Mobile menu
Home Altium Experts

About Author

Recent Articles

Analog Meets Digital: How Converters Can Make or Break Signal Performance Analog Meets Digital: How Converters Can Make or Break Signal Performance We are born into a world of purely analog signals. The sound of a stream running through a mountain meadow, the brown color of dirt, that screaming baby next to you; all of these ‘signals’ are of an analog nature. Yet, we grow up and seem to spend most of our time attempting to turn these signals into a reproducible ‘digital’ copy so we can perceive them through a digital device. Analog and digital signal performance is necessary to keep in mind Read Article
The Advantages of Using Project Templates for PCB Design What Are the Advantages of Using Templates for PCB Design? The domestication of horses, inventing the wheel and developing the combustion engine are tremendous milestones that we laud for enabling us to get around more efficiently and explore new places. Although, this is true another creation that deserves at least as much credit for giving most of us the confidence to branch out from our familiar surroundings is the map. The knowledge that someone before us has traversed a path gives us confidence in Read Article
PCB Component Data Management Resolved with Connected Component Applications PCB Component Data Management Resolved with Connected Component Applications My mouth was watering as I picked up the box sitting on my front porch. Dinner would be ready in 20 minutes. I was so hungry, having just gotten home. The box contained recipe cards and ingredients for making dinners throughout the week. I put on my slippers, and I pulled a recipe card from the box. All the ingredients were there. This new meal delivery service was growing on me. I’d be eating dinner soon, with time to spare for needed downtime Read Article
Avoid Integrated and Netlist Data Flows Slowing Design Starts Avoid Integrated and Netlist Data Flows Slowing Design Starts The chaos theory was used by Edward Lorenz early in the 1960s to model weather. Given multiple data points and nonlinear behavior, integrated circuit and synthesized netlist data starts because of nonlinear behavior. Just like the weather which is difficult to model and predict. It turns out nonlinear complexity produces beautiful, elegant pictures of real things. A tree is fractal; if you were to magnify its branch 1 million times, you’d see the Read Article
Journey Through Embedded Active Components in PCB Substrates with Pacemakers Journey Through Embedded Active Components in PCB Substrates with Pacemakers With 200,000 pacemakers implanted in the United States per year, the surgical process to correct heart abnormalities has become routine. When preparing for the process, cardiologists choose from three different incision types to determine the best implant method. Each type of incision impacts patient comfort and the amount of risk involved with the surgery. The incision provides access to a vein and allocates space for the pacemaker. A Read Article
Now that They’re Assigned, Find and Report Testpoints in Your PCB Design Now that They’re Assigned, Find and Report Testpoints in Your PCB Design Whether it is a test in school, a driver’s test, or some sort of casual mention of a test at work, the word “test” can cause normally calm people to have a sense of anxiety. On the other hand, once beyond the test you can see those same people visibly relax. Perhaps that is why when PCB designers finish assigning testpoints to their design it is easy for them to breathe a huge sigh of relief. But, once you’ve assigned those testpoints there’s Read Article
Scaling, Not Sinking Your Electronics: BOM Management Advice Scaling, Not Sinking Your Electronics: BOM Management Advice The most stressful part of owning a boat was when it came time to launch or recover it from the river. The boat was large and together with the trailer and truck, there was a lot of equipment to maneuver up and down the ramp without making any mistakes. If some kind of problem came up I would end up with the boat, the truck, or me sinking into the water. That sense of anxiety was very similar to the feelings I’ve experienced working with Read Article
7 Benefits of Bringing Additive Manufacturing In-House 7 Benefits of In-House Fabrication and Additive Manufacturing If you are like 98% of the PCB designers out there, you know what it can be like to run through the gauntlet of outsourcing a design to a third-party manufacturer to receive a prototype or two. The process is usually a little painful, often pricier than you’d have hoped, and leaves you waiting for longer than you’d expect. I often think that the manufacturing process is similar to going out to dinner at an overrated restaurant; you’ll wait on an Read Article
