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Your Advanced BOM Can Integrate PCB Design With Vacation Time Your Advanced BOM Can Integrate PCB Design With Vacation Time Anyone who has ever put together a gift for their children knows the importance of quality instructions. The experience that stands out most in my mind is when I assembled a Foosball table for my children late one Christmas Eve. The pieces didn’t fit as they should, I was tired, and most frustratingly of all; some of them in the instructions didn’t match up with what came in the box. I was so angry at the Foosball table manufacturers and their Read Article
Digital Library Management for Circuit Boards: More Than a Few Shelves PCB Creator's Digital Library Management for Circuit Boards: More Than a Few Shelves When you hear the word “components”, it’s natural to think about ICs, LEDs, resistors, and all the other electronic hardware that goes into building a PCB. But in terms of PCB design software, there is a lot of information that goes into any component. Every component has an associated symbol, footprint, pin arrangement, and other properties that are used by your PCB design software. With so many components available on the market and with Read Article
Choosing PCB Design Software Which Priortizes PCB Design PCB Design Software: Choosing A Unified Platform for PCB Design Priority Having the right tool for complicated and intricate tasks facilitates success. Having the wrong tool invites frustration. Rummaging through my tool chest the other day found me selecting the only tool available. Hours into the job with each step a struggle, I considered my hasty choice. It would have been better to spend a little money and order the superior tool. Spending the money for a superior EDA tool facilitates progressive and intelligent Read Article
Editing Multiple Components Anywhere in Footprint Editing Multiple Components Anywhere in Footprint Circuit board design has changed a lot over the years, and the way we work with library components has shifted as well. Originally, PCB designers created library components by laying down a sticker or “dolly” on a sheet of mylar on a drafting board. Later on, as designers migrated to CAD tools, the components were built using those same CAD tools. Those first tools didn’t offer much assistance to designers and you had to be really good at Read Article
Compare PCB Design Software Features For Your Device to Move to Manufacturing Compare PCB Design Software Features For Your Device to Move to Manufacturing So you’ve just devised your new device that will revolutionize the world on the back of a cocktail napkin. Maybe your new medical device will have diseases running for the hills. Maybe you’ve got a great sensor for high-moisture environments. But how do you breathe life into your new product and finally implement your master plan for success? Those of us who have had such grand ideas are familiar with this dilemma. A PCB designer might know Read Article
Layer Stackup in Rigid and Rigid-Flex PCBs Layer Stackup in Rigid and Rigid-Flex PCBs Building multilayer PCBs is like building with Legos. The all fit together easily, but you still need to follow directions if you want your design to stay together. Nowadays, only the simplest PCBs use a single layer, or a pair of top and bottom layers. Multilayer PCBs are now the norm rather than the exception, and manufacturers can fabricate PCBs with up to 30 layers. Layer stackup strategies in these boards are important for a number of Read Article
PCB Design Guidelines for Controlled Impedance Routing PCB Design Guide to Controlled Impedance During PCB Routing In June 1831, Sir James Clark Ross discovered the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula in Northern Canada. While the term “discovery” seems to indicate that the North Magnetic Pole is static, the North and South Magnetic Poles, in fact, move continuously. The Earth’s magnetic field changes over time and as those changes occur, the positions of the poles also shift. Given the rate of movement at 55 km per year, we may have another meaning Read Article
Coupled Versus Uncoupled Inductors: Which is Right for Your Switching Power Supply? Coupled Versus Uncoupled Inductors Procurement: Which is Right for Your Switching Power Supply? I recently took a deep dive into the various types of topologies surrounding switching power supplies. This article examined the benefits and downfalls of some of the most common topologies and aimed to assist you in the process of choosing how to power your design. The SEPIC topology is a very common switching mode power supply that can operate as both a Buck and a Boost converter. In other words, the SEPIC can act as a step-down (Buck converter Read Article
