SPICE: Certainty for All Decisions

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Simulation / Analysis for PCB Design

Draftsman: What’s New in Altium Designer 19

Draftsman: What’s New in Altium Designer 19 Draftsman^® has been a valuable asset to designers since Altium Designer 16. Although some users may have found it to be incomplete due to their unique board requirements, Draftsman has helped many designs go to production. Since its introduction Draftsman has evolved more and more into what it is today: a robust, stable, and powerful PCB drawing editor, specifically made to help designers automate their fabrication and assembly drawing process Read Article

IPC-2152 calculator

Using an IPC-2152 Calculator: Designing to Standards If you look at modern EDA programs, there are many calculators and simulators built into these applications. But one of the areas of simulation that has lagged behind everything else is thermal simulations. Thermal calculations are important particularly in power electronics, and in high-reliability electronics, even if these systems are running lower overall power. There are other instances where we can determine the potential need for an Read Article

Using Altium's PDN Analyzer and Incorporating Simulation-Driven Workflow

Using Altium's PDN Analyzer and Incorporating Simulation-Driven Workflow If you’ve ever placed your hand near the vent on your computer, you can get a sense for the heat being created by the motherboard. Fans are designed to remove heat generated by the components on your motherboard, particularly by your CPU and GPU. The same effects occur in PCBs, even if they do not include components that consume a large amount of power. Power is consumed as it is delivered from the power source to the components, and power drops Read Article

High-Speed PCB Design Analysis

High-Speed PCB Design Analysis: Simulations and Signal Integrity Checks High speed PCB design analysis is an admittedly broad area, comprising basic calculations of important design details, as well as simulations to verify a PCB layout. Some important evaluations are performed in the schematic, or at the very beginning of a design when a layout is being planned. These analysis techniques also have different levels of difficulty or advancement, and they will sometimes require an external program to fully evaluate the Read Article

With Software for Rigid-Flex Designing, You Can Define and Animate Your PCBs

With Software for Rigid-Flex Designing, You Can Define and Animate Your PCBs Rigid-flex PCBs can open the door of possibilities wide open for complex form factors involving limited real-estate. If implemented correctly, you could effectively use each and every wall of any shaped chassis as a mounting surface for your PCB(s). Designing these rigid-flex boards in design software, such as Altium Designer, makes it easy to visually see how your components might interact with one another once actually in a flexed or folded Read Article

How an Electrolytic Capacitor PDN Issue Almost Brought Down a Building

How an Electrolytic Capacitor PDN Issue Almost Brought Down a Building I recently came across an interesting story that involves the tale of a boiler system that failed to start under the close supervision of a TDK-Lambda rep, only to be solved by none other than the building maintenance technician. The story starts by the shutdown of an aging boiler in the dead of winter a British winter that required replacement of the seven-year-old radiators. After the repair and replacements took place, the boiler was switched Read Article

Voltage Regulators and How to Plan Your Power Budget with PDN Analysis

Voltage Regulators and How to Plan Your Power Budget with PDN Analysis and Examples With my first buck regulator design, I had been given a power budget for the circuit block and I had to take into consideration what it was supplying and what topology I’d use. I considered efficiency to remove heat from the enclosure and I wanted to avoid using a heat sink. I also wanted a robust engine, a regulator to keep on working when the CPU, memory, and other utility circuits were exercising their might. I decided on the buck regulator Read Article

High Currents and High Temperature: PCB Design Tips for Heat Management

High Currents and High Temperature: PCB Design Tips for Heat Management I remember the first (and hopefully the only) time one of my circuits caught on fire. It started with the resistors and quickly spread to a nearby decoupling capacitor. Thankfully, the destruction was minor and most of the components were salvageable. Why did this happen you ask? No, this was not due to a short circuit. Very simply, I did not take into account the high current PCB layout. As electronics continue to be miniaturized, the thermal Read Article

Be the Expert When it Comes to Designing Your Power Distribution PCB

Be the Expert When it Comes to Designing Your Power Distribution PCB Editorial credit: Paolo Bona / Shutterstock.com Around my house, we seem to undergo a transformation to obscure-sport experts every four years, and coincidentally it occurs at the same time that the Winter Olympics is taking place. Yes, I’m talking about the sport of curling. We have all become subject matter experts in the “button,” the “hammer,” the “house,” “sweeping,” and of course the “curl.” Rest assured, by next month we will have Read Article

For Your DC Power Application, Which Switching Power Supply Topology is Right?

