News & Updates
In today’s fast-paced world where iterations of electronics are spun at lightning speeds, we often forget one of the most critical aspects of development: testing. Even if we have that fancy test team, are we really able to utilize them for every modification, every small and insignificant change that we make to our prototypes? In this article, we will review a very low cost, yet highly effective and quite exhaustive test system that will get you that bang for your buck that you’ve been looking for.
If you’ve ever looked at the BOM for a reference design or an open-source project, you may have seen a comment in some of the entries in your BOM. This comment is either “DNP” or “DNI”. If you think about it, every component placed in the PCB requires some level of placement and routing effort, which takes time and money if you’re working for a client. This begs the question, why would anyone design a board with components they don’t plan to include in the final assembly?
When it’s time to share your design data with your manufacturer, it’s like taking a leap of faith. Sending off a complete documentation package might seem as easy as placing your fab files in a zip folder, but there are better ways to ensure your manufacturer understands your project and has access to all your design data. For Altium Designer users, there are multiple options for creating and packaging release data into a complete package for your manufacturers.
A heavy focus is usually put on managing your design data, but what about managing your design team? A mismanaged design team can lead to a disorganized and inaccurate design library and data. Watch this webinar to see how Altium 365 can help you to organize users into access restricted groups, manage design and designer access rights, avoid design conflicts when multiple members are working on the same design, and standardize your entire project using templates
If you’re designing a circuit board to be powered by anything except a bench-top regulated power supply, you’ll need to select a power regulator to place on your board. Just like any other component, your regulator has stated operating specs you’ll see in a product summary, and it has more detailed specs you’ll find in a datasheet. The fine details in your datasheets are easy to overlook, but they are the major factors that determine how your component will interact with the rest of your system.
It would be nice if the power that came from the wall was truly noise-free. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and although a power system can appear to output a clean sine wave, zooming into an oscilloscope trace or using an FFT will tell you a different story. When you take "dirty" power, put it through rectification, and then pass it through a switching regulator, you introduce additional noise into the system that further degrades power quality. If you’re a power supply or power systems designer, then you know the value of supplying your devices with clean, noise-free power.
If you’re an electronics designer or you’re just beginning your career as an engineer, the PCB stackup is probably one of the last things you’ll think about. Simple items like PCB copper thickness and board thickness can get pushed to the back burner, but you’ll need to think about these two points for many applications as not every board will be fabricated on a standard 1.57 mm two-layer PCB
I often get questions from designers asking about things like signal integrity and power integrity, and this most recent question forced me to think about some basic routing practices near planes and copper pour. "Is it okay to route signal traces on the same layer as power planes? I’ve seen some stackup guidelines that suggest this is fine, but no one provides solid advice." Once again, we have a great example of a long-standing design guideline without enough context.
Electronics schematics form the foundation of your design data, and the rest of your design documents will build off of your schematic. If you’ve ever worked through a design and made changes to the schematic, then you’re probably aware of the synchronization you need to maintain with the PCB layout. At the center of it all is an important set of data about your components: your schematic netlist. What’s important for designers is to know how the netlist defines connections between different components and schematics in a large project.
There are plenty of PCB manufacturing services you can find online, and they can all start to blend together. If you’re searching for a new service provider, it can be hard to compare all of them and find the best manufacturer that meets your needs. While experienced designers can spot bogus manufacturers from afar, there is always a temptation to go with the lowest priced, supposedly fastest overseas company you can find. However, there is a lot more that should go into choosing a PCB manufacturing service than just price.
Pi Filters are a type of passive filter that gets its name from the arrangement of the three constituent components in the shape of the Greek letter Pi (π). Pi filters can be designed as either low pass or high pass filters, depending on the components used. The low-pass filter used for power supply filtering is formed from an inductor in series between the input and output with two capacitors, one across the input and the other across the output. Keep reading to learn more about their application in the PCB Design.
The first question that should come up when selecting materials and planning a stackup is: what materials are needed and how many layers should be used? Assuming you’ve determined you need a low-loss laminate and you’ve determined your required layer count, it’s time to consider whether you should use a hybrid stackup. There are a few broad situations where you could consider using a hybrid stackup with low-loss laminates in your PCB
Batteries offer a great power source for electrical devices that need to be mobile or located somewhere where connection to a mains electricity supply or other power source is impossible. The biggest problem with battery power is the expectation of users that the device will operate for significant periods with the need for recharging or replacing the batteries. This demand is placing the onus on the designer to improve efficiency and reduce power demand to meet this need.
Learn why BOM management is critical for both procurement managers and electronic engineers. Altium 365 BOM Portal helps to bridge the gap between these worlds. Discover how!
Happy New Year! 🎉 We are thrilled to announce that the Altium 365 Assembly Assistant is now officially released and available for direct purchase through the Altium Store.
Creating documentation for hand PCB assembly does not prevent the same documentation from being utilized to assist in automated PCB assembly. Learn more about the optimal format for this data to enhance both your hand PCB assembly and overall assembly processes.
Explore the powerful features of Altium Designer 24! Experience Constraint Manager and revolutionize your PCB design with reusable constraint sets, schematic-to-board rule transition, easy class and differential pair grouping, and more.
Curious about how to solve production blockers before they derail your product launch? Explore how Altium 365® can help you swiftly manage last-minute design changes.
We are advancing our Open Source Laptop project to the next stage: assembling lid electronics. In the first part of this phase, we are focusing on the electronics and PCB design of the webcam module.
The efficiency of production lines is crucial for any successful hardware product development. However, some challenges derail these processes. Do you face these problems, too? Let’s find out!
3D-MID technology seamlessly integrates electrical circuits with three-dimensional mechanical parts. This unique fusion of functionality unlocks a myriad of possibilities across various application areas. Explore more about this innovative feature, available in Altium Designer 24, to delve into the fascinating world of the 3D design process.
The PCB design process is always an exciting journey for a designer or the founder of a project. The first run of it can be breathtaking. In this article, we delve into strategies for minimizing PCB damage in the case of an exemplary circuit.
Explore the hidden impact of fragmented feedback loops in PCB design and testing. Check how minor communication gaps lead to significant financial burdens and learn how to address them.
Would you like to improve the protection of your data? Altium 365 GovCloud can help you achieve these goals. It’s a version of Altium 365, engineered to meet the stringent demands of US government regulations.
We are heightening the anticipation for our Open Source Laptop project. In this chapter, we delve into the ambient light sensor module. Learn more about how to implement it into this project.
Experience accelerated design collaboration with PCB CoDesign, exclusively available on Altium Designer starting from December 13th. This innovative feature adopts a collaborative approach by seamlessly integrating schematic and PCB design, enabling multiple engineers to work on the same project. Explore this cutting-edge feature on our newly launched page dedicated to its functionalities.
Learn the key lessons from the presentation at Iteration22; “Joe Justice, Wikispeed - Everyone Must Be a Chief Engineer at SpaceX.” Read on and discover how to speed up the development of complex products.
We are continuing our journey into lid assembly mechanics inside the Open Source Laptop Project. In this chapter, we are focusing on the sensor PCB above the display panel.
Are you struggling with your manual assembly process? Would you like to speed it up and improve component placement accuracy? Read the story of XVP Photonics; with Assembly Assistant, they improved the component placement time by 25%. Discover how!