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An Overview Of PCB Outer Layer Processing

Previously, I described the PCB fabrication operations relative to inner layer processing, lamination, drilling, and plating. The last step in the process is outer layer processing which is described below. Once the desired plated copper thickness of a PCB has been achieved, it’s necessary to etch away the copper between the features in order to define the outer layer pattern.

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How Do Pads and Vias Impact Total Capacitor Parasitic Inductance?

There are many factors at play in determining the impact of inductance on high-frequency power distribution systems. Two topic areas, inductance of the decoupling capacitor and inductance of the power planes, were addressed in earlier articles. This article will focus on the inductance of the capacitor footprint and via inductance from the capacitor footprint back to the PCB power planes.

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Blog
Analyzing Crosstalk on FIFO and DDR4 Parallel Bus Interfaces

High-speed buses, whether single-ended or differential, can experience any number of signal integrity problems. A primary problem created by propagating signals is crosstalk, where a signal superimposes itself on a nearby trace. The industry-standard PCB design tools in Altium Designer® already include a post-layout simulator for examining crosstalk. Still, you can speed up crosstalk analysis in parallel buses when you use a powerful field solver.

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How-To's
How to Perform a Component Search in Concord Pro - Altium Academy

In this video, I'll show you how to perform a component search in the Components Panel. Learn how to perform a component search in the Components Panel while using Altium Concord Pro to effectively host all your component libraries from Altium Designer. You can always locate any particular component using this library navigation and place it on your schematic with pricing information from global suppliers. This availability and pricing information gets updated daily directly from the suppliers so you will always get fresh, up to date information. 

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Amplifier Stability at High Frequencies and Stray Capacitance

Any time-dependent physical system with feedback and gain has conditions under which the system will reach stable behavior. Amplifier stability extends these concepts to amplifiers, where the system output can grow to an undesired saturated state due to unintended feedback. If you use the right design and simulation tools, you can easily account for potential instability in your circuit models before you create your layout.

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How to use Snapping
Snapping When Creating Polygons

When creating polygons you can use snap points to form fit your polygons to the exact size and shape you need. We’ll show you how to set your snap points, which ones are most helpful for creating polygons, and how to use the same techniques to create keep out and solder mask areas.

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Blog
Working with Design Variants

The concept of design variants entails taking a single PCB design, and then on the assembly side, modifying specific components used in the design. Either by not installing, not installing, or choosing alternate components as replacements on a specific assembly to ultimately create different end products. In that way, you could support multiple product lines. This article describes the approach to working with variants. 

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Setting Up Concord Pro Revisions and Lifecycle

Before anything else, some advice. The revisions and lifecycle are an area that takes some planning. It used to be that Concord Pro was primarily for components, but now it has gone far beyond that. With the ability to store and manage many other items, including your various templates, projects, even PDF documents, not everything will have the same revision scheme. Concord Pro is so powerful that it can handle any revision scheme you’d want to set up.

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Library Managment
Automatic Symbol Creation in Altium 365

In order to design your projects, you’ll need a set of components to work with. Although the integration of Octopart with Altium Designer gives us a large repertoire of components, you simply can’t have access to every component model in the world. We’re going to create a component in the Altium 365 workspace with the Symbol Creation Wizard.

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How to Successfully Design a BGA

Whether the board will be placed in a high pressure vessel or underwater, your design will need to withstand pressure to avoid failure. On the enclosure side, your vessel should be rated up to a certain pressure and may require frequent cycling to prevent implosion. On the electronics side, component selection and layout (especially at high voltage) become critical to preventing failure and ensuring reliability.

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On-Demand Webinar
Editing Your PCB Geometry with MCAD Tools Webinar

You need to define your PCB geometry in the context of your enclosure. If your board cannot physically be assembled into the final product, it doesn't matter how well laid out it is electrically. This webinar focuses on how the MCAD CoDesigner allows you to edit your PCB in the context of a higher-level assembly, allowing you to respect the relevant mechanical constraints.

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Altium Designer 20.2 Update 1 is now available

The first update of Altium Designer 20.2 and Altium NEXUS Client 3.2 is now available. You can update through the Altium Designer update system ("Extensions and Updates") or download fresh builds from the Downloads section of the Altium website. Click on "Read More" to see a list of all changes in this update.

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How Copper Foil Roughness Affects Your Signals and Impedance

The history of engineering, both electrical and mechanical, is littered with approximations that have fallen by the wayside. These approximations worked well for a time and helped advance technology significantly over the decades. However, any model has limits on its applicability, and the typical RLCG transmission line model and frequency-independent impedance equations are no different. Copper foil roughness modeling and related transmission line impedance simulations are just one of many areas in which standard models cannot correctly treat signal behavior.

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What is Burn-in Testing for Electronics?

