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

Altium Designer 20

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

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18:49 Communicating Design Intent with Manufacturing Outputs No one wants to do a board respin because of inaccurate or incomplete manufacturing outputs confusing design intent. This webinar Watch Video

Are Fiducial Marker Placements on PCBs Still Necessary with Modern Manufacturing Capabilities? About 10 years ago, I stopped watching horror movies. In my younger days I really enjoyed being scared silly, but when I started my engineering career I became more interested in action and sci-fi genres. This is likely because I was getting my fair share of horror stories at work when simple mistakes resulted in catastrophic post-production nightmares. Sign up and try Altium Designer today. When I started my electronics design career, through Read Article

How to Create a PCB Manufacturing Cost Estimation Unless I receive a layout job directly from a manufacturer, my clients will usually ask if I’m a manufacturer. My company doesn’t manufacture boards, but I think it’s important to keep clients informed of the manufacturing costs for new PCBs. Once I started gathering estimates for some of my first projects, I started to better understand the primary cost drivers of PCB manufacturing and how to properly structure a comprehensive estimate for my Read Article

Take the Risk Out of Prototype PCB Assembly (PCBA) Take the risk out of your PCB assembly (PCBA) with supply chain management. There is a special feeling one gets when polishing off a Rev A design and ordering the first set of PCBs from a board house. While designers everywhere would likely not trade that feeling for anything, taking some of the uneasiness off the table would probably be a welcome change. Here are review steps that should prove more effective at settling nerves than an after-work Read Article

What is Burn-in Testing for Electronics? Once you’re planning for production of any new board, you’ll likely be planning a battery of tests for your new product. These tests often focus on functionality and, for high speed/high frequency boards, signal/power integrity. However, you may intend for your product to operate for an extreme period of time, and you’ll need some data to reliably place a lower limit on your product’s lifetime. In addition to in-circuit tests, functional tests Read Article

PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: How Hot is Too Hot? One common question from designers, particularly new designers that are learning about industry standards, is regarding the current-carrying capacity of conductors in a PCB. 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 on the board cool. While the Read Article

How to Design Your PCB Test Coupon and What You Can Test As the operating speed of components has increased, controlled impedance is becoming more common in digital, analog, and mixed-signal systems. If the controlled impedance value for an interconnect is incorrect, it can be very difficult to identify this problem during an in-circuit test. Minor mismatches may not cause a board to fail, but it can be difficult to pinpoint incorrect impedance as the cause of any test failure, especially if correct Read Article

PCB Trace and Pad Clearance: Low vs. High Voltage High voltage/high current designs carry safety requirements which 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 standards provide guidance for Read Article

PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: How Hot is Too Hot? One common question from designers, particularly new designers that are learning about industry standards, is current-carrying capacity of conductors in a PCB. 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 on the board cool. While the recommended Read Article

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

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

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 Read Article

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

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

PCB Core vs. Prepreg Material: What Designers Need to Know I sometimes get questions from designers that want to know more about the PCB material selection and manufacturing process. Although I’m not a manufacturer, it behooves designers to understand something about the materials they have available when working on a new project. One question I get is on the exact differences between PCB core vs. prepreg materials. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, including by novice designers; I’ll admit I Read Article

The Importance of Having A Modern PCB Manufacturing Data Format I recently posted a BLOG on Altium about the latest eSmart Factory in New Hampshire. Using the latest in State-of-the-Art machinery and processes, it can produce near-perfect complex multilayers and HDI substrates with extremely fine geometries in only a few days, and without ever being helped or touched by human hands, all while and emitting nothing to harm the environment—zero effluents. Digitization for the Smart Factory This technology will Read Article