Learn to Manage Your BOM Inventory for Smooth Production Runs I’ve recently gotten into fermenting kombucha (which, I am well aware, is about the most hipster thing I could have said), and I ordered a handful of different-sized mason jars online in order to store it. Mason jars are reliable as ever but with the increasing popularity of home-fermenting and brewing, they’re one part of an industry trying to optimize how we store. During my ordering process alone, I had twelve tabs open of marginally different Read Article Packing and Shipping Your PCBs: Best PCB Packaging Standards I mailed my last Christmas present yesterday, a few weeks after the holidays are over. I’m only a little embarrassed; I like to do a very precise job with wrapping even if I’m not terribly concerned with punctuality. The package was for a friend overseas who had a craving for her favorite American candies. Let me tell you: a beautiful wrapping job on a bag of fun-size Butterfingers is no small feat. Circuit board packing and shipping are more Read Article How is Your Design Affected by PCB Edge Clearance? We are often tasked with fitting a plethora of things into a small window of space. Whether it be cramming loads of info into our heads moments before a final exam, doing all twenty sightseeing activities into an eight-hour “vacation day,” or strategically stacking our Thanksgiving plates full of deliciousness, we must be aware of the boundaries given, and how each unique item interacts with the items surrounding (heaven forbid the mashed Read Article Getting Started with PCB Design NOTE: This Guide was written for Altium Designer 18. For the latest Altium Designer has to offer, please visit https://my.altium.com/altium-designer/getting-started . This tutorial will start with a sketch of a circuit and will take you through the process of representing the circuit as a schematic, implementing the circuit as a printed circuit board, and generating the outputs required for board fabrication. This tutorial is based on an astable Read Article Modern DFM, Princeton University, and Uniquely Shaped PCB Design OnTrack Newsletter January 2018 On Track Newsletter VOL. 1 No 8 Happy New Year and welcome to the January edition of the Altium® On Track Newsletter! In Designer Spotlight, we bring you a fresh perspective on DFM and prototyping with industry veteran Dirk Stans, owner of Belgium-based PCB manufacturer Eurocircuits. In Next Gen Innovators, we give you a glimpse under the hood of another impressive Formula SAE contender, Princeton University’s Racing Electric team. In the On Read Article Create a BOM That Works for Everyone For me, socks have always been about utility: they keep my feet from getting blisters. Yet for years I have spent far too much time sorting and organizing my socks to match up the colors. Browns with browns, blues with blues, and yellows with… well, to tell the truth, I would just throw those away. Yellow socks were just too weird for me. Then one day I decided to simplify my life and I replaced all my colored socks with plain black socks Read Article Thermal Pads vs Thermal Paste: The Best Choice for Mounting Your Heatsinks I used to work as a construction assistant, where my primary responsibility was to level properties before the heavy concrete trucks lay down a level foundation. It was a tedious and taxing job, but something that is quite crucial for a building for it to withstand years of use and abuse. I would run through a spit of land with nothing more than a shovel ensuring that the ground is flat and level within an inch tolerance. One inch leaves very Read Article The Difference Between Breadboard Projects and Prototype Layouts I was just making myself some lunch and cutting up some fixings for a sandwich when it occurred to me that I was using a breadboard. Although I’ve always thought of it as a cutting board, it is actually what my grandmother would have called a breadboard; a flat piece of wood for slicing bread. For those of us in the electronics world, a “breadboard” is something very different. So, I decided to look it up. I was surprised to learn that in the Read Article From Shack to Shed: What is a Bill of Materials and How Does it Help I’m planning on building a new utility shed in my backyard; the original shed was old and worn out when I first bought the house 20 years ago and it absolutely has to be replaced now. In fact, if it wasn’t for the thick coating of rust that seems to be protecting it, I’m not sure that it would even be standing anymore. I haven’t used a hammer and nails in my PCB designs before, so I ordered some plans on how to build this “Deluxe Backyard Storage Read Article Soup-Up Your CAD Tools as a 64-Bit PCB Designer For all the hazards that come along with older cars—rips in their vinyl, paint missing, smoking, rusted frames, and oil leaking—I will admit they are fun. I owned a 1969 Chevy Impala and for all the bad, one thing going for it was that it had been built to go fast. Even though it had a 4 barrel Quadrajet carburetor on a 350 cu in small block driving 350 horses into a Muncie 4 speed transmission, it still would only carry 6 people (well, and the Read Article Learning Current Density: Don’t Pop the Balloon One area of PCB design that probably does not get the attention that it deserves is current density. Current density in a PCB trace is much like the pressure in a balloon. You want to squeeze as much air into the balloon as you can, but if you put too much: boom! The same is true of PCB traces many times. We want the traces to be as small as possible yet carry the most current possible, and if the trace carries too much: boom! For PCBs, that boom Read Article ALTIUM EVALUATION GUIDE FOR PADS® USERS Read Article Five Tips Guaranteed to Reduce PCB Design Time Most engineers and PCB designers are creatures of habit. Once a roadmap has been prepared for creating successful products, that is the road most often traveled. We often don’t have the time to experiment with new techniques or look for new, innovative ways to accomplish tasks, and while that is not always a bad thing, it does not bode well if our competitors are creating successful products faster and cheaper than we are. To maintain your Read Article Net Clearance Rules Designers now have the ability to set specific parameters between same net objects when placing primitives on a board. Restricting space allows you to maintain clearance for primitives, and restricting primitives of the same net to a set clearance ultimately allows greater flexibility when forcing electrical primitives to interact with other electrical objects in a specific manner. INTRODUCTION Clearance rules set requirement constraints that Read Article Which is better for Altium WP PCB: polygons or planes? PCB designers have two choices when implementing large copper areas for power and ground regions: polygons or planes. Users often ask which is better a polygon or a plane for implementing power and ground nets, but both design features produce similar end results. Once you’ve decided which type of structure is most useful in your PCB polygon layout, you can place the structure you need for your design using the right set of CAD tools in your PCB Read Article Not That Much Force: Software for Updating PCB Layouts and Avoiding Redesigns The other night I went to see the new Star Wars movie, “The Last Jedi," and although I really enjoyed the movie I found myself laughing out loud during one sequence. I wasn’t laughing because of the humor of the movie, or a silly looking alien—there were plenty of those to go around already. Instead I was laughing because for one brief sequence they showed some electronic circuitry that appeared to be composed of what looked like thru-hole Read Article The Best PCB Component Placement Software Helps You to Efficiently Finish Your Placement Remember when we were kids and our parents gave us permission to do something fun but first we had to finish our chores? Now, taking out the garbage, folding clothes, and mowing the grass I’d prefer compared to budgeting for vacations or renovating bathrooms. Getting the chores completed lets me move on to something that is at least significantly more convenient and in many cases more fun. When I’m designing, I have similar chore preferences and Read Article Pagination First page « First Previous page ‹‹ Page150 Current page151 Page152 Page153 Page154 Page155 Next page ›› Last page Last » Load More