Week of September 28: Impedance profiles and the power section
A short PCB week, getting the impedance profiles set up in Altium and laying out the power section of the board.
Short week on the site, but both days were PCB work on the new board. One day was setting up the stackup side of things, the other was actually putting copper down for power.
- Impedance profiles, and a bug in Altium’s calculator: set up the impedance profiles, lost too long assuming Altium’s calculator was right when it wasn’t, found a way around it, and filed a bug report. The profiles are done and the layout rules can run off them now.
- Bringing up the power section of the board: fuse and diodes for protection, a solid ground plane with short loops, LDOs for clean rails, and a power plane split by voltage with vias feeding each part instead of a trace dragged across the board for every supply.