PCB Design Resources and Information | Altium

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

Controlling Crosstalk In Connector Pinouts This article will describe this type of crosstalk, the types of disruptions it causes, wherein the design cycle it needs to be factored in and how it can be successfully controlled. Read Article

PCEA is Here to Meet the Challenges of the PCB Design Industry Why is it important t be involved in the PCB Design community? How will it help your career growth? Tomas is here for a Part 2 episode, Watch or listen on the go now. Read Article

Gerber Compare in Altium 365's Online Platform The moment you push your Gerbers to a manufacturer for a DFM inspection, it can be a nerve-wracking experience waiting for a response. Once I push a totally new design to manufacturing, I spend a few sleepless nights waiting for a pro forma quote to come through and the design to pass qualification. It’s not until I get working boards that I breathe a sigh of relief. But before you receive your working boards, there will likely be some back-and Read Article

From RC to Atomic Clocks: All Clock Sources In almost modern circuits, especially whenever digital circuitry is involved, you will find some kind of clock source. All clock sources present a series of tradeoffs regarding stability, reliability, size, power consumption and cost. Luckily for us, such tradeoffs are relatively simple and can be explained almost fully within this single article. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each clock source, from the RC in a 555-powered oscillator, to a Read Article

What They do not Teach you About Capacitors In engineering, we often adopt hundreds of mental shortcuts in order to keep the complexity of the topics we tackle to a manageable level. If we were to run a quantum-physics simulation every time we flash an LED, we would never get anything done. Yet, many of these shortcuts and rules-of-thumb were created in times past , when the electronics industry was radically different than what it is now. Today, we are going to unlearn what a capacitor is Read Article

What They Don’t Teach You About Fluxes Introduction As engineers, we sometimes sit high on our pillowy chairs, looking at the nitty and gritty of the industry — such as the fabrication of the PCB — with a bit of nonchalance. The truth of the matter is, when studied in-depth, PCB fabrication is an extremely complex technological topic that deserves recognition as the most fundamental part of PCB engineering. Unless connectors, conductive adhesive, wire-bonding, or zebra-tape are used Read Article

LearnEMC CEO Todd Hubing on Engineering Consulting Services Kella Knack interviews Dr. Todd Hubing a top EMC expert. They discussed topics about the design challenges in Automotive Industry and tackled EMC concerns at the board level. Read Article

Build the Best CAD Computer for 2020 In search of the best CAD computer? In this blog post, expert Mark Harris shares his top picks of high performance and best value for money CAD computers. Read Article

Thought Leader Article, Dave Huntley, PDF Solutions In an ideal world where ideal products are developed, we would never have any issues resulting from any step in the design, fabrication, assembly, test and field operation processes. But in the real product development world that we inhabit, it is a fact that some level of undesired quality and reliability issues will occur. We continually look for novel ways to address these manufacturing issues especially as the components and the PCBs where Read Article

Best Practices for Using Generic Components in Your PCB Project Anytime you need to create a new design, you’ll start your search for the perfect components to give your new product the functionality it needs. Everything from resistors to complex ICs and powerful processors need to have component footprints and schematic symbols. The strategy is often to start by selecting specific components from the supply chain first, then place them into design documents. One strategy to approach a new design is to place Read Article

Interference Amplitude Distortion I’ve talked about COM and channel analysis in previous blogs, and I’d like to continue the discussion with more visual aids and some example code to enable readers to do some analysis themselves. To start, let’s review what COM is and a high level overview of how COM is calculated. COM is a signal-to-noise ratio of voltage at a point in time. The point in time is the sampling point, and the available signal is the voltage of the pulse response at Read Article

Tips for Updating Old PCB Designs with New Parts Follow our tips for updating old PCB designs with new parts. Altium Designer helps you stay productive and design successfully. Read Article

Build a DC-DC Buck Regulator - Student Project In this article, Mark Harris will go through the implementation of power supplies in a PCB Design project with a student. Curious how it turned out? Read now to learn more. Read Article

Tips for Getting Started In Compact PCB Design How do you tackle a high-density layout PCB design project? Mark Harris gives you a head start in acing your compact PCB design. Read and learn from the expert here. Read Article

PCB Cost Drivers and Designing to Cost Whenever I’m engaging with a client that wants to understand board design and manufacturing costs, they often get surprised when I tell them the major PCB cost drivers and start giving some ballpark estimates. For a startup hardware company, or even a major enterprise that does not normally engage in electronics manufacturing, the numbers can be surprising, especially for low-volume runs. There is this perception that electronics production is Read Article

An Altium Badge of Honor for Engineering Service Bureaus Engineering bureaus are essential to the electronics industry, ensuring high-quality contract work across a wide range of specialties. Altium has partnered with over 800 independent service bureaus over the years, elevating the quality of PCB design. Engineering service companies and contractors using Altium typically provide engineering design services specializing in everything from electrical and mechanical design to signal and power integrity Read Article

What Is Thieving In PCBs And Why Is It Done? In this Article, Expert Kella Knack describes thieving, to what sections of the board it is applied; at what point in the fabrication is it done, how it relates to plating operations; who is responsible for adding thieving to the outer layer artwork and its shortcomings and benefits. Read Article