Connect and Conquer: Multiboard Design Adaptation in PCB Design Software Connect and Conquer: Multiboard Design Adaptation in PCB Design Software Years ago I designed boards at a service bureau where there were several different customers and the boards that I worked on were unique in size and function. And in all of those designs, none of them were ever from the same system. Not only was it more to spread the design work around back then, but the only way to do system design was to create the boards individually and then test the prototypes together. With faster times to market and Read Article
Reduce Propagation Delay: Keep Your Logic Gates and Circuit Boards On Time Minimize Propagation Delay in Logic Gates: Synchronize Pulse Trains When you have an analog watch, daylight savings time can wreak havoc in your personal and professional life. You might wake up and not even realize that you are an hour off schedule. No one wants to admit that they have fallen victim to daylight savings time, and your entire schedule has to resynchronize when this happens. Synchronizing your clock and your electronics components is critical in high-speed PCB design. Applications like bus trace Read Article
Choose Unified Symbols for Your PCB Prototype Design Documents Choose Unified Symbols for Your PCB Prototype Design Documents I love spending hours at the bench soldering parts together and looking at the resultant signals they produce. It is satisfying to see the signals take shape on the oscilloscope as I refine each block. I’m surrounded by tools and equipment, little bits of wire and solder strewed from the invention process. Joining the beautiful mess are scattered components pulled from sample parts binders stored in the lab. Soon my prototype design will be ready Read Article
Customize designs with Consistent and Flexible Custom Rules and Queries Customize designs with Consistent and Flexible Custom Rules and Queries In the early stages of a circuit design, I frequently consider mechanical dimensions along with circuit requirements. Knowing dimensions of large components helps me visualize where they will fit with respect to overall three-dimensional device enclosure and the board’s location within the space. During the thought experiment for fit, I begin making notes about tolerances I’ll push as a tradeoff between electrical functionality and mechanical Read Article
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Use Altium Multi-Channel Design for Easy Repeat Circuit Use Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Use Altium Multi-Channel Design for Easy Repeat Circuit Use If you are like me, you would agree that one of the most wasteful exercises is repeating the same task over and over again. Of course, I am not referring to activities that require repetition in order to achieve a good level of competence. After all, practice does make perfect. Instead, I am speaking of the wasteful recreation of a completed PCB design to use in a different product, which is akin to reinventing the wheel when it is already in use Read Article
How to Panelize Your PCBs Before Lunch with Altium Designer How to Panelize Your PCBs with Altium's PCB Panelizer Whether you have a slew of PCBs to mass produce for your customers or a handful of project boards you wish to prototype all in one simple swoop, PCB panelization is an effective way to bring high throughput and efficiency to PCB production. In earlier days of PCB design, you would need additional software, hours of clunky engineering, and maybe even feasibility meetings with manufacturing teams for PCB panelization. However, today's PCB design Read Article
Inventors Should Spend Time Designing and Less Time Writing a Bill of Materials Inventors Should Spend Time Designing and Less Time Writing a Bill of Materials There’s a beautiful sense of satisfaction that comes with building something great. You took the time to think through the concept, perfect your design, and translate your vision into a functional prototype. You’re driven to bring your product to market, but you don’t want to spend time worrying about documentation. Your bill of materials is like a recipe and a shopping list for your new product, all rolled into a single document. The bill of Read Article
Incorporating DFM for Panelization in Your Electronics Incorporating DFM for Panelization in Your Electronics Oftentimes, in a larger production environment, companies seek small tips and tricks along the manufacturing route in the hopes of significant cost savings. As a ‘low hanging fruit’ of costs savings, manufacturing is (or at least should be) a highly discussed topic early on in the design phase. Keeping manufacturing principles and specifications in mind at the design stage is what is known as design for manufacturing (DFM). There are a handful of Read Article
Hybrid or Compact: Fractal Antennas in PCB Design Hybrid or Compact: Fractal Antennas in PCB Design The Mandelbrot Set was always a popular poster among my fellow students when I was in college. The zoomed-out picture hung on dorm room walls and even appeared on some graphic t-shirts. The fact that no one seemed to know about the Mandelbrot Set or understand fractals didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how useful fractals could be in designing antennas. There are many antennas in the PCB world including: microstrip Read Article