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Thought Leadership
Keep Your Altium Designer PCB Layout in Line with Grids and Grid-Selection Shortcuts
The grid system in a printed circuit board design CAD program is a great tool for a PCB designer, and it's a system worth knowing. Altium Designer
®
has a well designed grid system that you can use to your advantage in your PCB designs and schematic captures. Before all the different snap and placement utilities that are now available in CAD systems, we used to have to constantly manipulate the grid to place objects at different locations. It
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Collecting All the Pieces You Need: What is a Bill of Materials?
On a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon with small children, of course you’ll start to panic a bit to figure out what kind of antics you can get them into without causing too much trouble. So, I turned to drawing. We arranged crayons and paper on the dining room table and I began to draft a simple periscope. I outlined each part of the periscope and placed a letter alongside—my engineer was showing. Completed, I showed it to the kids and asked if
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GPS Antennas in Your PCB Design: You Won’t Get Lost Again
Going on hunting trips with my grandpa as a kid, we would carry a rather large GPS-navigator to help us keep from getting lost in the woods. It had a huge antenna sticking out the top and its battery never lasted longer than a few hours. Fast forward 20 years, and including GPS capabilities in your PCB design has become easier than ever. Many new consumer devices include GPS PCB antenna modules in their design. If you don’t have GPS or RF-design
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Dual-Band PCB Antenna Design: Keeping Your EMI In-Line
If you were born in the 1980’s or earlier, you probably remember those old brick-like cell phones and their giant antennas. Fast forward to the present, and most people don’t even realize that their smartphones have antennas. Proposed antenna designs have come a long way since the 80’s, and new antennas can send and receive in more than one frequency band. As the mobile and IoT industry continues to advance, electronic devices continue to use
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Preventing Ground Loops in Your PCB Design
I think we’ve all been there. You buy that awesome stereo system only to hear that familiar humming sound in the background. When you take it back to the store the clerk blames the manufacturer. What components are to be considered a problem? The decoupling capacitor or ground wire? How about the bypass capacitor or PCB ground loop design interference? The stereo manufacturer will blame the component manufacturer and the component manufacturer
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Understanding 2-Layer PCB Ground Planes
Like many designers, my first board was a 2-layer board, and it didn't use a PCB ground plane. It wasn't very elaborate, just an amplifier with some connectors and a connection to a DAQ module that interfaced with a LabVIEW app. When you're designing with through-hole components on a copper-clad perfboard, there's no way to create a solid ground region anywhere on the board, and your grounding strategy will suffer for it. If you watch the
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Cave Markings and Circuit Boards: How to Read PCB Layout Assembly Drawings
“The devil is in the details.” Ever think about the meaning of that phrase? It tells us about the importance of details and that overlooking details will cause problems. Such a brief sentence also speaks to us about how to read a PCB assembly drawing and how to read a circuit board. Accurate component placement makes the PCB layout easier. If we gloss over the small details, many different problems can damage circuit performance. PCB assembly
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Introduction of 3D Technology in PCBs: 3D Printing and PCB Design
Early experimental jets from the design table to wind tunnel tests of models to actual piloted flight at a rapid rate. During the 1950s, aircraft designers relied on slide rules and blackboard mathematics rather than computer processing and virtual simulations. When a test pilot climbed into a cockpit, he climbed into an untested prototype. Some flights went very well and set speed and altitude records, while other flights… didn’t. As with
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PCB Design and CAD Software: Know What Governs Your Designs
Every now and then, the phrase “rule of law” becomes part of conversations about how countries govern. Going all the way back to the 13th century Magna Carta, the “rule of law” speaks about the development of peaceful and equitable societies—and the need for basic human rights. Individuals living under the “rule of law” enjoy Equality under the law The transparency of law An independent judiciary and Access to legal remedy. Without rules for
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With RF Circuit Impedance in Mind Your Designs Won't Look Bird-Brained
Several years ago, scientists compared the aerodynamic characteristics of several bird species with different species of bats. Feathered bird wings become inactive during the upstroke and maintain lift. Every downstroke increases thrust, lift, and flight speed. In contrast, bats have membranous wings that produce lift during the upstroke. Regardless of their methods, birds and bats overcome weight and drag to achieve flight efficiency. Two
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Milling Artwork in Copper: PCB Router Bit Diameters and Other Tools to Get the Job Done
Spring is a busy time of year in the garden. The yard brings chores, but with the right tools, time passes easily and pretty soon I’m enjoying my lawn chair. One of those chores is picking up all the dead leaves left from Autumn that remain in places they fell, blanketing areas of shrub beds and cement patio. For shrub beds, I use rake and hands to pick up leaves and throw them in the compost. For the patio, I fire up the pressure washer and
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Laser Drilling Microvias and Stub Removal in PCBs
Anyone that has worked with a high power pulse laser knows the damage they can cause. In my optoelectronics days, destroying samples became routine as I ambitiously tried to coax a larger electrical response from my devices. But I was also able to use my trusty laser to fabricate interesting new devices by etching microscopic patterns in my samples. Mechanical drilling has been the standard method for placing via holes in PCBs and is still a
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Oh the Boards You Will Make: Tips for Beginners in Design & Electronics
If there was ever a time to begin thinking about beginning your career as an electrical engineer, the time is right now! With the rise of so many electronics hardware startups, the advancements in circuitry and pcb design software, and the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, you’ve found yourself on a large and fast wave of industry. With the upbringing of so many companies and possibilities, the job market is very hot and yields
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Why Startup Transition is a Concern for Embedded Systems
Do you have a morning ritual? I can barely function without mine. My brain has a hard time operating without a big breakfast, some piping hot coffee, and five minutes browsing through my inbox even when there are zero unread emails. Having a morning ritual for your embedded system is helpful too. While you don’t need to serve any coffee to your PCB’s microcontroller, you do need to ensure that it efficiently handles the transitional state during
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How Integrated PCB Libraries Can Lower Development Costs
Editorial credit: MikeDotta / Shutterstock.com I’m pretty stubborn when it comes to developing new recipes for my kid. Just last week, I insisted on preparing the bolognese sauce from scratch as I tried to whip up a decent pasta dish. I ended up taking more time than I should have, as my son grew in frustration and hunger by the minute. That’s when I decided to just buy off-the-shelf pasta sauce next time. When I started working on electronics, I
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Starting Out in PCB Design with the Right Board Layout Software
Recently my daughter-in-law posted a picture of my grandson’s feet along with the following statement: “I wonder where these feet will lead you in life my son, you are so full of curiosity and determination already.” As his grandfather, I already know for a fact that he is destined to become the most brilliant person ever to ever walk the face of the earth. Seriously though, wondering where our paths will take us in life is something that we will
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High Density Interconnect Boards and How They Can Benefit Your Design
In the world of PCB design, high-density interconnect boards are among the fastest growing designs that are surfacing. Offering lighter weight, faster transmission times, more real estate to place components, and a reduction in signal loss there are few downsides to implementing these designs into your device. In any industry, the push for better, faster, stronger is usually a consumer-driven force. It is no different here. The push for devices
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