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High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention: How to Manage Pads and Traces

High Voltage PCB Design for Arc Prevention: How to Manage Pads and Traces Growing up, I’d work obsessively on jigsaw puzzles with my grandmother. Like, skipping dinner obsessively. She was a grandmaster of puzzles; you only got to look at the picture once when you took the pieces out. If you needed more than your memory and pattern recognition, that was cheating. Instead of facing the shame of looking at the box, I learned to focus on the shapes of the pieces, and how each fit with its neighbors. That way, not knowing Read Article

Using Star Grounding for Analog Ground and Digital Ground Connections

Should You Use Star Grounding for Analog and Digital Ground Separation? Be careful when you use star grounding to connect analog and digital ground planes in mixed signal PCB design. Read Article

RS-485

The RS-485 Interface in a Wireless World RS-485 is still relevant, even if it does not use those big D-sub connectors. Read Article

How to Plan Your PCB Layout for a High Voltage Design

How to Plan Your PCB Layout for a High Voltage Design I used to trail run with a friend who is an urban planner. As part of her devious plan to get me to run further before I was too tired and bored, she’d tell me about the various considerations that go into the zoning and construction in a town. There were also a lot of shenanigans with local politics that provided a juicy distraction. Although my friend would disagree, a high voltage PCB layout have some similarities to complex urban planning. In Read Article

Considerations for Designing a High Voltage PCB

Considerations for Designing a High Voltage PCB I used to think that high voltage applications were only used in power engineering. Since I had no desire to work at a power plant or transformer station, I was safe from having to learn high voltage PCB design considerations. Alas, my interest in space applications proved me wrong and forced me to confront my laziness. It turns out high voltage applications show up in almost every industry, from manufacturing and power plants to medical and Read Article

PCB Trace Clearance Distance for High Voltage Creep

High Voltage PCB Design: Creepage and Clearance Distances for High Voltage Designing high voltage PCBs following specific spacing guidelines is critical. In high density circuit boards, spacing is even trickier and more important for protection. Read Article

Structural Integrity and the Challenges of Rigid-Flex PCB Design

Structural Integrity and the Challenges of Rigid-Flex PCB Design With the advent of rigid-flex, we’ve been able to fit more in a smaller form factor than ever before. Not only that but rigid-flex designs have an edge over rigid designs in weight and reliability. I could write a blog on just the advantages of rigid-flex, but I’ll leave that for another day. Rigid-flex is great, but there are some things you need to be aware of when you work with it. What I’d like to highlight in this blog are the routing Read Article

How Component Placement and Routing Helps Protect Your PCB from ESD

How Component Placement and Routing Helps Protect Your PCB from ESD I organize certain things with a reportedly alarming neuroticism. In grad school, there was a line of demarcation between the edge of my side of the desk and the pile of sample containers and papers that began on my neighbor’s side. This same tendency, though annoying to deskmates and boyfriends, especially since it doesn’t extend to bathrooms, makes me an ace at optimizing component placement on PCBs. Not only does this keep things neat, it also Read Article

The Correct PCB Routing and PCB Layout to Help Protect Your Board From ESD

The Correct PCB Routing and PCB Layout to Help Protect Your Board From ESD When I started running, I went with a friend who had finished several ultramarathons. She would run miles from her house, do a short loop with me, and then carry on without me. When I got faster, instead of getting to go home sooner, she made our loop longer. She was tricky about it, too. She always planned a route where it would be boring for me to turn around early, or on new trails so I’d get lost trying to take a “shortcut” back. As an urban Read Article

The Most Important Features for PCB Layout Software Comparison: PCB Design Tips Tricks - Altium Audio Bites

The Most Important Features for PCB Layout Software Comparison: PCB Design Tips Tricks - Altium Audio Bites Altium Audio Bites, giving you bite-sized information that's easy to digest and apply to your everyday design tasks. From our PCB Design Tips & Tricks audio series here is: The Most Important Features for PCB Layout Software Comparison. All our audio series are from real PCB designers in the field, detailing their day to day problems and experiences. We hope you can learn from this as much as we have. Give it a listen and let us know what you Read Article

How Parasitic Inductance Can Impact Your ESD Protection

How Parasitic Inductance Can Impact Your ESD Protection When I was a kid, I was certain I was going to be a biologist. I collected all kinds of lizards, tadpoles, and insects, and spent most of my allowance on aquariums for my various creatures to live in. However, one thing really held me back. I am super grossed out by parasites. I will let a mantis or snake crawl all over me, but even looking at a tapeworm gives me dry heaves. Eventually, I went into engineering, where nothing needs weekend Read Article

The Most Important Features for PCB Layout Software Comparison

The Most Important Features for PCB Layout Software Comparison Have you ever gone to a used car dealership and tried to get a good deal on a car? It’s nearly impossible for anyone but a mechanic. When I went I ended up with a choice between two cars that seemed nearly identical to me, except for their price. I picked the cheaper one and took it to a local shop, and found out that I’d chosen a jalopy. Sometimes choosing PCB design software can feel the same way. You use a free program or spend some money on Read Article

Pros and Cons of Different High-Frequency Transmission Line Types

Pros and Cons of Different High-Frequency Transmission Line Types You already know that dating is something I struggle with. After my failed attempts at blind dates and speed dating, I decided it was time to try online dating. I found a nice woman who said she was my age and set up a date. Upon arrival, I found out that I’d been catfished--that wasn’t actually her in the picture! Needless to say, it didn’t go well. It made me realize that I should have done a bit more research about my date and online Read Article

Circuit Replication with Multi-Channel Design

How to Simplify Your Circuit Replication with Multi-Channel Design Circuit replication, especially in flat designs, presents several unique challenges that occur when you copy PCB layout designs. You can't simply copy and paste footprints around your PCB layout and expect all of your design data to remain synchronized without errors. What about reverse engineering? Similarly, when you need to reuse schematic circuit blocks, taking the copy and paste approach simply takes too long and can make your schematics Read Article

BGA PCB Design

How to Successfully Design With a BGA What's the first step in designing with a high pin count BGA in your PCB? You'll start with floorplanning, fanout, and layer assignment to aid routing. Read Article

Making friends with differential pairs

Making Friends with Differential Pair Schematics A question arises when working with differential pairs, particularly when you inherit or import designs where the differential pair directives were not added to the schematics. Is it actually necessary to set up the directives in the schematic documents? In order to use the schematic Differential Pair directives in Altium Designer^® , a specific naming convention must be used. The negative and positive signals of the pair must follow the Read Article

How to Avoid Common PCB Signal Integrity Issues in Your Designs

How to Avoid Common PCB Signal Integrity Issues in Your Designs Learn the common PCB signal integrity approaches to help eliminate basic system level failures. Read Article