Naming Convention and PCB Data Management Introduction There is a poem by John Godfrey Saxe that was from a Hindu fable about the six blind men of Indostan who went to see the Elephant. The first went up and felt the side of the Elephant and concluded that he was touching a wall. The second went up and felt a tusk, exclaimed: “This is not a wall at all; it is a spear.” The third blind man, feeling the huge trunk, decided that it was a snake. The fourth man felt the elephant’s leg and Read Article Pad Stack Design And Fabrication—Part 2, Thermal Ties As noted in part one of this article , there are a variety of aspects regarding manufacturability and reliability that come into play as part of the pad stack design process. When it comes to soldering through-hole components into the plated through-holes in a PCB when the pin connects to a plane, you have to thermally isolate those holes from the planes to ensure successful soldering of those components. This is accomplished via a feature called Read Article Getting Connected: Altium’s User Community Forums The Altium design environment is a complex and sophisticated set of software tools. Not surprisingly, becoming proficient with these tools will take some time, and you’ll need to practice every step of the design process from beginning to end. So what happens if you get stuck along the way? The online documentation includes a “Getting Started” tutorial and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, and Altium also has a customer support system to Read Article Pad Stack Design And The Fabrication Process—part 1 “Pad Stack” is a term used by PCB layout personnel and PCB fabricators to refer to all of the features associated with a hole in a PCB. The hole can be plated or unplated, through-hole or blind or buried. Components of the pad stack include the drilled hole size, the finished hole size, the size of pads plotted on the inner and outer layers, the clearances in planes through which the holes drilled in the PCB pass, and the clearances in the solder Read Article PCB Design for Manufacturing Report Cards One of my earlier BLOGs talked about PWB Cost Drivers . What is required for the printed wiring board (PWB) Value Delivery Chain is a method of predicting the cost of fabrication for the printed circuit board (PCB) substrate, as well as the cost of PCB assembly and PCB assembly testing. With these tools and the wiring density metrics, tradeoffs can be performed early in the product's life. Many call this Design for Manufacturing and Assembly , I Read Article Advanced Electronics: Understanding Design Challenges For Space Applications Part 2 In the previous article we saw that when a particle that hits a BJT with enough energy, part of this energy may get absorbed by the component and may create unwanted current between the emitter and the collector. If this issue is neglected, we may have some malfunctions. This phenomenon is called SEE (Single Event Effect). It is the responsibility of the designer to design the board in a way that will be SEE tolerant. As I wrote in the previous Read Article Production-Grade Raspberry Pi Cluster Design This is what most people see when they think of a Raspberry Pi Cluster Just this year, two IBM-built supercomputers, named Summit and Sierra, were installed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, respectively. These two supercomputers overtook China’s Sunway TaihuLight system at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. While your next edge Read Article Build or Buy: Which Route to go as an Engineer? Are you hesitant to buy an off-the-shelf SBC? You can build it quickly with the right modular hardware design tools There is nothing more fun than embarking on a new project, either as an entrepreneurial venture or for your own personal enjoyment. As an engineer working on an embedded systems hardware project, you will get to a point where you have to make that critical decision: which important portions of your system should you build, and which Read Article How Modular Design Helps Hardware Startups Launch and Grow Hardware is hard... those three words best describe how difficult it can be to break into the hardware market and launch a new electronic product. This may be difficult to accept, but between PCB and enclosure design, planning for production, prototyping and testing, redesigns, and challenges sourcing semiconductors, launching a new hardware product can be a major ordeal. Pebble , one of the most anticipated success stories in the hardware Read Article Long Live EDA: Modular System-level Circuit Engineering Online Modular instruments like this are much easier with online electronics design software If you’re familiar with the electronics design automation (EDA) industry, you’ll find plenty of similarities. These important software platforms have been the mainstay of electronics development since the 1980’s. Although there is plenty of differentiation between different products, as well as various levels of integration, these platforms have always seemed Read Article PianoArc: A Circular Piano Fit for Princes and Mega Stars Earlier this year I met a fascinating designer at the San Diego Altium Users Group. Dave Starkey told me about a circular keyboard piano he and his partners had designed and built called the Pianoarc. In this interview, learn more about Starkey’s background and how he came to co-create this unique instrument that now graces a Middle Eastern Palace and is played around the world by PianoArc visionary Brockett Parsons, keyboardist for Lady Gaga Read Article Avoid Common Pad and Via Problems in Your Last-Minute PCB DFM Check You’ll want to examine your pads and vias for these components during a DFM check There are times where you’ll need to make last minute changes to your board before you send it off to a manufacturer. Similarly, you may need to modify an existing design before sending it off for manufacturing, which may require swapping components as well as slightly rearranging traces and other components. This can occur due to unavailable components or simple Read Article RF Signal Chain Design for FMCW Chirped Radar Systems If you could hear the output from your chirped radar system, it might sound like a brahminy starling In automotive and UAV radar applications, radar signals are amplified throughout the signal chain. Amplification is critical for ensuring the reflected signal can be accurately detected and for maximizing the range and resolution of your radar system. Although there are some ICs that integrate an entire signal chain into a single package, these Read Article RF Power Amplifier Impedance Matching at Microwave and mmWave Frequencies According to MarketWatch , the overall market for RF amplifiers is expected to surpass $27 billion by 2023. So where are all of these RF amplifiers expected to be used? You can thank 5G and the expansion of cellular networks in general for a healthy portion of the expected growth. For the PCB designers out there, RF amplifier impedance matching becomes an important design point, especially with high power amplifiers. Large-signal RF Amplifier Read Article Cooling Fan Electrical Noise Reduction in Your PCB Who hasn’t opened up their PC or laptop and taken a long look at its fans and heatsinks? If you’re working with high speed components, high frequency components, or power components, then you’ll need to devise some sort of cooling strategy to remove heat from these components. Unless you want to use the nuclear option and install an evaporative cooling unit or build a water cooling system, you’ll get the best results with the smallest form factor Read Article Happy Holden the Father of HDI PCBs Happy Holden, father of High-Density Interconnect, discusses his career at HP, his work with AI, and delivers cost-effective insights on multi-layers and miniaturization. Read Article Set Up a Low Power Rugged Network Attached Storage Server Building an Internet-of-Things device , or perhaps recording continuous video, requires a low-power, high capacity storage system, preferably utilizing inexpensive hardware. In specific cases, your device might be remote or might deal with high vibration intensities, like being mounted on a piece of industrial equipment, on a robot, or in a vehicle. Such circumstances make solid-state storage indispensable. Raspberry Pi? I started out looking at Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page89 Current page90 Page91 Page92 Page93 Page94 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More