Once you’re planning for production of any new board, you’ll likely be planning a battery of tests for your new product. These tests often focus on functionality and, for high speed/high frequency boards, signal/power integrity. However, you may intend for your product to operate for an extreme period of time, and you’ll need some data to reliably place a lower limit on your product’s lifetime. In addition to in-circuit tests, functional tests, and possibly mechanical tests, the components and boards themselves can benefit from burn-in testing.

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PCB Design for Testability to Ensure High Yield and Quality

If you remember your days in school, then you probably remember the feeling of happiness and celebration when you pass a big exam. You’ll feel the same sense of adulation when your board spin passes a barrage of pre and post assembly tests, but a complex design might not reach that stage unless you implement the right design for testability methods. There are some simple steps that can help your manufacturer identify and quickly implement important bare-board and in-circuit testing (ICT), especially on critical circuit blocks.

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Blog
Top Tips from Experienced Flex Designers

This article describes the best hints and tips for designers of rigid-flex circuits. These tips include choosing the most appropriate material, suggestions for coordinating the PCB with the manufacturer, and a set of rules to be followed while PCB design. 

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Blog
How Do Capacitor Mounting Structures And Footprints Impact Total Inductance?

There are a number of factors at play when it comes to the impact of inductance on high-frequency power distribution systems. This article will focus on the inductance of the capacitor footprint along with the inductance of vias from the capacitor footprint to the PCB power planes. Included are the various types and sizes of footprints for ceramic capacitors as well as a footprint for a tantalum capacitor; how changing the footprint impacts inductance and test results obtained for different capacitors.

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Blog
How to Perform Differential Pair Tuning in Altium Designer 20

In order to properly suppress common-mode noise, differential pairs must be routed in parallel, with perfect symmetry, and with matched lengths. In real PCBs, meeting these three objectives isn’t always possible. Instead of eyeing out your different pair lengths, the interactive routing tools in Altium Designer make differential pair length matching easy. You can encode permissible length mismatches as design rules as part of controlled impedance routing, or you can manually perform differential pair tuning using a variety of meandering styles. Here’s how this works in Altium Designer.

Blog
Driving Haptic Vibration and Feedback in Wearables

Augmented reality, virtual surgery, limb replacements, medical devices, and other new technologies need to incorporate haptic vibration motors and feedback to give the wearer a full sense of how they are interacting with their environment. Unless these cutting-edge applications include haptic vibration and feedback, users are forced to rely on their other four senses to understand the real or virtual environment.

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Blog
Back Drilling Example in Altium Designer: One of the Easiest Ways to Improve Signal Integrity

Over the last 20 years, electronic devices have become increasingly sophisticated. Less than two decades ago, just having a mobile phone to make calls was rare; today, our phones power our lives. To meet the growing demand for smartphone technology, technology has become faster, more functional, and intuitive. Improvements to the component base have streamlined processes while reducing manufacturing costs.

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Take advantage of the VCS-based workflow in Altium 365
Blog
Using Altium 365 Over Your Vanilla Version Control System

There are all sorts of version control systems (VCS) out there that people have been using with their PCB design software. As discussed in Why Use a Version Control System, we looked at different options ranging for local hard drive storage to sophisticated online revisioning systems. In this article we will be reviewing the differences between a standard VCS and Altium 365.

Recovering Copper Losses
Blog
Recover Conductor Losses By Clearing Your PCB Ground Layer

Controlled impedance routing at high frequencies is difficult enough, and it's important to make sure that you stay within your loss budget on long routes or in lossy media. When you have to route a long trace or a long differential pair to a connector or another component, what can you do if you're reaching the end of your loss budget? In this article, we’ll take a look at the skip reference routing method and explain how it can help recover some loss budget in a lossy interconnect.

Altium 365 SOC 2 Type 1 Certified
Blog
Announcing SOC 2 Type 1 Certification for Altium 365

We are pleased to announce that Altium 365 is officially SOC 2 Type 1 certified. System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 is a widely recognized attestation of security compliance defined by the AICPA and is considered the standard for ensuring data security and operational maturity. A SOC 2 certification provides valuable information for companies to assess the quality of the security provided by a service such as Altium 365.

Three ways to manage your BOM costs
Blog
Improving Supply Chain Success with BOM Management

It’s no secret that component shortages have become more frequent this year. Companies will continue to grapple with supply chain challenges into 2022 and beyond. The impact of manufacturing delays can be substantial if a part is not available. Delays occur and sales plans get put on hold. It can also be very expensive and risky to replace parts from multiple sources. Fortunately, many shortages can be avoided by introducing proactive supply chain practices.

