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PCB Design

Evaluating Concord Pro

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 Read Article

Creating a Powerful 150W LED Driver for Driving Large Lighting Panels

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 Read Article

Designing a Custom High Speed Photogate PCB

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! Read Article

Reduce PCB Manufacturing Time

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 Read Article

3D view of USB charger project in Altium Designer

USB Charger Project in Altium Designer: Part 2 Click here to jump to the viewer embed and browse this project 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 Read Article

3D view of USB charger project in Altium Designer

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 Read Article

Understanding Your PCB Netlist

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 Read Article

Using Terminations To Control Reflections

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 Read Article

PCB Functional Testing and The Role of Manufacturer Collaboration

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. Read Article

Guide to Getting Started with Freelance Engineering

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. Read Article

Tips for Time Critical Flex Delivery

Tips for Time Critical Flex Delivery Here are some simple suggestions to reduce the chances of fabrication delivery for your flex and rigid flex designs getting held up by delays. Read Article

Copper Current Density for Simulations, The Quick and Dirty Way

Copper Current Density for Simulations, Using Quick and Dirty PCB Design Rules How to calculate copper current density quickly and effectively when you don’t know where to start. Read Article

PCB Design for Radio-Over-Fiber Technology

PCB Design for Radio-Over-Fiber Technology It’s possible that radio-over-fiber technology is one of the least discussed aspects of fiber telecom networks. However, it stands to be one of the many portions of telecom infrastructure for bringing broadband wireless access to remote areas. This approach is likely to play a major role for future 5G infrastructure in rural areas where a standard wireless backhaul is not possible or cost-prohibitive. Just like any other electronic system, radio Read Article

For Clear Communication, Use the Best RF PCB Design Software

Use the Best Radio PCB Design Software For Clear Communication More and more RF or radio PCB designs are being used every day, and if you aren’t already working with them you may find yourself doing so very soon. To make sure you have the greatest advantage, use the best RF PCB design software you can get; Altium Designer. ALTIUM DESIGNER Working through radio PCB design commandments like frequency, components, noise, and layer management with ease. The communication gap is shrinking all over the world as Read Article

PCB Board Thickness Requirements and Standards Incorporating the design with the fabrication process was never worth the effort as old and rigid PCB layout design tools offered little in the way of help in this area. Those days are long gone, and the multitude of design technologies available to the PCB designer of today offer advanced functionality in layout tools. From a standard two-layer board to a multi-layer HDI with microvias or a rigid-flex design, you need Printed Circuit Board Read Article

Thermal Properties of PCB Substrate Materials

Important Thermal Properties of PCB Substrate Materials Signal integrity isn’t the full story, the thermal properties of your PCB substrate materials are also important for reliability. Read Article

Electronic Components Management in Altium 365

Electronic Components Management in Altium 365 Electronic components management is much easier when your team can quickly share and annotate parts data in Altium 365. Read Article