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PCB Design
PCB Trace Inductance and Width: How Wide is Too Wide?
Here’s how you can size your traces correctly and ensure they have sufficiently low PCB trace inductance.
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Integrated Electronics Manufacturing and Design Collaboration
Advanced devices require collaboration among multiple team members, both to ensure functionality and manufacturability. With embedded systems, this extends beyond a hardware team to include software developers. If you want your new product to be manufacturable at scale, then at some point, you will need to involve your manufacturer in the collaborative process. This is especially true with high speed digital devices and high speed analog devices
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What You Need to Know About GaN and SiC FETs
New FETs on the block. What you need to know about high electron mobility transistors (HEMT) silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN).
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Enterprise IoT Challenges for PCB Designers in 2020
Enterprise IoT became one of the biggest tech buzzwords in 2019, with many analysts promising improvements in business efficiencies and profits simply by connecting everything in the office. As time goes on, real problems that can be solved by connecting business assets start to become clear, and practical opportunities for innovation and problem solving can be identified. I would argue we’re starting to move away from the 1990s-equivalent age of
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Revisiting Vertical Connection Structures-VECS Part 2
It’s been about one year since I posted a BLOG about the new VeCS Technology (vertical connection structures) invented by Joan Tourné. Since then, Joan has written four papers detailing much more information about his invention. This is a quick update, in case you have not seen or read those papers. He has two more coming up in January 2020, and March 2020 in PCB007. Vertical Conductive Structures-Rethinking Sequential Lamination [1] NEXTGIN
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Noise Margin Analysis Part 2
Part 1 of this article addressed the three elements that comprise a design rule set, noise sources and their impact on a system’s overall operation including Vcc, and ground bounce and ground and Vcc offsets. Also described, was what needs to happen when current leads are so high that it’s not possible to put enough copper in the power path. This second part addresses further noise sources and their impacts, including ground and Vcc drops in IC
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Noise Margin Analysis Part 1
In a previous article, I described the various aspects of noise margins, their sources and why it is necessary to sum up all the noise margins for every logic component utilized in a given design. This two-part article addresses why noise margin analysis is a critical element within the design rule creation process, and how that analysis is incorporated into the final design rule set. Part 1 addresses the three elements comprising a design rule
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Evaluating Concord Pro
Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here . I’m working on several projects that require new PCB assemblies, and this presented a great opportunity to try Altium’s new product: Concord Pro™. Concord Pro is a component management system which makes component creation and organization much easier than using the
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Creating a Powerful 150W DIY LED Driver for Driving Large Lighting Panels
Most of my recent projects have been working towards building a high CRI (Colour Rendering Index) light panel for cinematography. A good quality video light panel is expensive, and for good reason, but as a maker, I tend to like buying things instead of just buying them. My goal was to build a 300-320W panel. However, I’ve come to realize that the limitation for a panel with that many LEDs is not driving them, but instead reflowing the board. A
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Designing a Custom High Speed Photogate PCB
Mark Harris details the process of making a custom photogate board for a desktop injection molding machine—download the project files and follow along!
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Reduce PCB Manufacturing Time Through Manufacturer Collaboration
In a recent interview with PCB007, Altium VP of Marketing Lawrence Romine recalled a brief conversation with Tara Dunn, who remarked that all designs her company receives for manufacturing get put on hold. If you’re a manufacturer, this probably doesn’t surprise you; some designers can be very cavalier with their design choices. Although these designs may be innovative and useful from a signal integrity and layout perspective, they may not be
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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 USB 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
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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
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Understanding Your PCB Netlist File
Understanding Your PCB Netlist File There are several different ways that PCB 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 PCB netlist file is used graphically
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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
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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.
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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.
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