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How to Design a great PCB or Printed Circuit Board

How to Design a great PCB or Printed Circuit Board

 

11. PCB Thermal management

 

 

It becomes the responsibility of the PCB designer to manage the heat dissipated by the components used in the PCB.  The following are guidelines for effective thermal management of heat generated by components on board.

 

  1. Effective use of copper pours in vacant areas on the boards
  2. Perform thermal analysis of the high power devices on board and determine whether a heat sink is required to effectively dissipate the heat. The purpose of the heat sink is to conduct heat away from the device.
  3. Thermal analysis software such a Hyperlynx thermal are used to perform thermal analysis of a PCB design file and identify the hot spots on the board

12. Single layer PCB design

Even though multilayer PCB designs are more common these days and the above tutorial too assumes a multilayer PCB design, single layer PCB still find a place in the PCB designers’ repertoire.   The electronics hobbyist who is very cost conscious and whose circuits are very low complexity, a single layer PCB may be the ideal choice.  In a single layer PCB, the components are mounted on the top side of the PCB and the routing is done on the bottom side.  Routing a single layer pcb may prove to be tricky since there is only one layer to route.  It is futile to try and comply to EMC rules.  Use jumper links to route traces and avoid too much of crisscrossing.  Sometimes it becomes impossible to route a connection without using a jumper link on a single layer board.

 

13. Conclusion

With a wide range of free PCB design software available, it would prove very cost effective for an electronics hobbyist to do the PCB layout design himself, rather than going to a professional.  Attempting to do a point to point wiring on general purpose boards would prove to be a hassle and would be less robust.  Also any sort of troubleshooting would prove to be very tedious.  Hope this tutorial has enabled understanding the basics of PCB design.



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This article is now accompanied by a Second Part. It shows the Practicle

ractical aspect of making your own PCB. You will learn about:
1. PCB Prototyping
2. PCB Fabrication
3. Components Sourcing
4. PCB Assembly
5. Basic Testing
6. Enclosure Design
7. Final Testing
Read it below:

 

For further reference, you can read the following books.

  1. EMC and the printed circuit board, Mark I. Montrose
  2. Printed circuit board design techniques for EMC compliance, Mark I. Montrose

 

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Read the Second Part here:

Most effective PCB Prototyping Techniques for Better Performance

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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

 


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