Newsletters

Browse our past newsletters on PCB design and industry information

OnTrack Newsletter: Microvia Reliability, Ben Jordan Whiteboard, Tech Articles - June 2020 OnTrack Newsletter June 2020 VOL. 3 No 13 Microvia Reliability in Ultra-High Density Interconnect Designs. Earlier this year, while attending the IPC Apex Expo in San Diego, we met with Jim Brown of GreenSource Fabrication. He shared with us how the GreenSource team has been on the frontlines of facing down the highly problematic and pervasive issue of microvia reliability. Through their involvement with tier one companies, IPC, and building out Read Article

Reliability image

Microvia Reliability in Ultra-High Density Interconnect Designs Judy Warner: Early this year, we had the opportunity to meet at IPC Apex in California. In our conversation, you talked about the pervasive issue of microvia reliability. Will you please describe the issue for our readers? Jim Brown: Judy, as the demand for technology has increased, it has trickled down to PCB density. The result is Ultra-HDI, stacked microvias, and sub-75-micron lines. Microvias have been in use for well over a decade but Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: At Last...Engineering in the Cloud, RF Power Dividers and Brain Food - May 2020 OnTrack Newsletter May 2020 VOL. 3 No 12 Open Source Ventilator: Schematic to Fully-Functional in Thirty Days with Altium 365 ® On May 1, 2020, Altium 365 was released to the public, marking a historic day which represents an unprecedented shift in how electronics are designed and realized. With this cloud-based platform, design engineers can work from anywhere and connect with anyone--including all primary and secondary stakeholders. During the Read Article

Guy Sitting on Clouds

Schematic to Fully-Functional in Thirty Days with Altium 365 Judy Warner: Dugan, you've been running Altium Designer on Altium 365 at Velocity Research for a while now as part of our Beta group. We recently also sponsored your efforts with the Open Source Ventilator project by giving your team access to licenses for Altium Designer 20.1, and Altium Concord Pro running on the Altium 365 platform. What’s been your early impressions and key takeaways after working in the Altium 365 environment? Dugan Karnazes Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: COVID-19, Virtual Education, and Blogs - April 2020 OnTrack Newsletter April 2020 VOL. 3 No 11 What Impact will the Coronavirus have on Your Designs? Around the world, we’ve all felt the sting of COVID-19 on safety, health, travel, global markets and our workplace. Wondering what impact this may have on design engineers, we reached out to Mike Buetow, the Editor-In-Chief for PCD&F (Printed Circuit Design and Fabrication) and Circuits Assembly magazines to learn about his viewpoint on what Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Rogers Laminates Corp Growth, RF Design and Brain Food - March 2020 OnTrack Newsletter March 2020 VOL. 3 No 10 Rogers Corporation: The Company Behind Top Performing Laminates If you design PCBs for high-speed digital, RF, Microwave or Millimeter Wave applications, you’re probably very familiar with Rogers laminates. However, did you know Rogers Corp has doubled in size in the past 10 years? Recently, while I was at IPC APEX Expo, I had the opportunity to interview Tony Mattingly, Sr. Product Manager and learn Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Engineering Stories, RF Design and Brain Food OnTrack Newsletter February 2020 VOL. 3 No 9 New Engineering Mini-Documentary Series: Altium Stories Too often, in the pursuit of healthy success and growth, it’s tempting for companies to talk about its products or services too much, and their customer’s success too little. While Altium may certainly fall into this all-too-common trap at times, we truly draw our greatest inspiration from innovative engineers like you, who are impacting the world Read Article

Man rubbing chin with question marks around him.

What Impact will the Coronavirus have on Your Designs? Judy Warner: Mike, we are hearing and watching the tough impact of the coronavirus on the world stage. From your perspective as a globally-focused editor, what are you seeing and hearing that is immediately impacting the electronics industry? Mike Buetow: There is clearly disruption in the supply chain at several levels. Taiwanese-owned factories make up the leading share of bare boards worldwide, at about 34%. About 63% of the output value of Read Article

Image of a PCB board

Rogers Corporation: The Company Behind Top Performing Laminates If you design PCBs for high-speed digital, RF, Microwave or Millimeter Wave applications, you’re probably very familiar with Roger’s laminates. However, did you know Rogers Corp has doubled in size in the past 10 years? Recently, while I was at IPC APEX Expo, I had the opportunity to interview Tony Mattingly, Sr. Product Manager and learn more about the company behind some of the world’s top-performing advanced circuit materials. Judy Warner Read Article