For Your DC Power Application, Which Switching Power Supply Topology is Right? We often have our old-timer pioneers to thank for laying down the groundwork for our continued success and future growth. These old-school designers had nothing more than theory and confidence to drive their designs, or more specifically, to drive their failures. But as stated by a multitude of wise individuals, each failure is nothing more than a discovery of how not to do something. However, with the discoveries of failures also come Read Article

A Big Kick in PCB Interconnect Solutions: Multi-Board Best Practices

A Big Kick in PCB Interconnect Solutions: Multi-Board Best Practices I’ve always enjoyed thinking about circuits similar to tiny cities. Copper routing as the streets, components as building structures, vias, and the following electrons as the inhabitants running around. But imagine what PCB would be in the city from Inception where the flat ground starts turning on its head and extending overtop, or if Salvador Dali became a city planner. In today’s world of densely packed components (HDI), advanced manufacturing Read Article

Properties of Semiconductors: Electrodeposition and PCB Devices

Properties of Semiconductors: Electrodeposition, Gas Sensors, and PCB Devices I started working with gas sensors 10 years ago—my team had several ideas on how to improve the performance of our devices by integrating semiconductor nanomaterials into our PCB-based sensors. We were familiar with various electron, barrier heights, valence electrons, conduction band and the semiconductor interface. We were all masters of electrodeposition and masters of gas sensors in our own right, and we had the idea to integrate the two Read Article

Practice Makes Perfect: How to Test Electronic Components during PCB Design

Practice Makes Perfect: Testing and Verifying Electronic Component Assemblies during PCB Design When I was younger, well much younger, I had dreams of one day being a pro athlete. I wanted to be the guy who scored the winning touchdown, knocked in the winning run or hit the buzzer-beater. Although I never made to the professional level, I did have some success and I learned a lot. The most important thing was the results you achieved were strictly tied to your preparation. In other words, if I wanted to do well in the game I had to test Read Article

High Current PCB Design and its Real World Applications

High Current Board Design and its Real World Applications With the rise of PCB applications stretching far and wide, designs are being created for applications that extend past simple signal integrity solutions. Advancements in material technology, PCB manufacturing capabilities, and the rising demand for PCB design is opening up the floor for many industries that otherwise have been dormant in the PCB world. Many limitations that were not present a handful of years ago are beginning to loosen. Of Read Article

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Designing with Breadboards

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Designing with Breadboards Breadcrumbs, breadboards, and breadwinners. One of which has electronic components. Two of which will provide you with a delicious and nutritious meal enough to feed a family. The first, will provide you with the foundational playground to which your printed circuit board board design will spawn from. I will save you time, effort, and many awkward encounters by telling you that if you go around trying to stick jumper leads into breadwinners Read Article

Designing Your PDN to Work Within Your PCB Layout Guidelines

Designing Your PDN to Work Within Your PCB Layout Guidelines I enjoy watching the occasional episode of Star Trek here and there, and I get a kick out of noting the inconsistencies in their technology. In one episode they may be firing all of their energy weapons at the bad guys, moving at warp 3-billion to time travel and showing no regard as to where their power was coming from. In the next episode though, someone will plug in a space toaster to warm up their breakfast in the galley, and the whole ship Read Article

See Where You are Going with Your PCB Power Distribution Network Design

Electric Distribution Systems and PCBs: Power Distribution Network Design For those of you who have only experienced the brilliant high power of LED, Xenon, or Halogen headlights in today’s modern cars, you may not realize how fortunate you are. My first car was old enough that its headlights could have been candles. One year I received Halogen fog lights for my birthday, and the difference at night was amazing. Not only could I now see what was next to the car in the dark but the fog lights almost out-distanced the Read Article