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The Importance of Compliance Awareness in Circuit and PCB Design

The Importance of Compliance Awareness in Circuit and PCB Design I had an English professor once who was a lot of fun, but man, his requirements for essay writing were brutal. Making a decent grade required a ton of work. I had to check and recheck my paper’s content to make sure that every detail he asked for was painstakingly covered. These tedious rituals, though annoying and painful, helped teach me how to be thorough with my research. This was something that came in handy when I began my career and had to Read Article

Bluetooth Low Energy and the Internet of Things

Bluetooth Low Energy and the Internet of Things Did you ever “reinvent yourself” at some time in your life? I did, I went from the nerd in high school who wore cargo shorts and high socks to a less nerdy college student who had regular socks and shorts with the fashionable number of pockets. By the end of college, I had learned “social skills” and was finally ready to enter society as the best, or at least acceptable, version of me. People aren’t the only things that need reinvention, so do Read Article

Engineering a Layer Stack Up for High Speed Design

Engineering a Layer Stack Up for High Speed Design Most of your board's simpler EMI/EMC problems, signal integrity problems, and power integrity problems can be solved or reduced with the right layer stackup. In high-speed PCB design and in RF PCB design, the layer stackup is the first place to start engineering the board to ensure it will operate within the intended operational parameters. But like any engineered component, a high-speed layer stackup must balance many functional goals, as well Read Article

Why PCB Design Auto-Interactive Routing is Not a PCB Autorouter

Why PCB Design Auto-Interactive Routing is Not a PCB Autorouter Editorial credit: Santiparp Wattanaporn / Shutterstock.com A while back I was given the gift of a flight in an AT-6, a WWII era airplane used for training fighter pilots. There couldn’t have been a better gift for an aviation enthusiast, and I spent the next 5 months eagerly anticipating it. Finally, the day arrived and I couldn’t have been happier as we took off into the wild blue yonder. Then the pilot demonstrated an aileron roll, and my Top Read Article

AltiumLive Summit Starts Tomorrow in San Diego's Beautiful Mission Bay

AltiumLive Summit Starts Tomorrow in San Diego's Beautiful Mission Bay - PCB Design Conference Scroll down for a map or click on directions in Google Maps. AltiumLive 2017 Rarely does a PCB design conference come along that is focused wholly on training content designed to make YOU a more knowledgeable and effective . That’s why Altium decided to create one--fully centered on designers...and presented by expert PCB designers. AltiumLive 2017: Annual PCB Design Summit is coming to San Diego. Over the next two days, EDA industry Read Article

High Speed PCB Layout Guidelines

High Speed PCB Layout Guidelines: Placement Tips and Strategies In real estate, the buzzword is; “location, location, location”. Interestingly enough, the same can be said of high-speed PCB layout. Although all aspects of the high-speed PCB design process are important, component placement is especially important for ensuring easy routing, minimizing EMI, and possibly eliminating the need for some extra layers. Location placement methods that work without a problem in a standard PCB design may not satisfy the Read Article

How to Guarantee Signal Integrity in Your PCB Design for Serial Communication Protocols

How to Guarantee Signal Integrity in Your PCB Design for Serial Communication Protocols During my school days, I was addicted to the popular FIFA PC games series. I could spend hours scoring against the best virtual soccer teams. I was so engrossed in playing the game that I become oblivious to my mom’s voice when she called me to run an errand. It goes without saying that I received a healthy dose of scolding from my mom and was slapped with a 3 months ban on PC gaming. This is a good example of external sources can cause us to Read Article

How to Plan Ahead to Meet PCB Disposal Requirements

How to Plan Ahead to Meet PCB Disposal Requirements When I was a kid and learned to solder, I had a mentor that kept an old coffee can on his soldering bench labeled “Lead Waste - DO NOT THROW IN TRASH.” Wire snippings, solder bits, and the random metal detritus that accumulates on a soldering mat all went in there. Apparently, it got full every few years and he took it to a local electronics recycling place to make sure he wasn’t adding any lead or heavy metals to the environment. I was shocked Read Article