Strong Design Software for Differential Pair Routing Strong Design Software for Differential Pair Routing Back when I lived in Portland, I used to commute downtown, typically taking the train to and from work. I was thankful to live in a city with a meticulously timed train system. There must be a valid reason to route train lines as differential pairs because I could always count on the trains being on time. Routing differential pairs on a PCB also requires specific rules and meticulous timing that can only be achieved using the best PCB design Read Article
Kick Your EDA Translators to the Curb: Choose Unified Design Kick Your EDA Translations to the Curb: Choose Unified Design Personal computing devices have significantly changed how bills are paid. And it’s getting better as utilities, banks, and medical enterprises get onboard with unified, intuitive user interfaces. Not long ago, moving from writing and mailing checks to using online banking for paying bills was excruciating. All the environments and web pages were slightly different. Even the simple process of paying a bill was inconsistent and there was no Read Article
Using Kirchhoff’s Law to Determine Sufficient PCB Trace Thickness Using Kirchhoff’s Law to Determine Sufficient PCB Trace Thickness For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of peanut butter. Back in elementary school, my mom limited my peanut butter intake to a thin spread on a slice of bread. This didn’t come close to satisfying my cravings so I’d sneakily add a generous inch of peanut butter on sandwiches without my mom’s knowledge. My peanut butter thickness preference, unfortunately, did not help with PCB trace thickness in earlier days of hardware design. It wasn’t Read Article
How to Systematically Organize Your Messy Schematic Design Schematic Organization: How to Systematically Organize Your Messy Schematic Design Even as a six-year-old, my son is great at organizing his toys and personal belongings. At that age, I used to chuck all my possessions into a huge storage box. My son, on the other hand, has a knack for orderliness that borders on obsessive. Although his meticulous attention to detail can be mildly frustrating at times, it means that I can always trust him to keep his play area organized. In PCB design, you need to exhibit the same level of Read Article
Medical Technology Innovations and the Electronics That Enable Them Medical Technology Innovations and the Electronics That Enable Them Ten years ago, who would have thought one of the world’s largest medical equipment manufacturers, General Electric, would look to exit the industry and sell-off its medical equipment business? It is also a fact of life that changes like these tend to drive companies to look for profit opportunities in other industries. In the 21st century, with a rapidly aging global population, you have the likes of aerospace giants, such as Lockheed-Martin and Read Article
Developing 3D Printed Electronics to Minimize PCB Design and Manufacturing Costs Developing 3D Printed Electronics to Minimize PCB Design and Manufacturing Costs After moving to a new city, I couldn’t resist visiting the local library to pick up my library card and explore educational resources. As I walked in, the librarian cheerfully handed me a pamphlet on using a 3D printer. I was thrilled to see how easy it is becoming to access a 3D printer. Once restricted to research universities and high-budget labs, 3D printing is now ubiquitous. 3D printed electronics are also starting to become more reliable Read Article
Manufacturing Cost Tradeoffs with FR4 PCBs Manufacturing Cost Tradeoffs with FR4 PCBs My frugal nature means that I tend to be a slow shopper. I don’t go to the mall too often, but when I do, I spend too much time weighing the costs and benefits of two different pairs of jeans. Such neurotic behavior will probably annoy your spouse, but it pays to be neurotic when you are debating which material and board thickness to use in your PCB. Most designers consider the PCB fabrication costs associated with FR4 PCBs to be a rather simple Read Article
Use Interactive Routing to Mitigate EMI Issues from High-Speed PCB Traces Use Interactive Routing to Mitigate EMI Issues from High-Speed PCB Traces Having a robot clean the house and perform laundry chores continues to elude modern technology given intricate steps to complete each chore. Given the repetitive nature of the chores, you’d think robotic automation would be the perfect application to turn over to a robot. It turns out that cleaning the house and doing the laundry is much more complicated and too advanced for robot understanding. Only simplistic chores, like vacuuming the floor Read Article
Rigid-Flex Command Set-up and Layer Stack Design Rigid-Flex Command Set-up and Layer Stack Design Once you take that nose dive into PCB design, you start to realize how many of your home electronic devices actually work. From DVD drives to laptop monitors, and just about anything that folds, it is all made possible with rigid-flex PCBs. Rigid-flex PCB design can be a tricky beast depending on the software you’re using to create it, but at the end of the design, your printed circuit board will bend and flex like a gymnast. A rigid-flex PCB, at Read Article