Design for Manufacturing (DFM)

Design data management system

The Search for the All-in-One Electronic Design Data Management System In this article we discuss the pain points of using a single design data management system over linking many together. Read Article

Silk to Solder Mask Clearance: The PCB Design Rule You Need to Add

Silk to Solder Mask Clearance: The PCB Design Rule You Need to Add I was impressed that, right out of the box, the stock design rule checks (DRCs) in my copy of Altium 20 pretty much covered all the bases on how to make a “standard” printed circuit board (PCB). Altium Designer defaults to “10 mil” rules, which means that the standard spacing and widths of copper tracks is 10 mils. What's more, most of the other spacings also default to 10 mils. This includes track to track, pads to tracks, through-holes to other Read Article

How to Create a PCB Manufacturing Cost Estimation

How to Create a PCB Manufacturing Cost Estimation Unless I receive a layout job directly from a manufacturer, my clients will usually ask if I’m a manufacturer. My company doesn’t manufacture boards, but I think it’s important to keep clients informed of the manufacturing costs for new PCBs. Once I started gathering estimates for some of my first projects, I started to better understand the primary cost drivers of PCB manufacturing and how to properly structure a comprehensive estimate for my Read Article

Circuit Board Design for In-Circuit Testing with Jack Olson

Circuit Board Design for In-Circuit Testers There are many types of circuit board tests available in electronics manufacturing today, each having unique goals and characteristics. This article presents guidelines at the design level (schematic and layout) to enable the use of in-circuit testing (ICT) fixtures to verify proper component assembly. These simple test fixtures allow your board to be tested as its assembled, which helps identify and remove failed boards from your production run Read Article

PCB assembly (PCBA) and supply chain management

Take the Risk Out of Prototype PCB Assembly (PCBA) There is a special feeling one gets when polishing off a Rev A design and ordering the first set of PCBs from a board house. While designers everywhere would likely not trade that feeling for anything, taking some of the uneasiness off the table would probably be a welcome change. Here are review steps that should prove more effective at settling nerves than an after-work visit to the bar—and infinitely more effective at preventing errors! There Read Article

PCB Trace and Pad Clearance: Low vs. High Voltage

PCB Trace and Pad Clearance: Low vs. High Voltage High voltage/high current designs carry safety requirements that need to be met by designers. Similarly, high-speed designs need to have suppressed crosstalk in order to ensure signal integrity. The key design aspects that relate to both areas are your PCB trace clearance and pad clearance values. These design choices are critical for balancing safety, noise suppression, and manufacturability. The IPC 2221 voltage and spacing standards provide Read Article

Design Reliable Multiple Stack Microvias Like a Pro

Design Reliable Multiple Stack Microvias Like a Pro In this podcast episode , learn how Gerry Partida and his team at Summit Interconnect made a compelling new discovery about the reliability of multiple stacked microvias. Watch it now. Read Article

Stealth aircraft and quantum radar

NVIDIA Jetson Nano: Lane Detection and Tracking Autonomous vehicles are slowly becoming an important part of the automotive industry. Many believe fully autonomous vehicles will soon be driving alongside humans, and technology companies are in a race to deploy fully autonomous vehicles. In December 2018, Waymo, the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving car project, officially started its commercial self-driving car service in the suburbs of Phoenix. Companies like May Mobility, Drive Read Article

PCB design review and collaboration

PCB Design Review and Collaboration in Altium 365 Remote collaboration tools are everywhere these days, and now designers have access to a convenient collaboration system for electronics design. Whether you’re part of a design team, or you need to quickly execute any design changes recommended by your manufacturer, you need cloud collaboration tools that are immediately accessible within your PCB design application. Now with Altium 365, you’ll have access to a cloud-driven design interface that Read Article

Design for testability for PCB designers and manufacturers

Designing for Testability in PCB Design: Ensure High Yield and Quality If you remember your days in school, then you probably remember the feeling of happiness and celebration when you pass a big exam. You’ll feel the same sense of adulation when your board spin passes a barrage of pre and post assembly tests, but a complex design might not reach that stage unless you implement the right design for testability methods. There are some simple steps that can help your manufacturer identify and quickly implement Read Article

The Importance of Having A Modern PCB Manufacturing Data Format

The Importance of Having A Modern PCB Manufacturing Data Format I recently posted a BLOG on Altium about the latest eSmart Factory in New Hampshire. Using the latest in State-of-the-Art machinery and processes, it can produce near-perfect complex multilayers and HDI substrates with extremely fine geometries in only a few days, and without ever being helped or touched by human hands, all while and emitting nothing to harm the environment—zero effluents. Digitization for the Smart Factory This technology will Read Article

The eSmart Factory Comes to PCB Fabrication

The eSmart Factory Comes to PCB Fabrication We all talk about the Industrial Revolution. The world has gone through a number of “Industrial Revolutions” since the creation of steam power in England. In fact, we talk about three such revolutions since that first one. In the early 2010s, the German Government proposed a fourth industrial revolution they called INDUSTRU 4.0. Today we also call it “The Smart Factory”! But, to date, there hasn’t been too much reported progress in this program Read Article

Design Philosophy in Printed Electronics Manufacturing

Design Philosophy in Printed Electronics Manufacturing In printed electronics, I think about design philosophy from a new perspective. My question about design philosophy is related to printed electronics manufacturing: do I optimize my layout for electrical performance or manufacturability, which may then mean compromises for electrical characteristics? In printed electronics design I need to make trade-offs between trace resistance, voltage levels, power consumption, and layout area. With proper Read Article

The Shrinking Manufacturing Cycle

The Shrinking Manufacturing Cycle Traditionally, an engineering cycle has been considered to be on the order of 18 months. That’s the time between generations of products, whether it’s a new processor or a new Internet appliance. Today, a company that operates on an 18-month cycle is considered slow within many industries. If you have a lot of competitors, their release cycles are likely out of phase from yours. For example, if there are three companies serving an application Read Article

Lies Your Fabricator May Have Told You

Lies Your Fabricator May Have Told You In some of our previous articles, we have talked about the various things that go wrong when a board design is turned over to the fabricator for manufacturing. Sometimes, the things that can go awry are due to design errors but the bulk of them can be ascribed to errors incurred during the fabrication process. This article will describe the errors that can be encountered and what, if anything, can be done to avoid them. We have previously Read Article

Methods For Calculating And Measuring Impedance, Part 2

Methods For Calculating And Measuring Impedance, Part 2 In Part 1 of this article, I reviewed the four basic types of PCB transmission lines and the various equations used for calculating the impedance associated with those lines. Part 1 also discussed why those equations only tell part of the story, and why there are other influencers including 2D field solvers; knowing the glass-to-resin ratio and knowing the frequency at which transmission lines will be used that impact the process of ensuring that Read Article

Transmission Line Properties That Affect Impedance—Hidden Features

Transmission Line Properties That Affect Impedance—Hidden Features Here and in several other articles published on the Altium Resource section of the company’s website, the topic of transmission line impedance has been addressed from a number of different perspectives. I have addressed transmission line impedance previously in my article, The Evolution Of Simulation Technology and Impedance and, it might seem that we may have exhausted the field of potential information that can be provided on impedance, however Read Article