Skip to main content
Mobile menu
PCB Design
Altium Designer
World’s Most Popular PCB Design Software
CircuitStudio
Entry Level, Professional PCB Design Tool
CircuitMaker
Free PCB design for makers, open source and non-profits
Why Switch to Altium
See why and how to switch to Altium from other PCB design tools
Solutions
For Enterprise
The Last Mile of Digital Transformation
For Parts and Data
Extensive, Easy-to-Use Search Engine for Electronic Parts
Altium 365
Resources & Support
Explore Products
Free Trials
Downloads
Extensions
Free Altium 365 Tools
Online PCB Viewer
Resources & Support
Renesas / Altium CEO Letter To Customers
All Resources
Support Center
Documentation
Webinars
Altium Community
Forum
Bug Crunch
Ideas
Training & Education
Professional Training / Certification
Comprehensive Career Training for Altium Software and Design Tools
University/Educators & Students
Academic Licenses, Training, Sponsorships and Certificates for Higher Education
Store
Search Open
Search
Search Close
Sign In
Components
Main menu
Home
PCB Design
Collaboration
Component Creation
Data Management
Design Outputs
ECAD/MCAD
HDI Design
High Speed Design
Multi-Board
PCB Layout
PCB Routing
PCB Supply Chain
Power Integrity
RF Design
Rigid Flex
Schematic Capture
Signal Integrity
Simulation
Software
Altium 365
Altium Designer
Enterprise Solutions
PDN Analyzer
Upverter
Education
Programs
Altium Academy
Engineering News
Guide Books
Newsletters
Podcasts
Projects
Training Courses
Webinars
Whitepapers
FREE TRIALS
PCB Components
The Importance of Compliance Awareness in Circuit and PCB Design
I had an English professor once who was a lot of fun, but man, his requirements for essay writing were brutal. Making a decent grade required a ton of work. I had to check and recheck my paper’s content to make sure that every detail he asked for was painstakingly covered. These tedious rituals, though annoying and painful, helped teach me how to be thorough with my research. This was something that came in handy when I began my career and had to
Read Article
How to Plan Ahead to Meet PCB Disposal Requirements
When I was a kid and learned to solder, I had a mentor that kept an old coffee can on his soldering bench labeled “Lead Waste - DO NOT THROW IN TRASH.” Wire snippings, solder bits, and the random metal detritus that accumulates on a soldering mat all went in there. Apparently, it got full every few years and he took it to a local electronics recycling place to make sure he wasn’t adding any lead or heavy metals to the environment. I was shocked
Read Article
How PCB BOM Management Tools Facilitate Efficient Communication Between Departments
Many years ago, I was a junior PCB learning the ropes of the trade in a large company. To help me understand the entire product production process, my boss took me on a tour of the manufacturing floor. The people that I met there were not rude per say, but I noticed a subtle attitude of, “Oh, you’re one of them” that puzzled me. The reason for their annoyance I found out later was that they would routinely suffer delays because of bad information
Read Article
Bill of Materials in Supply Chain Management: Part Inventory Control
Sending information to other departments and personnel is a regular part of the PCB design process. For purchasing, their part of this process starts when engineering sends them a bill of materials () for a new design. At this point in the design cycle, the is a preliminary document and it is constantly changing as are added, updated, or eliminated during the design cycle. The problem for purchasing is that this constantly changing data impacts
Read Article
PCB BOM Management: Spend Less Time on Your BOM and Reduce Delays in Manufacturing
Real-time solutions with management tools Cafeterias in colleges, summer camps, and schools are often known for serving up food that has a consistent quality and similar ingredients. For the kids who are tired of eating spaghetti with meatballs, this approach to food production is a downer. However, from a manufacturing point of view, using standard ingredients with minimal variety makes for efficient production. This is also true in circuit
Read Article
PCB Circuit Design Tips: Standard vs. Specialized Component Selection in PCB Design
As a kid, I was fascinated by hovercrafts. These nearly frictionless vehicles go from land to water without pause and spin 360s on demand like a carnival ride. I knew that the cost of a full-scale build would require mowing every yard in the county, so instead, I started by constructing a homemade radio-controlled model. It worked beautifully on ponds and flat parking lots, but in our hilly corner of the woods, the sleek craft required all of the
Read Article
PCB BOM Management Tools and Real Time Part Access: How It Will Help Your Design for Manufacturability
Have you ever been so ready to take off on a new project that you can’t wait to jump into it? Of course you have. As engineers that’s part of what makes us tick. We’ve got so many ideas running around in our head that we would rather forego sleep or food in order to create a design. Then it happens, some kind of delay forces us to lock up the brakes on our creative process. There are many scenarios that can do this, but one of the worst is when
