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Thought Leadership
Considerations for PCB Circuit Design: Why PCB Labels are Important
Checklists are an important part of life. Airline pilots use them to make sure that they’ve put the wheels down before landing. Shoppers use them to make sure that they don’t forget to buy the eggs. We all use checklists in different ways, and many of us would be lost without them. Here’s another good use for a checklist; making sure that we don’t forget to include important elements on our PCB design. It’s not likely that we will forget to place
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PCB Designer Responsibilities: How to Manage Engineering and Manufacturing Expectations
My wife works at an elementary school, and the thing she dislikes the most is when she has to put herself between two kids in an argument. Being caught in the middle like that is frustrating for her because it is often difficult to turn it into a “win” for both sides of the argument. We as PCB designers are often in the same position when we have to mediate the needs of electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Trying to negotiate a “win
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PCB Design Software Features To Consider
Before making a decision on buying a home, you would probably ask a lot of questions. Is it close to the facilities and services that are important to you? Is it in a good and safe neighborhood? Will the layout of the house satisfy your needs? These are all important questions that need to be answered before you commit to living there. In the same way, buying new PCB design software deserves the same level of scrutiny. You will want to find out
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How to use Circuit Design Software for PCB DFM Guidelines
I once had the privilege of touring the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) courtesy of a family member who served aboard her. Although secure areas were off-limits to me, I still was able to see a good portion of the ship. I saw everything from hangars and workshops to crew quarters and the galley. I even stood on the foremost part of the flight deck, right where Optimus Prime stood at the end of the second Transformers movie. Through it all, I was
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How PCB BOM Management Tools fit into a Paperless Manufacturing BOM Software
My wife is an avid reader, and we have a large selection of her favorite books filling the bookshelves in our family room. Lately though, she has been purchasing more and more E-books to read on her tablet. E-books are easier for her to store and transport, and she now prefers that format over the traditional printed book. This transition from paper to electronic format has been going on for a while now, and E-books are just a small portion of
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Obsolescence Information Management for PCB BOM Maintenance
In my home laboratory, the garage, I have many bins. One contains small springs, another gear-motors, yet another small bolts… and so on. Despite my girlfriend’s skepticism, these bits are actually very useful for fixing assorted gadgets and household appliances, and they also provide fodder for my weekend tinkering habits. Keeping track of what I have and where it is uses up quite a lot of mental capacity in itself. At work, the sheer volume of
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The PCB Routing that Benefits the Most from Interactive PCB Auto Routing
Years ago I helped to re-roof a house, and the first task was to remove the old shingles. Pulling up shingles one at a time, I was very proud of my efforts until a professional roofer came over to me shaking his head. Using a scoop shovel like a snowplow, he removed a couple a hundred shingles in less time than it took me to pull up five by hand. I learned up on the roof that day to always look for better ways to get the job done. When routing a
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Environmental Considerations for High Voltage PCB Board Design
Several years ago, I had a date take me hiking. Beforehand, he gave me a long list of what to wear and bring for the hike. I had been camping and hiking in the mountains since childhood, and this guy was a southern boy, so I found it a little vexing to have him telling me what to do on my home turf. Fortunately, I had been raised to take environmental hazards seriously and tried hard to appreciate someone else who also had neurotic and
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How to Implement Supervised Inputs in Your PCB Circuit Design
Have you ever worked late on a design project and forgot to eat? I was literally starving when I finished off one of my regular design projects. I decided to go for a quick meal at a local eatery. I placed my order and hoped the service would be fast. However, after 45 minutes and no food, I was told that the kitchen has missed my order. I learned my lesson that you can’t expect that your order is being followed just because you placed it. The
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PCB BOM Creation as a Living Document
The other day my son bought himself a new phone because the navigator in his old phone was defective. Every time that he used the old phone for directions, he would end up getting lost. Although taking the time to get a new phone wasn’t in his plans, he could no longer afford wasting time trying to figure out where he was and where he needed to go next. His difficulties reminded me of the problems that I’ve seen in some PCB design groups where
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Why an Auto-Interactive Router Routes Cleaner Traces than an Auto Router
When I was a boy, my room was always a mess. Since I thought I knew where everything was, there was no reason to clean it. Finally, after a lot of pressure from my parents and my peers, I capitulated and cleaned up the room. The difference was amazing. It was so much easier to get around now that I had a clear path. The same can be said about PCB trace routing from an auto router. Auto routers are known for producing disorganized routes that are
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Bill of Materials Inventory Management and the Benefits of an Online Parts Request Documentation Systems
I once asked a family member to borrow some money to use as a down payment. His response included a counter-proposal that I didn’t understand, so I let it pass. Unfortunately by not understanding his answer to my request, I missed out on an even better opportunity than what I had initially asked for. That exchange has stayed in my mind as an example of how important clear communication is. In our world of PCB design, the need for clear
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RF Interference Prevention and RF PCB Design in the Internet of Things
Have you ever been to a party where there was so much noise you could barely hear yourself think? I’m a dedicated introvert, but sometimes my friends lure me out to such gatherings with promises that it will be “very relaxed.” They never are, and I don’t seem to learn. It’s times like those that I wish it was socially acceptable to wear noise-canceling headphones to such events. In the world of electronics, the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT)
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Important Considerations in Your Embedded System's Master-Slave Communication Model
It can take a few weeks or months to finish a working prototype of an embedded system. Sometimes I would spend days working on a single part of the project. However, when your boss is looking for updates every day, it can be particularly distracting and hinder your productivity. When I started my design company, I learned not to repeat these mistakes on my team. Like a human, embedded systems come in various shapes and sizes, and more importantly
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High Speed PCB Design Considerations: Bypass Capacitor Place and Route Tips
Many years ago, the majority of the board designs that I was involved with were simple digital designs. Placing and routing bypass capacitors in those designs was very easy, and often the circuitry was slow enough that ceramic capacitors were not needed. Most of the time we considered bypass capacitor placement and routing as more of an afterthought than as a primary design consideration. I remember how some of the engineers even instructed me to
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The Importance of Compliance Awareness in Circuit and PCB Design
I had an English professor once who was a lot of fun, but man, his requirements for essay writing were brutal. Making a decent grade required a ton of work. I had to check and recheck my paper’s content to make sure that every detail he asked for was painstakingly covered. These tedious rituals, though annoying and painful, helped teach me how to be thorough with my research. This was something that came in handy when I began my career and had to
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Bluetooth Low Energy and the Internet of Things
Did you ever “reinvent yourself” at some time in your life? I did, I went from the nerd in high school who wore cargo shorts and high socks to a less nerdy college student who had regular socks and shorts with the fashionable number of pockets. By the end of college, I had learned “social skills” and was finally ready to enter society as the best, or at least acceptable, version of me. People aren’t the only things that need reinvention, so do
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