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PCB Design
PCB Trace and Pad Clearance: Low vs. High Voltage
High voltage/high current designs carry safety requirements that need to be met by designers. Similarly, high-speed designs need to have suppressed crosstalk in order to ensure signal integrity. The key design aspects that relate to both areas are your PCB trace clearance and pad clearance values. These design choices are critical for balancing safety, noise suppression, and manufacturability. The IPC 2221 voltage and spacing standards provide
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PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: Is My PCB Too Hot?
What does PCBA too hot mean? It's a common question from designers, particularly new designers that are learning about industry standards, and refers to the PCB via current-carrying capacity of conductors. Trace and via current-carrying capacity are legitimate design points to focus on when designing a new board that will carry high current. The goal is to keep conductor temperatures below some appropriate limit, which then helps keep components
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Amplifier Stability at High Frequencies and Stray Capacitance
Amplifiers are one of those critical components that make modern life possible. From wireless communication to power electronics, amplifiers need to run stably and predictably for these products to work properly. Stability analysis is one of my favorite topics in physics and engineering, and it always tends to crop up in places you would least expect. One of these places is in amplifiers. Any time-dependent physical system with feedback and gain
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Near-field and Far-field EMI: What's Causing Noise Problems in My PCB?
If you’re an antenna designer, then you’re likely familiar with all aspects of near-field vs. far-field radiation. Given the litany of radiated EMI problems that cause noise within and outside of an electronic device, one might suddenly realize their new product is acting like a strong antenna. To understand how EMI affects your circuits, it helps to understand exactly how near-field vs. far-field radiation from your PCB affects your ability to
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ADC Sampling Rate and Layout for Mixed Signal Boards
Whenever you’re selecting an ADC, whether it is built into an MCU or as an external component, the sampling rate you will use is a prime consideration as it will determine how well you can reproduce a measured signal. Some RF applications, analog sensor boards, and other mixed-signal devices need at least one ADC with an appropriately chosen ADC sampling rate. If you’re designing with a mixed-signal board, you’ll need to balance the required
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Getting Started in Altium Designer | Changing the Rules!
The Altium Designer environment is controlled by rules, which are created using a powerful tool called the “PCB Rules and Constraints Editor”. By creating rules before component placement and routing starts, Altium can warn you or prevent you from making mistakes, depending on how your preferences are set. If rules are changed midstream, Altium’s sophisticated Design Rule Checker can highlight violations based on the revised rules, and report
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Advanced Tools to Increase the Quality of PCB Manufacturing Documents
Guest writer Peter Smith shares tips for getting the best out of Altium Draftsman
®
. When I started at a company relatively recently, I (and the other designers) were less than impressed with the quality of the manufacturing datapack. It took some work, but we managed to convince the management that it was worth investing the time and effort to produce datapacks that were complete and looked really professional. At the time, we were on Altium
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How to Use Blind and Buried Vias in Altium Designer
The old adage of not being able to cram 10 pounds of whatever into a 5 pound bag is especially true when it comes to routing traces on a PCB design. Unfortunately this demand seems to be the norm anymore; everyone these days wants to increase the density of designs or reduce their form factor, or both! One way that you can help yourself is to use blind and buried vias when routing. These vias will open up a host of new routing options as you will
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The Automotive Standards for Electronics: The Landscape of Self-Driving Cars
Personally, I enjoy driving my own vehicle, and I am unsure of how comfortable I would feel about the process being fully automated. I like the idea of being able to take control over my vehicle when I need to, but it would be nice to be able to recline in the back seat on a long road trip. The automotive industry hasn’t brought self-driving cars to this level just yet, but rest assured, this is envisioned to be a reality in the not-too-distant
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Printed Circuit Board Design Software that is Productive and Painless to Use
When I was young, a new hospital was built in my community. It was easy to get to and provided a great service. Over the years however, the hospital has grown and added more clinics and services. To accommodate this growth the property has been drastically altered for the construction of buildings and parking lots. Now there are narrow driveways, reduced parking, and areas blocked off by cement barricades. If new equipment is being delivered as
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Advanced Design Techniques with Altium Designer
In this article, we’ll learn how to use Altium Designer
®
to implement extra functionalities that are not available by default. We’ll discover a powerful aspect of Altium Designer that when mastered can bring your design skills to a higher level. In this article, we’ll discuss how to implement a script to perform design verification for you. We will learn: How to create rules to verify some design requirements. To verify those rules using a script
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Everything You Need to Know About Ferrite Beads
As noted in my previous blog regarding PDS design , the whole power supply conundrum is one that has been plagued over the years with a number of erroneous rules-of-thumb; “black magic” design rules and confusion as to what does or doesn’t work. One of the most controversial topic areas focuses on the use of ferrite beads as a means of controlling and containing EMI. There is conflicting information concerning the use of ferrite beads and it is
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The EMC Doctor is in: Ken Wyatt on EMI and PCB Health
The OnTrack Podcast welcomes Ken Wyatt (also known as ‘the EMC Doctor’). Ken is an EMC Engineer, a prolific author on EMI/EMC related topics, and an industry consultant.
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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
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NVIDIA Jetson Nano: Lane Detection and Tracking
Autonomous vehicles are slowly becoming an important part of the automotive industry. Many believe fully autonomous vehicles will soon be driving alongside humans, and technology companies are in a race to deploy fully autonomous vehicles. In December 2018, Waymo , the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving car project, officially started its commercial self-driving car service in the suburbs of Phoenix. Companies like May Mobility
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Altium Syncs Your Design and PCB Programming Software
Wondering how to program a PCB board? Altium Designer and Altium 365 can accept outputs from your PCB programming software and store them in the cloud.
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The Best PCB Antenna Design Software Eases Antenna Implementation
Circuit Board antenna design can be a difficult task for any software; however, that shouldn’t be a problem for Altium Designer, which can serve as your go-to BLE antenna design software and much more. ALTIUM DESIGNER Ensuring that your antenna designs are placed without issue Consumer and industrial demand have prompted the demand for smaller wireless devices. The devices support wearable technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) applications
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