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Altium Designer 20

The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

Altium Designer 20

The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use

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PCB Design

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USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 2 In a previous blog post, I showed the process for building a schematic for a custom USB charger board using Altium Designer. This board requires a small number of components and some particular attention to the power supply design/decoupling networks, but aside from this it’s quite easy to build out the connections you need for the USB A connectors. Here, I’ll show the strategy for translating this schematic into a compact board with a small form Read Article

USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 1 When I’m in my office, I keep my pluggable USB charger around, otherwise the battery on my phone is likely to run out. If you want to build your own USB charger, you can create your own USB charger board with the powerful schematic design and layout tools in Altium Designer. Here, I’ll present the overall design process for a portable USB charger. The charger requires 12 V of power and charges two external devices through two USB ports. We’ll Read Article

Understanding Your PCB Netlist Understanding Your PCB Netlist There are several different ways that netlists are used at various stages of the electronics development process. Netlists may have different purposes and may have unique data formats, but they all provide a similar function; they list the connections of an electronic circuit. This is important for a variety of fundamental tasks in electronics and PCB layout design. Your netlist is used graphically in your schematic Read Article

Using Terminations To Control Reflections In a previous two-part article, I discussed reflections, their origins and what they do to a signal using a typical unterminated 5V CMOS circuit as an example. As noted previously, this information applies to any logic family. This article will focus on how reflections can be controlled through the use of different terminations. Included in this discussion will be a description of the properties of those terminations and which work best in Read Article

PCB Functional Testing and The Role of Manufacturer Collaboration Getting your PCB functional testing requirements correct is easiest when you collaborate with manufacturers during the design phase. Read Article

Guide to Getting Started with Freelance Engineering Freelancing as an engineer can be a great way to earn money and experience while you study, or as a temporary step between graduation and finding your dream job. In this article, we'll discuss strategies for landing your first few jobs as a freelance engineer. Read Article

Tips for Time Critical Flex Delivery Here are some simple suggestions to reduce the chances of fabrication delivery for your flex and rigid flex designs getting held up by delays. Read Article

Tarun Amla on the Role of ITEQ, a Large Laminate Manufacturing Company in the PCB Industry We spoke with the Executive VP and CTO of ITEQ; about ITEQ’s targeted market sectors, product developer mistakes, and the impact of COVID-19 on the laminate industry. Read Article

Copper Current Density for Simulations, The Quick and Dirty Way How to calculate copper current density quickly and effectively when you don’t know where to start. Read Article

PCB Design for Radio-Over-Fiber Technology It’s possible that radio-over-fiber technology is one of the least discussed aspects of fiber telecom networks. However, it stands to be one of the many portions of telecom infrastructure for bringing broadband wireless access to remote areas. This approach is likely to play a major role for future 5G infrastructure in rural areas where a standard wireless backhaul is not possible or cost-prohibitive. Just like any other electronic system, radio Read Article

Important Thermal Properties of PCB Substrate Materials Signal integrity isn’t the full story, the thermal properties of your PCB substrate materials are also important for reliability. Read Article

Chris Carlson's Time Saving Tips for PCB Design Chris Carlson, Snr FAE at Altium and accomplished Electrical and Electronic Engineer shares the expertise of his 23-year career in development, documentation, manufacturing, application engineering, and customer support. According to an Aberdeen study, 61% of a designer’s time is spent doing non-direct, design-related activities, such as sourcing components, document control, and so much more. Chris is here to help you improve your efficiency and Read Article

Current Transformers: How To Project If you need to measure the current from an AC source, a current transformer can be a low cost, accurate option. You can find current transformers designed specifically for anything between 50/60Hz power line applications and much higher frequencies that are more suitable for industrial/scientific machinery or process monitoring. Current transformers are non-contact and non-invasive, meaning that you do not need to run AC power through your Read Article

PCB Core vs. Prepreg Material: What Designers Need to Know I sometimes get questions from designers that want to know more about the PCB material selection and manufacturing process. Although I’m not a manufacturer, it behooves designers to understand something about the materials they have available when working on a new project. One question I get is on the exact differences between PCB core vs. prepreg materials. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, including by novice designers; I’ll admit I Read Article

Pin-Package Delay and Via Delay in High Speed Length Tuning The race is on to keep signals in sync Take a look at the inside of an integrated circuit package, and you’ll find a number of wires bonded to the semiconductor die and the pads at the edge of the component. In the electronics world, signals need to travel across these bond wires and pads before they hit a PCB trace. As you look around the edge of an IC, these bond wires all have different lengths, and they incur different levels of delay and Read Article

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 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