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1:43 Ben Jordan on Starting From Reference Designs Watch Video
2:46 Ben Jordan on Datasheets and App Notes Watch Video
1:57 Ben Jordan on App Notes Watch Video
3:42 Ben Jordan on Crazy Datasheets and Altium's Forum Watch Video
DFSI: Stripline Differential Impedance Calculation Made Easy DFSI: Stripline Differential Impedance Calculation Made Easy As a PCB designer, you may hear your signal integrity overlords dictate controlled impedance with a specific value and tolerance. As someone who has requested these things, I know designers have trouble with implementing this in their trace geometry. This article details what impedance is, how it is calculated, and a practical way for PCB designers to determine the proper geometry for their application. When designing high-speed serial circuits Read Article
Why PCB Prototyping in the U.S. is a Crucial Element For Success Why PCB Prototyping in the U.S. is a Crucial Element For Success Within today’s global design and manufacturing environment, moving PCB manufacturing offshore is our industry’s de facto product development process. Many believe that PCB prototyping could and should be moved offshore to take advantage of the rising skill and capability levels of the offshore resources in Taiwan, China and Korea. This has led to a crisis in the U.S. PCB prototyping industry. U.S.-based companies find it difficult to stay in Read Article
How To Design the Perfect PCB Stack Up With Altium Designer How To Design the Perfect PCB Stack Up With Altium Designer In the last 20+ years, electronics have become increasingly more complex. Board density is always being pushed to the limits, EMC/EMI regulations evolved and got stricter, and edge rates have become smaller. Therefore, the PCB Layout engineer needs a good understanding of EMC, PDN, EMI, and SI in order to route a modern PCB with confidence. In this article we’ll talk about some of the considerations we should have in order to create a PCB stackup Read Article
How to "Git" Collaborative with Altium Designer How to "Git" Collaborative with Altium Designer Getting collaboration right with any ECAD tool can be rather challenging. For most of us we tend to stick with the “old school” methods: Work on your design Send a zip package via email to another Other works on the design and sends a zip package back to you for review You work on your design and send back to the other Repeat forever This method not only clutters up your inbox but it also forces you to work in a serial fashion. The solution to Read Article
1:17 Steve Williams on His Background Watch Video
2:17 Steve Williams on Company Culture and ISO Audits Watch Video
PCIe BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing PCIe Card Guides: BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing With all the chips that appear on a PCI or PCIe card, laying out and routing these boards might seem extremely complicated. However, the standardized architecture of PCIe provides considerable flexibility for designers. One issue that is a bit complicated is PCIe BGA fanouts for components on these cards. The trick to implementing a fanout and escape routing strategy is ensuring that you comply with the PCIe layout and routing specifications Read Article
Series Termination Resistance Calculation Series Termination Resistor Calculation With transmission lines, some things never seem to be simple. Determining the termination technique and the values of components in a termination network shouldn’t be a difficult task. Most PCB design programs force you to look online for calculators, or you’ll have to run the calculations by hand. Instead, your design software should make it easy to test a range of component values in your termination network. Some components, traces Read Article
Standard PCB Thickness and Your Layer Stack Standard PCB Thickness and Your Layer Stack I’ll confess that I love 1990’s sitcoms. If Jerry Seinfeld were a PCB designer, he would probably ask “what’s the deal with the 1.57 mm board thickness?” It’s a fair question after all, and it makes you wonder why some standard values (e.g., 50 Ohms impedance in RF systems) are used in PCB design and other areas of engineering. There are good reasons why these and other design values have become in standardized in PCB design, even if they aren't Read Article
The Essential Tools You Need for PCB Design The Essential Tools You Need for PCB Design Whether you’re building a house or building a PCB, you need the right tools in your toolbox. Every designer needs to have CAD tools for component placement, but even command line-based CAD software can be used for accurate component placement. With modern electronic devices becoming more complex at all levels, designers need tools that help expedite essential design tasks. Choosing the right set of PCB design tools requires weighing a number of Read Article
LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines for Ensuring Signal Integrity When you first get started in high-speed PCB design, you'll spend a lot of time encountering and understanding an alphabet soup of acronyms. MIPI, USB, PCIe interface, SATA PCB layout... the list of acronyms used to name high-speed digital interfaces is long. Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) is an older interface that was standardized for differential data transfer at high speeds, but it remains in use today for a variety of imaging and Read Article
Routing topology configuration in PCB design Routing Topology Configuration in PCB Design for Power, Data, and Peripherals Which PCB routing topology matches with which technologies? Take a look at this article to learn more. Read Article
Weekly Digest: Projects and Teams Weekly Digest: Projects and Teams We’re doing our best to provide the most in-depth information to help designers with productivity, project management and everything PCB design related. Get the latest information here from Industry Experts and catch up on everything published this week, all in one place. Let us know your burning questions or tag us in social media to share one of your projects! Octopart On The OnTrack Podcast with Judy Warner This week Chris Calvi came on the Read Article