News & Updates
Blog
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Design Basics for HDI and the HDI PCB Manufacturing Process
As the world of technology has evolved, so has the need to pack more capabilities into smaller packages. PCBs designed using high-density interconnect techniques tend to be smaller as more components are packed in a smaller space. An HDI PCB uses blind, buried, and micro vias, vias in pads, and very thin traces to pack more components into a smaller area. We’ll show you the design basics for HDI and how Altium Designer® can help you create a powerful HDI PCB.
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Is It Printed or a Component? All About PCB Test Points
Test points in your electronic assembly will give you a location to access components and take important measurements to verify functionality. If you’ve never used a test point or you’re not sure if you need test points, keep reading to see what options you have for test point usage in your PCB layout.
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How to Design to a Differential Impedance Specification
The concept and implementation of differential impedance are both sometimes misunderstood. In addition, the design of a channel to reach a specific differential impedance is often done in a haphazard way. The very concept of differential impedance is something of a mathematical construct that doesn’t fully capture the behavior of each signal in a differential trace. Keep reading to see a bit more depth on how to design to a differential impedance spec and exactly what it means for your design.
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The Main Advantages when using Draftsman to Create a Component Mounting Drawing
Quite often, a standard assembly drawing is not enough to ensure the quality of a PCB assembly, especially when designing high-density boards. It would also be helpful to include additional detailing for simpler devices. The use of a Draftsman document brings an elegant, yet powerful solution to make these tasks easier.
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Product Lifecycle Management in Electronics Manufacturing
An effective product lifecycle management (PLM) solution will integrate the tools and processes employed to design, develop and manufacture a new device. This solution goes beyond engineering activities to include the project management, process control, and financial management of the end-to-end business processes. PLM solutions create this collaborative environment where product development can flourish, bringing additional benefits in efficiencies and transparent communications, breaking silos, and speeding up the development process.
On-Demand Webinar
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Length Matching in High Speed Buses
With ever increasing speeds in high-speed data systems comes a couple of PCB layout challenges. High-speed busses like DDR, VME, PCIe just to mention a few can all reach data transfer speeds that require strict timing with very tight tolerances, thereby leaving very little slack in the PCB layout. Watch this on-demand webinar to learn why it's imperative to match track lengths in high-speed data systems and differential signals. You’ll see how to properly define PCB length matching and time delay constraints, and how to effectively route high-speed signals in Altium Designer®.
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Should You Use Tight vs. Loose Differential Pair Spacing and Coupling?
In this article, we want to get closer to a realistic description of tight coupling vs. loose coupling in terms of differential pair spacing, as well as how the differential pair spacing affects things like impedance, differential-mode noise, reception of common-mode noise, and termination. As we’ll see, the focus on tight coupling has its merits, but it’s often cited as necessary for the wrong reasons.
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How to Solve Your Engineering Design Review Challenges
You’ve possibly gone through plenty of engineering design reviews, both on the front-end of a project and the back-end before manufacturing. Engineering design reviews are performed to accomplish multiple objectives, and with many engineering teams taking a systems-based approach to design and production, electronics design teams will need to review much more than just a PCB layout and BOM. Today’s challenges with sourcing, manufacturability, reliability, and mechanical constraints are all areas that must be confronted in real designs
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Schematic Review Checklist
One of the most common points of failure of a device occurs even before you start to layout your circuit board. Mistakes in your schematic design can easily make their way all the way into prototypes or production without a second thought once layout starts. In this article, I’m not going to extol the virtues of a good schematic design. Instead, this article is a simple no frills checklist.
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PCB Via Current-Carrying Capacity: How Hot is Too Hot?
One common question from designers is current-carrying capacity of conductors in a PCB. Trace and via current-carrying capacity are legitimate design points to focus on when designing a new board that will carry high current. The goal is to keep conductor temperatures below some appropriate limit, which then helps keep components on the board cool. Let’s dig into the current state of thermal demands on vias in PCBs and how they compare to internal and external PCB traces.