Reliability and failure analysis
Blog
Overview of PCB/PCBA Reliability and Failure Analysis

Reliability testing and failure analysis of a PCB/PCBA go hand-in-hand; when designs are stressed to the limit, their failure modes need to be determined through thorough inspection and analysis. To get started on this topic, it’s important to understand the qualification aspects that will govern your bare board design and the PCBA. We’ll look at the various dimensions of PCB/PCBA reliability, as well as some of the standard failure analysis techniques used to identify potential design change requirements.

Plane and Cavity Resonances
Blog
When Do PCB Power Plane Resonances Occur?

By now, designers should be aware of some important behavior involved in power delivery to components in a PCB, particularly for digital components. All digital components produce and manipulate wideband signals, where the frequency content theoretically extends up to infinite frequency. As such, some radiation may propagate through your PCB, leading to resonant behavior that is not observed on the power rail.

Selecting a plating material
Blog
How to Choose PCB Plating for Your Finished Board

Once your board passes through the standard PCB fabrication process, the bare copper in your PCB will be ready for the application of a surface finish. PCB plating is applied to protect any copper in your PCB that would be exposed through the solder mask, whether it’s a pad, via, or other conductive element. In this article, I’ll run over the different PCB plating material options and their advantages in your PCB. 

What is the PCB Supply Chain?
Blog
What is the PCB Supply Chain?

The PCB supply chain encompasses multiple components, raw materials, and the PCB itself. PCBs and PCB assemblies are often the most technically complex components that are purchased for electronic assemblies and products. The complexity of modern PCBs leads to several challenges for a supply chain management team that may be significantly different when compared with other commodities the team manages. In this brief guide, we'll look in-depth at the PCB supply chain, and specifically what falls within the purview of a procurement and supply chain management team.

What is mode conversion
Blog
A Guide to Mode Conversion, Its Causes, and Solutions

On interconnects, such as board-to-board connections or cascaded transmission line arrangements, you have an important EMC compliance metric that is sometimes overlooked. This is mode conversion, which can be visualized in an S-parameter measurement for differential and common-mode signal transmission. In this article, we’ll look at a short overview of mode conversion in high-speed design with some examples from common differential standards.

Pad and via sizing
Blog
PCB Via Size and Pad Size Guidelines

There are some aspects of PCB design and layout that seem deceptively simple, and yet they have a complex answer that is related to many important aspects of manufacturing. One of these design aspects is the match between PCB via size and pad size. Obviously, these two points are related; all vias have a landing pad that supports the via and provides a place to route traces into a via pad. However, there are some important sizing guidelines to follow when the matching pad and via sizes, and this match is an important element of DFM and reliability.

Differential Microstrip Impedance
Blog
Differential Microstrip Impedance Calculator

Are you looking for a free tool that you can use to calculate the impedance of differential microstrips? We created a simple tool you can use to calculate differential microstrip impedance for a given geometry and dielectric constant. If you’ve been looking for an accurate differential microstrip impedance calculator, then the calculator below is certainly one of the best free tools you’ll find on the internet before you start using field solvers to determine differential pair impedance.

PCB DFM Check
Blog
Getting Through a PCB DFM Check

In this article, we’ll discuss the key design features to implement, and steps to take prior to fabrication that will help prevent some common DFM problems. I’ll also provide examples of where I commonly see these PCB DFM problems in signal integrity circuits.

Spreading Inductance
Blog
What is Spreading Inductance?

If you’re working with a high-speed digital component, there are some simple power integrity rules that should be followed. However, there is one quantity that is sometimes ignored when building a PDN impedance simulation: the spreading inductance of your plane pair. Here are some points designers should know about the spreading inductance of a plane pair.

PCB Design Basics for New Designers
Blog
PCB Design Basics for New Designers

In this article, I’ll present some design basics that every new designer should follow to help ensure their design process is successful. Some of these points may challenge the conventional view of how circuit boards are constructed, but they are intended to help balance low noise signaling, manufacturability, and ease of solving a layout.

Selecting Materials for High Voltage PCB Design and Layout
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Selecting Materials for High Voltage PCB Design and Layout

High voltage PCBs are subject to certain safety and reliability concerns that you won’t find in most other boards. If your fabrication house specializes in high voltage PCBs and keeps materials in stock, they can likely recommend a material set, as well as a standard stackup you might use for certain voltage ranges and frequencies. If you need to choose your own materials, follow the tips below to help you narrow down to the right material set.

Via tenting in PCB Layout
Blog
When to Use Tented Vias in Your PCB Layout

There are some guidelines I see many designers implement as a standard practice, often without thinking about it. Some of these practices are misunderstood or implemented without best practices. Others are implemented without thinking about the potential problems. One of these is the use of tented vias, which is sometimes implemented in a PCB layout by default. Is this always the right practice?

