PCB Design Resources and Information

Explore Altium's Resource hub to discover content from blog posts and design guides to technical white papers, all gathered together for your convenience and written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

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More New Features in Altium Designer 22.5 June 24, 2022 ONTRACK BI-WEEKLY New This Month in Altium Designer The newest features available in Altium Designer 22.5 have been released and are available for download. To upgrade your AD22 to the newest version and take advantage of all available upgrades, navigate to the Updates page from the Extensions and Updates window. Here’s a few of the changes you’ll find in the newest version of Altium Designer: Filtered Text Search - Have you ever Read Article

IPC CEO John Mitchell on the Supporting American Printed Circuit Boards Act Supply chain security and having access to trusted manufacturers in the US would be an ideal outcome of the Printed Circuit Board Act. John Mitchell talks about the role of the IPC in influencing the creation of laws relating to the electronics industry. Watch this podcast episode now or listen on the go. Read Article

The Electronics Behind a Haunting Attraction In this episode, a returning guest Gabriel Goldstein shares the electronics behind the thrills in escape rooms. He also generously gives some valuable advice on finding your niche and starting your own business in the electronics industry. Watch and learn from this episode. Read Article

New Features and Upgrades in Altium Designer 22.5 June 10, 2022 ONTRACK BI-WEEKLY New This Month in Altium Designer The newest features available in Altium Designer 22.5 have been released and are available for download. To upgrade your AD22 to the newest version and take advantage of all available upgrades, navigate to the Updates page from the Extensions and Updates window. Here’s a few of the changes you’ll find in the newest version of Altium Designer: More Productive - Improvements in the Read Article

Occam Process: Assembly without Solder Have you heard of assembly without solder? In this episode, Joseph (Joe) Fjelstad founder and president of Verdant Electronics talks about the Occam process – a solderless assembly for electronics. Read Article

Resilient, Robust and Trusted Supply Chain

The Benefits of Diversifying PCB Industry Supply Chain To develop a resilient ecosystem, understanding the root cause of the PCB industry supply chain shortages is a must. Listen to Travis Kelly and Zach’s insightful conversation about PCB supply chain shortages. Read Article

Altium Helps De-Risk Your Bill of Materials The new Supply Chain Resilience report from Spectra helps you identify at-risk parts in your BOM. Stay ahead of inventory challenges with Spectra. Read Article

Get your free EDDI report from Spectra, powered by Nexar Spectra from Nexar brings you the Electronic Design to Delivery Index (EDDI), a free supply chain data report product. Gain the supply chain visibility you need with the EDDI from Spectra. Read Article

Accessible Trustworthy Data for PCB Designers

Easily Find Electronic Components for Your Next PCB Design Dan Schoenfelder joins us today to discuss the most extreme problems the PCB design industry faces: supply shortages, particularly the semi-conductor products and microcontrollers. Read Article

Making Codes Tangible Through Electronic Projects In this episode, Bill Kolicoski, the creator of Taste the Code Youtube channel, inspires young electronic designers to start learning through creating. Read Article

SAP (Semi-Additive PCB Process) – Top 5 Questions Regarding Stack Up This blog addresses commonly asked questions related to circuit layer stack up in relation to the new technology of SAP (Semi-Additive PCB Process). Read Article

The Exciting Path to Mechatronics Engineering Fergus Downey, Ph.D. student and research assistant at Curtin University in Western Australia (WA), is joining us in this episode and sharing his journey to becoming a Mechatronic Engineer. This will be a fun episode! Fergus will discuss his involvement with the Binar Space Program and give us an overview of CubeSat Read Article

3D Printing Circuit Boards for Fast Prototyping

3D Printed Circuit Boards for Fast Prototyping Sean Patterson joins us to share the technology behind DragonFly IV®, the multi-material 3D printer for electronics fabrication. He will walk us through its current capabilities, and how it can bring your electronic prototypes to the next level. Watch this episode or listen on the go. Read Article

Analog Solar Tracker Project Learn about light sensors while building an analog solar panel tracking system with Mark Harris. This open-source project covers multi-channel design, window comparators, driving motors, and photosensors. Read Article

Risk Vs. Reward During the recent IPC APEX expo, there was a lot of discussion about SAP, or semi-additive PCB processes. As with any new technology in PCB manufacturing, there were people that are excited to jump right in and start designing with much finer feature sizes and work through the inevitable changes to the traditional thought process. Others are in a let’s wait and see mode and of course there are a few skeptics there as well. There were a few stand Read Article

Nucleo Shield Multi Board Design Learn how easy it is to create multi-board projects in this practical project article. Mark Harris covers why you would break larger boards into sub assemblies, and connection options between sub assembly boards. Read Article

EnviroSense WiFi Weather Station Multiboard Design

Wireless Module Designs: EnviroSense WiFi Weather Station Multiboard Get started with surface mounted sub-assemblies in this hands-on wireless module designs project. Mark Harris demonstrates the advantages of multi-board assemblies when creating your own surface mount module. Read Article