefit of heat transfer and reduced temperature, but there are other points to be considered when using a heat sink with a thermal pad or thermal paste. Assembly houses also need to know which option a design will use, requiring that clear documentation be provided Read Article How to Make Copper-Clad Boards With the Best PCB Layout Software Some designers prefer to build their own prototypes in their home or company lab as it gives them a firsthand view of potential quality problems in their boards. While designers can go this route if they’re comfortable using etchants and cleaning solutions needed to remove copper from PCB laminates, they’ll need design tools to create their etching stencils. An at-home designer will need to procure PCB copper boards to use for etching and create Read Article Designing Coplanar Waveguide with Ground in Your PCB RF designs that run at high frequency need high isolation from digital components, power subsystems, and external sources of noise that can degrade signal quality. One option in many RF designs is coplanar waveguide with ground as this can be used with controlled impedance routing on external layers. When you need to use coplanar waveguide with ground routing in your RF PCB designs, use the industry’s best set of routing features. Only Altium Read Article Your Complete Guide to PCB Thermal Analysis The physical properties of your PCB substrate and copper conductors are the main factors determining how a circuit board will heat up during operation. Circuit board thermal analysis techniques aim to predict when and where a board will heat up during operation, as well as how hot the board will get. This important part of the analysis is geared to ensure component-level and board-level reliability, and it can influence many design decisions Read Article The Best Capacitor Circuit Simulator for PCB Design A capacitor is a fundamental element in integrated circuits and in PCB design, and it’s hard to think of a circuit that doesn’t contain at least one capacitor. A capacitor’s behavior and interaction with other components in a circuit generally needs to be simulated to ensure the design will operate as intended. Capacitors can provide filtering, blocking, and power stability behavior depending on their use in a circuit, and a capacitor circuit Read Article How to Design an AC to DC Converter Circuit in Altium Designer An AC-to-DC converter circuit does exactly as its name implies: it takes a harmonic AC input and converts it to a DC output. These circuits are simply from a high level and when operating at low power on a breadboard, but a real AC to DC converter circuit is more complex than just a transformer and rectifier circuit. Finding the right components for these circuits and running accurate power simulations takes the right PCB design software that Read Article The Best Power Supply Circuit Design Tools With Simulation From bench-top power supplies to power regulator circuits on embedded boards, designers often need to create a custom power supply circuit design and layout. These circuits sound simple to design, but it takes the SPICE-based simulation and verification tools in Altium Designer to create a stable, high-quality power supply circuit design. Altium Designer gives you much more than circuit design and circuit simulation tools; you can easily create Read Article PCB Footprint Creation and Reuse with Altium 365 Many components come in standardized packages, but not all component manufacturers provide CAD models and schematic symbols in their PCB libraries. These CAD models show the location of pins, silkscreen information, centroids, and pads as they should appear in your PCB layout. PCB component creation can get repetitive when you need to apply an existing PCB footprint to a new component. With the component creation tools in Altium Designer and the Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page54 Current page55 Page56 Page57 Page58 Page59 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More