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Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey
Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey: Part IV - MCAD Integration

The final episode of Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey covers MCAD integration with Altium Designer. Hosted by Piet Callemeyn, this video walks through using MCAD CoDesigner, collaborating with mechanical engineers, and syncing design changes.

Full series available here: Kickstart Your Rigid-Flex Journey Series

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New in Altium Designer 25
Tackling Complexity: How Altium Designer 25 Handles Large PCB Designs - Recording Preview

Discover how Altium Designer 25 enhances performance across schematic design, PCB layout, and documentation. Watch the webinar recording to see how it handles large and complex designs with ease!

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How-To's
TVS Diodes on RF PCB Traces: What You Need to Know!

Check out our latest video to learn about bidirectional and unidirectional TVS diodes, tips for avoiding harmonic generation, and the key characteristics to ensure optimal ESD protection. Host Zach Peterson provides practical examples and design tips to keep your RF lines interference-free. Plus, he dives deep into RF circuit protection, featuring valuable resources from Octopart.

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How-To's
Ferrite Bead Circuit Model Parameters Deep Dive

Check out our new video where host Zach Peterson explains how to calculate resistance, inductance, and capacitance for ferrite bead models. From analyzing impedance curves to using SPICE simulations and a custom Excel calculator, discover practical techniques for accurately modeling ferrite bead behavior.

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How-To's
How to Design a PCIe Edge Card

Watch our new video where Zach Peterson walks you through designing a PCIe edge card. Learn about mechanical specifications, pinouts, creating templates in Altium Designer, and extending an 8-lane PCIe card to a 16-lane configuration—all with practical tips and a ready-made template!

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New in Altium Designer 25
Wire Bonding in Altium Designer: Features and Capabilities

During the Hardware Design Masterclass Conference in Wrocław, we showcased the Wire Bonding feature. Samer Aldhaher delivered a presentation, and now we're excited to premiere it on YouTube. This session explores the Wire Bonding feature and includes a live demo highlighting its basic capabilities.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Unlock New Design Possibilities with Wire Bonding - Recording Preview

Explore how Altium Designer simplifies advanced PCB designs like 3D stacked die in cavity. From routing bond wires to generating complete project documentation, this on-demand webinar has you covered. Full recording is here: Wire Bonding Webinar Recording.

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Altium Stories
Industrial Design Meets Electronics Engineering

Discover how engineering disciplines come together to create remarkable products with Altium’s powerful tools. Electronics, mechanical, and industrial design merge their expertise, as D+I, part of Capgemini, showcases their refined design process. See how diverse skillsets and Altium's solutions drive innovation.

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How-To's
Simplify Analysis with Power Analyzer by Keysight

The Power Analyzer by Keysight in Altium Designer simplifies power design by enabling detailed analysis of power nets and PDNs. This demo highlights how to identify and resolve issues like voltage drops to ensure reliable power delivery, all within the Altium environment.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Perfect your high-speed routing with Dynamic Phase Matching!

Struggling with phase matching in your high-speed projects? Learn how Altium Designer 25’s Dynamic Phase Matching feature ensures precise signal integrity and simplifies high-speed design.

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HDM Wrocław
Hardware Design Masterclass Wrocław 2024 - Autumn Edition

Altium participated in the Hardware Design Masterclass Wrocław 2024, organized by Rafał Stępień. Representing Altium, Samer Aldhaher delivered a presentation on Wire Bonding in Altium Designer. This slideshow highlights key moments from the event.

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How-To's
Pi Filter Formulas and Simulation Deep Dive

Learn the essentials of Pi filters, including how to size, design, and simulate them in Altium Designer. Host Zach Peterson explains the design equations for Pi filters, discusses online tools for accurate component selection, and demonstrates real-time simulations in Altium Designer to visualize the effects of impedance mismatches.

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New in Altium Designer 25
True Donut Pad Shapes

Check out our brand-new short video showcasing an exciting improvement in the PCB design process. Altium Designer 25 now supports true donut pad shapes, enhancing both your routing and performance.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Modernizing Engineering Workflows: Altium Designer 25 and the Future of Concurrent Design - Recording Preview

Discover the new features in Altium Designer 25! This webinar recording highlights the Signal Analyzer by Keysight, advanced Wire Bonding capabilities, multi-board design enhancements, and more, showcasing how these tools can transform your PCB design process.

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New in Altium Designer 25
Dynamic Phase Matching and Tuning for Differential Pairs

Explore how dynamic phase matching for differential pairs works with the improved match length rule in Altium Designer. Learn key techniques in this quick tutorial!

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New in Altium Designer 25
Obey Rules and Auto-Shrinking Features

Discover how Altium Designer 25's Obey Rules and Auto-Shrinking features streamline routing, ensuring speed and precision while maintaining adherence to all design constraints.

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