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Suppress Noise and EMI in Your PCB With the Right Analog Filter Design Suppress Noise and EMI in Your PCB With the Right Analog Filter Design The electronics industry continues to pack more capabilities onto smaller PCBs and devices are being run at lower power and at higher frequencies. Noise suppression becomes even more important as operating frequencies rise and signal levels fall, this becomes more manageable with an EMI filter for noise on a PCB design. Adding filtration to your PCB designs can enhance signal integrity in EMI-prone environments with large stray magnetic fields Read Article
pcb cost estimate Designing to Meet a Target BOM Price and PCB Cost Estimate Creating an accurate PCB cost estimate for design, components, production, assembly, shipping, and even firmware can be a challenging task for new designers. Even established organizations can have trouble getting it right as it's hard to anticipate every problem that can arise during a design. Manufacturers can help you handle the production and assembly portion of a project, but any time a new design needs to be put into production, components Read Article
Avoid Signal Integrity Loss While Using a Fanout Strategy in Your PCB Avoid Signal Integrity Loss While Using a Fanout Strategy in Your PCB When I was much, much younger, I looked at the pin layout on the back of a processor and wondered how anyone can possibly route all of those electrical connections on a PCB. I didn’t know much about signal integrity, of fanouts on PCBs then but fast forward fifteen years and now I get to layout those traces on PCBs. Fanout is a technique where short traces and vias are used to connect inner rows of pins on high pin-count ICs. Fanout can also Read Article
Coatings vs Resins for Your PCB: What’s Best for Providing Protection? Coatings vs Resins for Your PCB: What’s Best for Providing Protection? In today’s world, protection is always a welcome asset. Whether it be protection from the rain above your head (mitigated by a roof), protection from the sun (mitigated by sunscreen), or protection from electromagnetic currents (mitigated by current isolation techniques amongst others). With resin and conformal coating for your PCB, you can think about the forces that attack your PCB from a physical (environmental) standpoint - beyond EMI Read Article
PCB Design Software Shortcuts to Speed Up Your PCB Designs Learning the PCB Design Software Shortcuts to Hack Your Design Growth Even simple PCB designs can require the use of many functions and tools, and this doesn’t change if you’ve been a designer for 20-minutes or 20-years. One feature that will always make your PCB design software more efficient is using keyboard shortcuts. So how can you improve your efficiency beyond where it's at now? With a little help from Altium Designer and the shortcuts they’ve so graciously added to the program! No matter how quick your Read Article
Working with Altium Designer’s Multilayered Via Routing Rules Routers in PCB Boards: Working with Altium Designer’s Multilayered Via Routing Rules Some of the first ideas and drawings of two-layered PCB design came at the turn of the century, right before the world would descend into its first world war. It should come as a surprise that an idea and an adaptation to circuit boards, two-layers, developed over one-hundred years ago is still alive and well. But it should come as no surprise that with time comes new adaptations, and the era of multilayered stackups is much more appropriate for Read Article
Keep Your Altium Designer PCB Layout in Line with Grids and Grid-Selection Shortcuts Keep Your Altium Designer PCB Layout in Line with Grids and Grid-Selection Shortcuts The grid system in a printed circuit board design CAD program is a great tool for a PCB designer, and it's a system worth knowing. Altium Designer® has a well designed grid system that you can use to your advantage in your PCB designs and schematic captures. Before all the different snap and placement utilities that are now available in CAD systems, we used to have to constantly manipulate the grid to place objects at different locations. It Read Article
GPS Antennas in Your PCB Design: You Won’t Get Lost Again GPS Antennas in Your PCB Design: You Won’t Get Lost Again Going on hunting trips with my grandpa as a kid, we would carry a rather large GPS-navigator to help us keep from getting lost in the woods. It had a huge antenna sticking out the top and its battery never lasted longer than a few hours. Fast forward 20 years, and including GPS capabilities in your PCB design has become easier than ever. Many new consumer devices include GPS PCB antenna modules in their design. If you don’t have GPS or RF-design Read Article
