News

Historically, design-for-manufacturability (DFM) checks have taken place during the fabrication process and have typically been performed by PCB manufacturing engineers or fab houses utilizing DFM-specific analysis software. The typical PCB designer would only run their own built-in prefabrication DRC and integrity checks prior to sending out for manufacturing and wait to hear back from the fabricator if issues were encountered.

Today, DFM analysis allows you to identify and correct potential fabrication and assembly issues in the design database before they hit the production floor. Without DFM, you leave changes in the manufacturer’s hands, where the focus is on increasing yield, not on the electrical performance of the final product.

In this webinar by Mentor, a…

Summary

• Internet of Things and the explosion of PCBs in devices has helped drive Altium's (ALMFF) revenue growth to better than 20% p.a.
• Altium Designer continues to grow market share and subscriptions taking marketshare from competitors like SIEGY, CDNS and ZUKNF.
• Altium's margins are increasing to almost 40% despite the company investing in new business units like Octoparts, Tasking and Nexus.
• A PE of 84 has stretched the valuation too far and a PEG ratio in the 1.6-1.8 is not close enough to our preferred level of 1.
• Our recommendation is to wait for a 10-20% pull-back which would be around $30 Australian per share.

Introduction

Our Global Technology Growth Star…

In October 2019, the third and largest AltiumLive: Annual PCB Design Summit will be held in San Diego (October 9-11) and Frankfurt (October 21-23). When we first began AltiumLive, we had a simple vision: to help PCB design engineers Learn, Connect, and Get Inspired. So, we built an AltiumLive community which included industry experts, PCB design engineers, supply chain professionals, students, and inspiring innovators that are altering the landscape of our world. And just because we thought it would be fun--we threw in an epic robot build-and-battle! Would this vision resonate with design engineers and the industry? Only time would tell when we launched the first AltiumLive in October 2017.

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Are PCB designers ready for a world of printed electronics? If not, it might be prudent to start thinking about moving beyond traditional PCB design and considering how to approach this rapidly growing market.

While there has been a lot of hope and hype around printed electronics, the market is finally catching up to the technology. The printed and flexible electronics market is expected to hit more than $73 billion by 2027, according to IDTechEx.

Much of this market includes organic light emitting diodes and conductive ink that’s used in a broad range of applications. It’s also being driven by the Internet of Things, which demands low-cost, lightweight technologies.

At their core, designs for traditional PCBs and printed…

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has announced today that it has developed what is believed to be the world's first* compact metal corrosion sensor small enough to be mounted on printed circuit boards. The new sensor utilizes metal corrosion monitoring technology developed by Mitsubishi Electric that detects the degree of corrosion of metal components caused by corrosive gases such as sulfur compounds in the atmosphere. The deployment of multiple sensors with different levels of corrosion resistance allows the degree of corrosion to be detected in stages, helping to prevent equipment failure. Mitsubishi Electric plans to deploy the new technology across its own industrial equipment portfolio.

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