PCB 101 – New series of articles

Written by Clive Maxfield July 29, 2010 Hits: 923 Favorites

5.0 (1)

I just ran across the first in what could become a rather useful series of articles explaining fundamental PCB concepts...

I don’t know if you know (if you see what I mean), but I write the occasional column for the folks at PCB Design 007 (I'm a little scamp writing blogs and articles all over the place). Anyway, this means that I'm often to be found rooting around the PCB Design 007 site seeing what's going on, which is how I came to run across the first in a series of PCB 101 articles.

Today's PCBs are very clever

Now, I don’t know about you, but I love 101-type articles, because they don’t assume that I already know something. Even if I do know what they are talking about, the authors usually manage to find a way of describing something that's new to me, and that I may well use myself sometime in the future.

In this first article, for example, I rather liked the analogy between mismatched impedances and a water hose, which started off as follows:

The effect that trace impedance has on signal strength and integrity has a lot to do with energy. Think of the board trace as a hose. If we try to pump too much water into the hose, all of it won't fit. But it has to go somewhere, so the extra water pressure will reflect back creating a spray at the input of the hose. The same happens with mismatched impedance...

So, the bottom line is that I'm going to be keeping my eye out for future articles in this series and – if you think you'd be interested – I'd be happy to let you know when they are posted in a future blog similar to this one (email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you'd like me to do this, otherwise I'll assume no one is interested).

User reviews

Average user rating from: 1 user(s)

To write a review please register or login.

Overall:

5.0

pcb101 any ideas

Overall:

5.0

Reviewed by robert Tarzwell
August 02, 2010

Comments (0)
Report this review

HI I am Robert Tarzwell , I write the pcb101 column, thanks for the good review, question is what do people want to read about , if you have any ideas for pcb101 stories let me know , the email is on the pcb007 web site This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , we are just getting to the printer with the first pcb101 book a handbook on pcb manufacturing , 100 pages lots of interesting photos .

Robert Tarzwell

Written by :

Clive Maxfield