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High-Speed PCB Design Tips
Essential tips for high-speed PCB designs, and when you need to start being concerned about how and where you route your traces.
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MIDs Make a Comeback as Vertical SMD Modules for Your PCB
If you've ever wanted to mount components vertically, but without the expense of a flex section this article is for you. You can use an MID in your PCB.
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Everything You Need to Know about Conformal Coating
Explore the basics of conformal coating with us. Conformal coating is a protective layer applied to electronic circuits to guard against environmental factors such as moisture and dust.
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Introduction to Open Source Laptop Project
We have started a very exciting journey into the creation of an open source laptop project. This project will be an ongoing one, with our community able interactively participate. By utilizing Altium 365 users will be able to view, comment on, and download design files. This will be a great learning experience for new and experienced PCB designers.
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Mechanical and Electrical Design Come Together With Altium’s MCAD CoDesigner
Electronics designers working in small design houses or in large enterprises often encounter a common set of challenges when interfacing with mechanical designers. Continue reading to learn how you can best interface with your mechanical designer to get your projects out the door fast!
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Ebook: Routing High-Density Interconnects with Reliable Microvias
HDI PCBs take a particular approach to routing interconnects through multiple layers to ensure reliability during fabrication, assembly, and operation. The critical structure that enables this is microvias, which are prone to failure if not designed properly. In this e-book, readers will receive an initial look at the reasons microvia reliability has come into the spotlight and why HDI PCB designers put reliability first when routing through microvias.
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IPC-2221 Calculator for PCB Trace Current and Heating
Aside from impedance and annular ring calculations, one of the other major formulas specified in the IPC 2221 standard relates temperature rise, trace width, and trace current. THere is also the IPC-2152 standard, both include this guidance on designing for thermal reliability, but which standard should we use?
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Stripline Impedance Calculator
Striplines provide some advantages over microstrips as they take advantage of natural shielding and coupling from nearby ground plane layers. Although they tend to experience higher losses due to total confinement in the dielectric, they can be thinner due to the high dielectric constant used in internal layers of a PCB. Use our free impedence calculator to help you determine the correct width needed to hit a target impedance.
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Which Types of Opto-Isolators Are Right For Your Signal?
An optoisolator is a cool electronic device that can be used to pass information between a diode without passing an electrical current. There are many great applications for these, but do you know which one is right for you?
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Properties panel document options in SCH editors
The Properties panel provides access to the properties of documents and objects. The contents of the panel change depending on the active document or the selected object. This blog will quickly go over some of need to know options around the properties panel in the schematic document.
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The High-Speed PCB Stackup Design Challenge
Even with all the good guidelines out there for high speed design, there are particular aspects of stackup construction and their relation to building boards that get overlooked. This blog is goes beyond just the typical SI/PI guidelines and looks at these problems from more of an engineering perspective.
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Everything You Need to Know About Stitching Vias
Stitching vias are something you often see spread around the surface layer of a PCB, but what are they? and should you be using them? In this guide, we'll go over some of the standard uses of stitching vias and when they should be used in a PCB.
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PCB Stackup Basics
In comparison to the build-up of a PCB, the stackup is more concerned with the electrical type of each layer, that is are we working with signals, power, or ground. Continue reading to learn how you can optimize your layer stack.
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Multi-board and Harness Design Capability in Altium Designer 23
Altium’s VP of marketing Lawrence Romine discusses the multi-board and harness design capabilities coming in Altium Designer 23.
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Controlled ESR Capacitors: Should You Use Them for Power Integrity?
Controlled ESR capacitors are important for power integrity in your design as they can help smooth out the PDN impedance spectrum in your high speed PCB.
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How Does the Package PDN Impact Power Integrity?
Whenever we say something to the effect of “components can’t work without a correctly designed PCB,” we only have to look at component packaging for evidence. It is true that component packages come with parasitics that affect signal integrity, but there is one area that we don’t often look at in terms of component packaging: power integrity.
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