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The electronics industry is no stranger to compliance with environmental restrictions and regulations. These regulations are necessary for the health of end users, and it’s the responsibility of designers, component manufacturers, and materials manufacturers to ensure their products can comply with environmental regulations. Today, the major environmental challenge which companies are starting to address is the persistence of PFAS in many...

Sustainability in electronics encompasses environmental, social, and corporate governance aspects, and IPC aims to make it easier for companies by providing standards, education, and advocacy to navigate these complex issues. In this episode, we are very pleased to have Kelly Scanlon of IPC to enlighten us about the importance of sustainability in the electronics industry and how you can contribute as a PCB designer. Listen to this Podcast: ...

Intro Interfacing DDR volatile memory to FPGA without prior experience can initially seem quite daunting. Despite an FPGA’s inherent flexibility, where we could assume that we can connect the external DDR memory’s I/O seemingly anywhere to any free pins, we still need to consider many constraints. For instance, where to place certain DDR memory pin groups, what voltages to run the banks at, what clocks we need and where we attach them, how to...

Although a power supply might look like it produces clean power on an oscilloscope, power supply operation in a real system can create noise or be susceptible to noise. Power rails often need to serve power to multiple devices in a system at the same voltage, but with clean power in different portions of the system. When that is the case, noise on the main rail may need to be cleaned up before being provided to different portions of your system....

We have a seasoned favorite guest in the podcast today. John Mitchell the President and CEO of IPC talks about his new book Firing Your Hiring Habits. This is a very insightful conversation! We tackled acquisition, retaining and upskilling talents in your team. PCB designers, aspiring entrepreneurs and leaders in any company will surely benefit from this discussion. Make sure to watch through the end and check the additional resources below. Li...

Back in the early days of ECAD software, not all designers would have access to a PCB trace impedance calculator. However, they still might need to design a high-speed PCB or an RF PCB, and that means there is a trace impedance requirement. For differential pairs, this meant that there was a differential pair impedance requirement, or rather an odd-mode impedance requirement. No matter what the case was, if you did not have an impedance...

When we talk about packaging, substrate-like PCBs, and fine-line PCBs, we are collectively referencing an area where PCB fabrication processing is pushing to the limit. This area is ultra-HDI, where the typical features in a PCB are scaled down to very small values. These more advanced capabilities enable traditional design practices with larger BGAs, but instead scaled into very fine pitches (0.3 mm) requiring tight spacing and linewidth. These...

The ability to bend, flex and fold are one of the primary benefits of flexible circuit materials and while there are several examples of flexible circuit designs that withstand hundreds of thousands of even millions of flexes, the reality is that designs that are dynamically flexing often have had the design updated many times before reaching optimal performance.  The good news for designers new to flexible circuit designs is that most flexible...

Troubleshooting power supply current handling issues is crucial to achieving optimal performance of your electronic devices. In this video, we will explore the common reasons why a power supply fails to handle the defined output current and provide practical solutions to solving these issues. Whether you are designing a power supply or repairing an existing one, understanding the structure of the power supply is key to quickly solving these...