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Episodes
The PCB Design Podcast features conversations on all facets of PCB Design and Hardware Development
Episodes
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
In this episode of the OnTrack Podcast, we have a chat with Benjamin Dannan, a defense & aerospace contractor. We talk about power integrity, high amps, quality reports, vendor models, the importance of verification, and much more.
Episode Highlights:
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Intro
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Ben's Background
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Power Integrity Considerations
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Vendor Models Quality & Accuracy
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Trust & Verify
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File Density Challenges
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Die (integrated circuit) Models & Packages
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"It's Easy to Miss Things."
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Lost in the Translation
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Ask for Quality Reports
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2,000 Amp Challenges
Links and Resources:
- Watch Recent Related Episodes
- Read Related Articles:
- Connect with Benjamin Dannan on LinkedIn
- EDI CON Online 2023
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
In this OnTrack episode, we are very excited to bring you Tim Wang Lee, a Signal Integrity Application Scientist and the High-Speed Digital Application Product Manager at Keysight.
Tim will share his early days as a prodigy with Dr. Eric Bogatin. We will also discuss the importance of simulation and measurement to achieve signal integrity for your PCB design.
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Show Highlights:
- Tim Wang Lee Introduction
- Tim talks about Dr. Eric Bogatin as his mentor, the knowledge about simulation and signal integrity especially rule number nine
- A favorite phrase GIGO (garbage in garbage out) according to Tim is his way of understanding his intentions and asking questions before diving into a project
- Tim with Mike Russo, initiated simulation and measurement workflow seminars and webinars to help educate the importance of measurements and simulation to back it up
- What is a Virtual Prototype?
- Where to start with a system-level qualification in simulation?
- Tim explains what an EP Scan (Electrical Performance Scan) does
- Keysight is also now focusing on Power Integrity and Heidi Barnes is one of the leading experts in the Power Integrity ecosystem
- Next step for Keysight is to aid PCB designers in not only generating results but also fixing the issues
Links and Resources:
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Watch Related Podcast Episode:
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Let’s talk about Electronics reliability with the QA guru Cheryl Tulkoff.
In this episode Cheryl and I will talk about risk assessment, planning for not only success but also a failure, and understanding the difference between quality and reliability. This discussion is going to be very informative for every PCB designer who wants to get ahead of their game. Watch through the end, and make sure to check the additional resources below.
Show Highlights:
- Cheryl shares her rewarding career experience in the electronics industry
- She worked at IBM where she was immersed in electronic manufacturing from beginning to end
- She also worked at DfR Solutions and National Instruments where she learned all the skills and knowledge in electronics manufacturability, quality & reliability consulting
- To produce a successful electronic product it is important to have the awareness to resolve every problem, from the chip level, board level, system level, and the environment level
- Cheryl explains why unique or non-aligned standards exist in the industry – no one size fits all
- A great piece of advice for all PCB designers is to know what you are designing and who you are designing it for, look at the risks, and then manage them appropriately
- Planning for success may also include celebrating failures. Budget for failure analysis is often disregarded due to the “success-driven roadmap” mentality
- Failure should be part of design management
- Cheryl and Zach talk about the “Startup Culture”
- Software reliability and hardware reliability go hand in hand
- What rate of failure is tolerable? Defining what is quality and reliability separately for the product you are designing
- Manufacturers can not ensure reliability for you
- Cheryl shares her experience being involved in litigation as an expert witness
- Redundancy practices in the industry, is it typical?
- What can designers do to mitigate failures?
- Understanding what you are designing and who you are designing it for
- Collect as much feedback as possible – from users, industry experts, and professional organizations
Links and Resources:
- Connect with Cheryl Tulkoff on LinkedIn
- Read Cheryl Tulkoff articles on Research Gate
- Checkout Cheryl Tulkoff book Design for Excellence in Electronics Manufacturing
- Connect with Zach on LinkedIn
- Full OnTrack Podcast Library
- Altium Website
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Sunday Jul 17, 2022
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
When you hear about 10-ounce copper PCBs, high current and high voltage come to mind. In this episode, we will have a deep dive discussion on designing heavy power boards with Mario Strano. Mario is the senior PCB designer at Nikola and also president of ECAD Central. He will share with us his 16 years of experience in PCB design and the migration services he provides through ECAD Central.