Designing a PCB for High voltage: PCB Layers

Designing a PCB for High voltage: PCB Layers My sister used to decorate cakes as a 4-H project, while I showed chickens and built a computer. She had to create at least six “show quality” cakes a year, plus all the versions that didn’t come out perfect. It turns out you can actually get tired of eating cake, so eventually you just get styrofoam forms and decorate those. It gives you a chance to practice the design before you actually put it on a real cake. Getting the design right might Read Article

Why You Should Incorporate Digital Input Sampling for Embedded Systems

Why You Should Incorporate Digital Input Sampling in Your Embedded System I particularly enjoy shopping in the supermarket on the weekend. In the grocery section, there are samples of various food products that range from tuna spread to white coffee. While I enjoy hopping from one sample station to another, my 5 year old son shamelessly always asks for a second helping. Sampling in electronics carries a different meaning than leisurely eating a variety of snacks. In an embedded system, digital input signals play an Read Article

High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention: How to Manage Pads and Traces: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites

High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention: How to Manage Pads and Traces: PCB Design Tips & Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you think in the comments Read Article

The Best PCB Design Software Tools and How They Work

The Best PCB Design Software Tools and How They Work Using the right tools can save you lots of time, money, and frustration no matter what type of design you intend to realize. The old adage “work smarter, not harder” definitely applies to printed board design. Great PCB design software will provide the tools you need to work intelligently, instead of frustrating you with awkward features. Your choice of EDA software is subjective to your design needs. Most of the time it comes down to having the Read Article

Quality Tips and Tricks To Help You Get Your Layer Stack Right

Quality Tips and Tricks To Help You Get Your Layer Stack Right What are PCBs? PCBs are Printed Circuit Boards and they are the heart of everything electronic. The circuit board offer mechanical support and create an electrical connection between several electronic components with the aid of pads, conductive tracks, and several other features which are made from copper sheets and laminated onto non-conductive substrates. The PCB is also a housing unit on which several components (resistors, capacitors or Read Article

Hand Routing vs Using an Automated Router: Why Auto-Interactive Routing Is the Ideal PCB Design Solution

Manual Routing vs Using an Automated Router: Why Auto-Interactive Routing Is the Ideal PCB Design Solution I have been designing printed boards for a long time. Like most experienced PCB designers, I have my reservations about autorouters. Autorouters have a reputation for being difficult to set up and run, taking a long time to work, and giving questionable results. Often you would put your board into the router in the evening only to find the next morning that the results were not worth saving. I knew designers who would spend hours and hours Read Article

Bill of materials in Supply chain management: Part inventory control

Bill of Materials in Supply Chain Management: Part Inventory Control Sending information to other departments and personnel is a regular part of the PCB design process. For purchasing, their part of this process starts when engineering sends them a bill of materials () for a new design. At this point in the design cycle, the is a preliminary document and it is constantly changing as are added, updated, or eliminated during the design cycle. The problem for purchasing is that this constantly changing data impacts Read Article

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Component Shapes Considerations

High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Component Shapes Considerations When starting a high speed PCB design, there’s a lot that must be considered before the design ever gets into layout. Schematic organization, board materials & layer configuration, critical component placement, and how high speed signals are to be routed are all aspects of high speed design that need to be planned for. Often there is one area that doesn’t get as much consideration as everything else, and that is the component footprint shapes Read Article

Stripline vs Microstrip: Understanding The Differences and The Best PCB Routing Guidelines

Stripline vs Microstrip: PCB Routing Differences and Guidelines Traces in a PCB are given two possible names based on their location in a PCB stackup: striplines and microstrips. In a PCB, a stripline and microstrip are two different transmission line structures used in a PCB layout. Microstrips and striplines also come in the coplanar and differential varieties, and all of these have certain advantages when used for high-speed or high-frequency signals. If you're looking for a thorough comparison of Read Article