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  • Altium Designer

    Complete Environment for Schematic + Layout

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    Entry Level, Professional PCB Design Tool

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    Community Based PCB Design Tool

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    Agile PCB Design For Teams

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    Connecting PCB Design to the Manufacturing Floor

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  • Altium Concord Pro

    Complete Solution for Library Management

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    Extensive, Easy-to-Use Component Database

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    World-Renowned Technology for Embedded Systems Development

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    Altium Designer 20

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

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    PCB Design

    PCB Design

    Read the latest information PCB Design from the industry's leading experts.
    Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT in Manufacturing When it comes to electronics, consumer devices like smartphones and Alexa tend to get all the attention. However, according to Alun Morgan at Ventec International Group, “about 23% of PCBs produced worldwide are used in electronics equipment for manufacturing applications.” The numbers only go up when you include other non-consumer categories that support manufacturing operations, such as automotive, telecom, power generation/distribution, and Read Article
    Production-Grade Battery Modules for Raspberry Pi Zero I’ll admit, I’m a big fan of Raspberry Pi. This set of inexpensive boards packs plenty of general purpose computing power into a small form factor, it easily connects to a LAN/WiFi and is accessible via SSH, and its memory is easily expandable with a micro SD card. It’s also easy to get a new prototype embedded application up and running directly from your laptop. The one aspect that prevents its application as a production-grade embedded system Read Article
    PCB Design Review and Collaboration in Altium Concord Pro Remote collaboration tools are everywhere these days, and now designers have access to a convenient collaboration system for electronics design. Whether you’re part of a design team, or you need to quickly execute any design changes recommended by your manufacturer, you need cloud collaboration tools that are immediately accessible within your PCB design application. Now with Altium Concord Pro, you’ll have access to a cloud-driven design Read Article
    Differential Pair Length Matching: Best Practices for Signal Integrity Take two signals and send them down a parallel bus or differential pair. How can you be sure the downstream receiver will latch to your signals? If your signals don’t arrive at the same place and at the same time, then gates in your receiver won’t latch at just the right moment. This delicate balance can be like walking a tightrope across a cliff, and it can be difficult to maintain differential pair length matching by eyeing your trace lengths Read Article
    How to Perform Differential Pair Tuning in Altium Designer 20 In order to properly suppress common-mode noise, differential pairs must be routed in parallel, with perfect symmetry, and with matched lengths. In real PCBs, meeting these three objectives isn’t always possible, but you can often come close with the right design tools. Instead of eyeing out your different pair lengths, the interactive routing tools in Altium Designer make differential pair length matching easy. You can encode permissible length Read Article
    How Do Capacitor Mounting Structures And Footprints Impact Total Inductance? In this blog article we discuss the inductance of the capacitor footprint along with the inductance of vias from the capacitor footprint to the PCB power planes. Read more. Read Article
    An Overview Of PCB Outer Layer Processing Expert Kella Knack describes in detail the fabrication of the PCB outer layer. Read and learn about how different vias are formed and the steps involved in the multilayer build-up process. Read Article
    The PCB Fabrication Process—what Every Design Engineer Needs To Know, Part 2 In Part 1 of this article, I described the first steps that occur during the PCB fabrication process. They detailed the inner layer processing effort as well as the efforts that take place during the transition from inner layer processing to lamination. This part of the article will provide a detailed description of the lamination, drilling and plating processes. The goal of these two articles is to familiarize designers and design engineers Read Article
    The PCB Fabrication Process—What Every Design Engineer Needs To Know, Part 1 In the olden and not-so-olden days of PCB development, the process of moving a board from design to manufacturing was often referred to as “throwing the design over the wall.” This was not the result of the operations being so clearly divided, but rather a way to assign ownership and blame if there were errors. My last project at Martin Marietta was a black hole program for the U.S. Airforce and Navy. When problems were encountered during the Read Article
    Working with Design Variants Introduction They say variety is the spice of life. That is also the case for PCB designs. It may come as a shock to some, but many companies are in business and always chasing this thing called “profits” (I am using my sarcastic voice). It is entirely understandable that profit is what keeps the doors open and people employed. A significant way that they improve the bottom line is to have a variety of product lines available to their customers Read Article
    Arduino Portenta H7 Brings Dev Boards to Production Grade When I hear the name “Arduino,” I don’t usually think of production-grade hardware. I’m not talking down to the folks at Arduino, they’ve done an excellent job at invading the educational and proof-of-concept development niches, to the extent that other hardware platforms simply haven’t been able to catch up. Arduino boards are an excellent choice for low volume functional prototyping and embedded software development. But what about production Read Article
    GaN MMIC Power Amplifier Market Outlook and Applications The next smartphone you buy is likely to include a GaN MMIC power amplifier for wireless communication. What was formerly relegated to academia is now seeing fast commercialization. These developments aren’t limited to smartphones, although this is expected to account for a significant portion of the growing RF components market. High frequency radar in automotive, aerospace, and even robotics is expected to be a significant driver of further GaN Read Article
    What Types of EMI Filters are Best for Passing EMC Certification? When you need to pass EMC certification and your new product is being crippled by a mysterious source of EMI, you’ll probably start considering a complete product redesign. Your stackup, trace geometry, and component arrangement are good places to start, but there might be more you can do to suppress specific sources of EMI. There are many different types of EMI filters that you can easily place in your design, and that will help suppress EMI in Read Article
    Why you should be using Concord Pro? Introduction A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so the aphorism goes. I think it’s worth noting that the first step is the most difficult to take. In my experience, the best engineers suffer from a condition in which they, before even taking that first step, endlessly consider “What if?” scenarios. You know what I am talking about here... “What if we do this and something happens?” This issue is so prevalent in our Read Article
    Top Tips from Experienced Flex Designers Fabrication: In general, advice given about flexible circuit fabrication is split between knowledge of the fabricator and their process, and communication. Knowledge of the printed circuit board fabrication process is not as common as it once was, and this is even more apparent with the subtleties of flex manufacturing. Understanding the manufacturing process helps to illuminate areas that are more challenging for fabrication, as well as areas Read Article
    PCB Design for Testability to Ensure High Yield and Quality If you remember your days in school, then you probably remember the feeling of happiness and celebration when you pass a big exam. You’ll feel the same sense of adulation when your board spin passes a barrage of pre and post assembly tests, but a complex design might not reach that stage unless you implement the right design for testability methods. There are some simple steps that can help your manufacturer identify and quickly implement Read Article
    A PCB Design Review Checklist Gets You to Manufacturing Quickly From what I’ve heard in some of my favorite podcasts, successful people keep a lot of to-do lists. Likewise, PCB designers can ensure their own successful manufacturing run when they keep a PCB design review checklist. After you send your design data over to your manufacturer, their engineers will go through your design with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything that could reduce yields or anything that appears as a discrepancy between design Read Article