Watch this episode or listen on the go. We’ve touched on many other interesting topics, such as setting up clearance and creepage rules and a 57-ounce copper board.
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Show Highlights:
- Mario’s background and professional path as PCB Designer and Component Engineer
- He is currently the only PCB designer at Nikola
- His expertise includes but is not limited to designing 10-ounce copper boards, real heavy power boards, HMI boards, human-machine interface boards
- Setting up creepage and clearance rules for heavy copper was a challenge to Mario during his transition from SQL Semiconductor to Avnet
- Mario and Zach discuss more 10-ounce copper PCBs
- Zach was amused to hear about Taiyo Kogyo’s 57-ounce copper
- The Japan-based company developed proprietary processes that allow them to do things like Bus Bar Embedded PCB
- Mario briefly shares his experience as a component engineer at Avnet for six years
- The two discuss the tantalum capacitor shortage in 2018 and compare it to the current semiconductors shortage, which started in 2020
- How is the supply chain shortage affecting PCB designers, and how are they working around it?
- ECAD Central, an Altium 365, Concord Pro, and Altium NEXUS Database service provider – setup and configuration, database migration
- Mario compared migrating data to “like moving mountains”
- Is mirroring parts between two systems possible? Mario explains what can be done. Definitely not a simple drag and drop operation, though!
Links and Resources:
Connect with Mario Strano on Linkedin
Visit the ECAD Central website
Learn More about Taiyo Kogyo and their 57-ounce copper boards
Watch related podcasts:
Easily Find Electronic Components for Your Next PCB Design
The Benefits of Diversifying PCB Industry Supply Chain
Connect with Zach on LinkedIn
Full OnTrack Podcast Library
Altium Website
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Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
What a very insightful discussion with Heidi Barnes of Keysight. In this episode, we will discuss all things simulations and power integrity in detail. We will dive into EM simulations, capacitor placement, Z, Y, and S parameters correlation measurements, and more! You will learn a lot from this episode!
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Show Highlights:
- Heidi’s background and her 30 years of experience in the PCB design Industry
- When she was only 17, she did an internship at Bill and Dave in Santa Rosa, which is now the Hewlett Packard (HP)
- She got into the solar industry and aerospace
- She is currently passionate about signal integrity and power integrity
- Heidi stresses the importance of simulation tools and mentions the need for having reasonable rules of thumb and have an understanding of what to expect before you jump into a simulation tool
- The Keysight’s PathWave ADS ( Advanced Design System) environment, what does it offer?
- Running an EM simulation and getting results through the pro environments– PiPro (power integrity pro), SiPro (signal integrity pro)
- On top of the DC analysis, it features a lot of great asymmetric tolerances analysis, current density, and thermal heat up effects analyses
- Heidi talks about capacitor placement–lowering the path inductance, allowing a higher frequency, and giving a broader power delivery from the printed circuit board.
- Capacitor Placement paper presented at DesignCon
- Addressing specific peaks that are exceeding the target impedance in a problematic PCB
- Heidi’s take on using ferrites
- Steve Sandler has a great video about How to Design for Power Integrity–how to select a regulator
- Z, Y, and S parameters–understanding simulation to measurement correlation
- Heidi wrote a paper on SI Journal website: Power Integrity Fundamentals: Impedance vs. Frequency
- She also tackles the “two-port shunt impedance measurement”
- Watch for another episode with Heidi Barnes, tackling subjects related to all things SI and especially getting into measurement issues, coming soon!
Links and Resources:
Check out Heidi Barne’s articles on SI Journal website
Visit Keysight website
Read a previous interview with Heidi Barnes: Heidi Barnes, Senior Application Engineer and Power Integrity Product Owner
Watch Heidi Barnes Altium 2022 Presentation: What is Target Z and Why is Power Delivery AC Not DC? - AltiumLive 2022
Connect with Zack on LinkedIn
Full OnTrack Podcast Library
Altium Website
Download your Altium Designer Free Trial
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