New Engineering Mini-Documentary Series: Altium Stories Too often, in the pursuit of healthy success and growth, it’s tempting for companies to talk about its products or services too much, and their customer’s success too little. While Altium may certainly fall into this all-too-common trap at times, we truly draw our greatest inspiration from innovative engineers like you, who are impacting the world everyday. For this reason, we have decided instead of telling our story, we are going to start Read Article

Chris Carlson's Time Saving Tips for PCB Design

Chris Carlson's Time Saving Tips for PCB Design In this podcast episode, Chris Carlson, Senior Field Application Engineer at Altium, shares the kind of indispensable PCB design tips & tricks one can only get with 23-years of experience! Watch now! Read Article

Signal Integrity Evangelist Eric Bogatin, our Expert Insider to DesignCon 2020

Signal Integrity Evangelist Eric Bogatin, our Expert Insider to DesignCon 2020 Signal integrity expert, Dr. Eric Bogatin, explains Rule #9, drops details on the upcoming DesignCon in Santa Clara, and teases his new book on transmission lines. Watch this OnTrack podcast now. Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Cloud-based Design, RF and Design Tips

OnTrack Newsletter: Cloud-based Design, RF and Design Tips OnTrack Newsletter December 2019 Vol. 3 No. 7 Altium 365: The New Frontier of Collaborative Cloud-Enabled Electronics Realization In this interview, we talk with Leigh Gawne, Chief Software Architect at Altium, to learn about Altium 365 and the impact he foresees that Cloud-enabled electronics realization will have on design engineers and the entire industry. (To see Leigh Gawne and team collaboratively design a board LIVE in Altium 365 at this Read Article

High Speed Design Features Growing Forward with Altium and Simberian Partnership

High Speed Design Features Growing Forward with Altium and Simberian Partnership Happy New Year from Altium! In our first article of the year we talk to Roger Paje, VP of Sales and Marketing at Simberian about our recently formed formal partnership and how their highly accurate field solver technology is helping usher in new high-speed design capabilities in Altium Designer such as layer stack, impedance and surface roughness modeling. These enhancements began in Altium Designer 19, were amplified in Altium Designer 20, and Read Article

Altium 365: The New Frontier of Collaborative Cloud-Enabled Electronics Realization

Altium 365: The New Frontier of Collaborative Cloud-Enabled Electronics Realization In this interview, we talk with Leigh Gawne, Chief Software Architect at Altium, to learn about Altium 365 and the impact he foresees that Cloud-enabled electronics realization will have on Design Engineers--as well as the entire industry. (To see Leigh Gawne and team collaboratively design a board LIVE in Altium 365 at this year’s AltiumLive conference, watch this video). Judy Warner: Leigh, please tell our readers about your background and your Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Altium Designer 20 Sneak Peek, Impedance Measurement, Food for Thought - November 2019

OnTrack Newsletter: Altium Designer 20 Sneak Peek, Impedance Measurement, Food for Thought - November 2019 OnTrack Newsletter Nov. 2019 Vol. 3 No. 6 A First Look Inside Altium Designer 20 November marks the launch of Altium Designer 20, and we thought you’d be like to hear from a couple of Altium veteran “insiders” about what you can expect to see in this latest release. Lawrence Romine, VP of Corporate Marketing and Ben Jordan, Technical Marketing Director, Corporate (both engineers) share what their favorite new features are and which ones they Read Article

OnTrack Newsletter: Music & Electronics, MCU Selection, Brain Food - October 2019

OnTrack Newsletter: Music & Electronics, MCU Selection, Brain Food - October 2019 OnTrack Newsletter October 2019 VOL. 3 No 5 PianoArc: A Circular Piano Fit for Princes and Mega Stars Earlier this year I met a fascinating designer at the San Diego Altium^® Users Group. Dave Starkey told me about a circular piano he and his partners had designed and built called the Pianoarc. In this interview, learn more about Starkey’s background and how he came to co-create this unique instrument that now graces a Middle Eastern Palace and is Read Article