Read Article
Circuit Board Design and BOM Management in Low Volume PCB Assembly
What’s the difference between Angry Birds and SpongeBob? I’m probably at an age where I shouldn’t be caring about these things, but choosing the wrong character for my son’s 5th birthday cake could spell disaster. As a designer, you probably can’t relate to my need to carefully consider the repercussions of choosing SpongeBob. However, you might understand it better knowing that I apply the same level of caution when designing for low volume
Read Article
PCB Layout Constraints That Help Manage Component Obsolescence
Just about everyone in the world of engineering has heard some variation of the “Iron Triangle” theory. It’s a popular way to talk about what is or isn’t possible among those given the task of getting things done. Basically, it is a philosophy that says you can get something done fast, cheap, or good; pick two. For example, when designing a PCB for an aircraft, cheap goes out the window, fast takes a back seat and quality is paramount
Read Article
BOM Automation: The Benefits of Having an Automated Bill of Materials in Project Management
I have some friends who founded a startup company to create and market a brilliant new product. Their product quickly became a success, but all their hard work was constantly undermined by communication issues between departments. It wasn’t long until the engineers found their creative hands tied, purchasing was buried under an avalanche of unreliable documentation, and the product build-in manufacturing was slowed to a crawl from incorrect and
Read Article
Using Flyback Diodes in Relays Prevents Electrical Noise in Your Circuits
What is a flyback diode, and how does a flyback diode protect a circuit? When used properly, flyback diodes can reduce electrical noise and prevent flyback voltages from building up.
Read Article
The Benefits of a Bill of Materials In Supply Chain Management
Some of the most complicated engineering projects I’ve worked on were made up of multiple layers of sub-assemblies. Before we could order parts for a new assembly, we needed to go through every component in each tier of the final product to ensure that they would meet the rigorous current, voltage, and temperature derating requirements for different customer applications. The first few times I had to do this, it was by merging dozens of excel
Read Article
BOM Part Number Management: Why It Should Be Automated
If you’ve ever worked with high voltages or have designed a high voltage circuit, you know that they always require careful planning. In my last job, we had been using a particular high voltage power supply circuit for years. When it was initially designed, the board took longer than usual to complete. While its design required some extra finicking, it was worth the effort. Everything was going well until the larger assembly's design was modified
Read Article
What Materials to Include in Your Bill of Materials
As an electrical engineer, I am constantly impressed with the brilliant designs my colleagues come up with. I’m also constantly shocked to see how mismanaged most of their BOMs are. I’ve been on projects with a huge range of practices for handling a bill of materials. On one end of the spectrum, there was my senior design project, with no BOM at all, just a series of sticky notes my group placed on the front cover flap of our notebooks. Protip
Read Article
Why Designing a High Voltage PCB for Rapid Prototyping Is More Effective Than Rushing to Form Factor
Remember that fable we all were told as kids about the tortoise and the hare? The moral of the story was that slow and steady wins the race. In engineering, this is especially true when it comes to creating a consumer product quickly. However, this practice is rarely the approach we take. I personally experienced this when I rushed the design of a dimmer for the IOT market. In fact, I was making two dimmers. The first dimmer was simpler and used
Read Article
Designing General PCB Controller for your Circuit Board Layout
I always thought that to be successful you need to emulate the success of others. When I started my career, there weren’t any single board computers like Raspberry Pi, and no one took Arduino seriously for industrial applications. You can imagine how bad it was the first time I did maintenance on a general purpose controller that I designed. It was a fire alarm controller that had over 50 wires manually screwed onto it. I had to replace a faulty
Read Article
How NASA Plans to Use 3D PCB Technology and Designs for Space Missions
Editorial credit: Tony Craddock / Shutterstock.com Have you noticed how a 3D model has become a phenomenon? People seem to want to 3D print anything they can now. Maybe the 3D printing craze will collide with the Internet of Things and we’ll get a printed smart fork. While other people are writing about the 50 best things you can make with them and then throw away, I’m going to tell you how NASA hopes to use 3D printing. Between a rocket
Read Article
Pagination
First page
« First
Previous page
‹‹
Page
23
Page
24
Current page
25
Page
26
Page
27
Page
28
Next page
››
Last page
Last »
Load More