Dual-Band PCB Antenna Design: Keeping Your EMI In-Line Dual-Band PCB Antenna Design: Keeping Your EMI In-Line If you were born in the 1980’s or earlier, you probably remember those old brick-like cell phones and their giant antennas. Fast forward to the present, and most people don’t even realize that their smartphones have antennas. Proposed antenna designs have come a long way since the 80’s, and new antennas can send and receive in more than one frequency band. As the mobile and IoT industry continues to advance, electronic devices continue to use Read Article
Preventing Ground Loops in Your PCB Design Preventing Ground Loops in Your PCB Design I think we’ve all been there. You buy that awesome stereo system only to hear that familiar humming sound in the background. When you take it back to the store the clerk blames the manufacturer. What components are to be considered a problem? The decoupling capacitor or ground wire? How about the bypass capacitor or PCB ground loop design interference? The stereo manufacturer will blame the component manufacturer and the component manufacturer Read Article
Cave Markings and Circuit Boards: How to Read PCB Layout Assembly Drawings Cave Markings and Circuit Boards: How to Read PCB Layout Assembly Drawings “The devil is in the details.” Ever think about the meaning of that phrase? It tells us about the importance of details and that overlooking details will cause problems. Such a brief sentence also speaks to us about how to read a PCB assembly drawing and how to read a circuit board. Accurate component placement makes the PCB layout easier. If we gloss over the small details, many different problems can damage circuit performance. PCB assembly Read Article
3D Printing and PCB Design: Good Things Come in Three Introduction of 3D Technology in PCBs: 3D Printing and PCB Design Early experimental jets from the design table to wind tunnel tests of models to actual piloted flight at a rapid rate. During the 1950s, aircraft designers relied on slide rules and blackboard mathematics rather than computer processing and virtual simulations. When a test pilot climbed into a cockpit, he climbed into an untested prototype. Some flights went very well and set speed and altitude records, while other flights… didn’t. As with Read Article
PCB Design and CAD Software: Know What Governs Your Designs PCB Design and CAD Software: Know What Governs Your Designs Every now and then, the phrase “rule of law” becomes part of conversations about how countries govern. Going all the way back to the 13th century Magna Carta, the “rule of law” speaks about the development of peaceful and equitable societies—and the need for basic human rights. Individuals living under the “rule of law” enjoy Equality under the law The transparency of law An independent judiciary and Access to legal remedy. Without rules for Read Article
With RF Circuit Impedance in Mind Your Designs Won't Look Bird-Brained With RF Circuit Impedance in Mind Your Designs Won't Look Bird-Brained Several years ago, scientists compared the aerodynamic characteristics of several bird species with different species of bats. Feathered bird wings become inactive during the upstroke and maintain lift. Every downstroke increases thrust, lift, and flight speed. In contrast, bats have membranous wings that produce lift during the upstroke. Regardless of their methods, birds and bats overcome weight and drag to achieve flight efficiency. Two Read Article
Milling Artwork in Copper: PCB Router Bit Diameters Get the Job Done Milling Artwork in Copper: PCB Router Bit Diameters and Other Tools to Get the Job Done Spring is a busy time of year in the garden. The yard brings chores, but with the right tools, time passes easily and pretty soon I’m enjoying my lawn chair. One of those chores is picking up all the dead leaves left from Autumn that remain in places they fell, blanketing areas of shrub beds and cement patio. For shrub beds, I use rake and hands to pick up leaves and throw them in the compost. For the patio, I fire up the pressure washer and Read Article
Oh the Boards You Will Make: Tips for Beginners in Design & Electronics Oh the Boards You Will Make: Tips for Beginners in Design & Electronics If there was ever a time to begin thinking about beginning your career as an electrical engineer, the time is right now! With the rise of so many electronics hardware startups, the advancements in circuitry and pcb design software, and the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, you’ve found yourself on a large and fast wave of industry. With the upbringing of so many companies and possibilities, the job market is very hot and yields Read Article
Why Startup Transition is a Concern for Embedded Systems Why Startup Transition is a Concern for Embedded Systems Do you have a morning ritual? I can barely function without mine. My brain has a hard time operating without a big breakfast, some piping hot coffee, and five minutes browsing through my inbox even when there are zero unread emails. Having a morning ritual for your embedded system is helpful too. While you don’t need to serve any coffee to your PCB’s microcontroller, you do need to ensure that it efficiently handles the transitional state during Read Article