PCB Traces 101 - Phil's Lab

Basics and guidelines for PCB traces (tracks), including geometry/materials, sizing (power and signal), thermals, current-handling, controlled impedance, delay, and more.
[SUPPORT]
Hardware design courses: phils-lab-shop.fedevel.education
Course content: www.phils-lab.net/courses
Free trial of Altium Designer: www.altium.com/yt/philslab
Patreon: / phils94
[GIT]
github.com/pms67
[SOCIAL]
Instagram: / philslabyt
[LINKS]
IPC-2221 calculator: www.4pcb.com/trace-width-calc...
Trace inductance calculator: spok.ca/index.php/resources/t...
Differential pairs video: • Differential Pairs - P...
Controlled impedance: www.protoexpress.com/blog/con...
PCB design for EMI/SI video: • PCB Design for EMI & S...
Critical length calculator: www.protoexpress.com/tools/ba...
Kicad controlled impedance video: • KiCad Controlled Imped...
Stackup/controlled impedance video: • PCB Stack-up and Contr...
[TIMESTAMPS]
00:00 Introduction
00:43 Altium Designer Free Trial
01:09 Basics
03:51 Geometry
07:07 Geometry/Material Cost
07:49 Resistance, Inductance, Capacitance
11:33 Power Delivery
12:59 IPC-2221 Calculator
14:09 PDN Inductance
15:31 Inductance Calculator
16:43 Power Planes
17:09 Differential Pairs
17:38 Controlled Impedance
18:54 Critical Length Calculator
20:05 Contr. Imp. Configs & Further Resources
21:30 Propagation Delays & Delay Matching
23:01 Practical Guidelines
29:55 Outro

[@arnavgupta8000]

Just started PCB design and this helped a lot! For some reason, even basic information is difficult to find in a consolidated manner. More 101 videos, please!

[@PhilsLab]

Thank you, glad to hear that - more of these 101 videos to come :)

[@kesaramalinda7591]

As an intern, these 101 videos are GOLD . Thank you for these videos.

[@larcomj]

"Energy exist in the spaces between the traces" gotta love RIck Hartley. His seminars are quite good.

[@user-bd6bp6tr4j]

Learnt a lot from your drone PCB design video from 3 years back. Thanks a lot for your lessons!

[@PhilsLab]

Thanks for following the channel for all this time! :)

[@Mtaalas]

I wish I had this when I started out 20+ years ago... You concentrate it all down to 30 minutes and go through the all key topics so that viewer is AWARE of these concepts and can look into them more when they need to. Being aware about existence of something is half way of learning to master it. How I learned about drawing was to read a lot and watch a lot of videos on the topic by professionals (presentations), then do lots of simple, non critical designs AS THEY WERE critical and high speed and then learned about EMI etc.by poking around with oscilloscope and seeing all the ringing and reflections etc. Then when you go to actual high-speed design, you already have the basics and the vision to understand how currents flow and how to keep loops small and consider the current carrying capacities etc.. so that helps you. You don't calculate everything immediately, you use calculators for impedance matching pairs, for layer stack-up, for very high speed critical traces, but the actual routing and placement of components you use most tons of learned intuition and ability to see how currents flow and how impedance is. It's all very artsy, but that's what it is... :D

[@MikeHarris1984]

Awesome. Found your channel and I'm new to self teaching PCB design to myself. Your videos have been amazing and love them. Thank you for all you publish!! I took electronics in high school in the 90's where we designed and built our own PCB with coper boards and through hole components. Designing and building and testing much more advanced PCB with the stm32, esp32, etc... These cheap microprocs and the manufacturer that turns around small batches delivered in less then a week. I love it!!!

[@PhilsLab]

Thank you very much, Mike! Yeah, it's pretty amazing how far PCB/electronics tech has come, also in terms of cost/speed/accessiblity.

[@jakubvanek5723]

Amazing video Phil. Your videos are a great help when designing PCBs!

[@PhilsLab]

Thank you, Jakub!

[@pietrogagliano4484]

Great video Phil! As always the most relevant and important topics! I think at this point you are literally reading my mind because yesterday I was wrapping up the address command control routing and spacing on the course board and was precise looking for a definitive standard for how far to space out my traces and then this video comes out first thing in the morning here to clear that up without any doubts😂

[@PhilsLab]

Thanks, Pietro! Glad the timing was right on this one - I hope you're liking the course! :)

[@ElectricGears]

28:00 It's also trace-to-SMD component used to jump over said trace.

[@MegaBlueIronV20]

Very good amalgamation of ideas and topics, very nice to be able to branch deeper into other topics from this vid. Appreciate it

[@PhilsLab]

Thank you!

[@atifsaeed7854]

Great video for learning basics. Thanks a lot, Phil.

[@PhilsLab]

Thank you!

[@charlesguilbault7063]

Hey Phil, you might want to try and use a de-esser on your voice to remove consonant sounds, esspecially your sibilances! Thx for the video!

[@_a_x_s_]

This is a good refreshment of my knowledge. Nice video! Thanks for the amazing course. I was working on a project where one of the PCBs is just a 2-layer board that is trying to carry nearly 30 differential pairs to carry audio signals with multiple ground connections from PTH to PTH within 3.6 centimetres and all the connections are crossed... For all of these constraints, I cannot really control them. What I can do is to use legacy vertical-horizontal routing with my best imaginations and try to follow as much good practice as possible. Although it looks messy, almost no return path underneath the traces and nearly all the line spacing are just a bit more than manufacturer’s capability, I believe that’s reasonable in this case😂

[@hbozyq4470]

Pay a few bucks and get 4 layer makes your life much easier.

[@abdifatahaden4761]

I've just been interpolating the estimates from the Rick Hartley lecture on grounding to get the critical length for traces. Good to know there is an online calculator.

[@jawadmalik2630]

Very impressive Phil. I gained a lot from these clips. 🥰

[@PhilsLab]

Thank you!

[@shamssalehin2376]

Great video as usual..thanks professor Phil..

[@PhilsLab]

Thanks for watching!

[@MuhammadQasimRauf]

Concise and to the point as always. Thanks for the awesome tutorial once again. Looking forward to some solution from fedeval academy to resolve the streaming issue of your Digital Hardware Design course in Pakistan 😢

[@vigneshp6889]

It was really helpfull.As a biginer , now i had a idea how to start layout.Thank you for your guidance.

[@PhilsLab]

Thanks for watching!

[@fixfaxerify]

Super helpful, thank you for this

[@PhilsLab]

Glad it was helpful!

[@abit_gray]

Thank you for those videos. Only thanks to you I got the courage to try to make my own PCBs and not "build" using DevKit style boards (like Arduino and then a wire net for other boards).

[@haythemjelassi4766]

Thanks for these details! Could you please create a tutorial explaining why we use length matching for certain traces and how to perform it?

[@SeamlessR]

Thank you, very much.

[@inoth79]

Great job man! This is a very nice introduction for someone looking to get into PCB design. During my undergrad thesis, I needed to design a custom portable system, wish your video was available in 2019 😅 By the way, ETH graduate?

[@persupersulast2506]

Please make a soldering 101: different tools used, how to solder different types of pcbs, best temperatures for soldering, pitfalls and tricks for better soldering...

[@tsraikage]

what about edge copper plating of PCB and ground rim? do they offer any advantages?

[@gean7917]

very nice.

[@huguytughffcvfdxv]

if you don't have any pressure not big power level, not lots of current. What is good widht with thickness at 35um and on the top not in inter layer ? I see big is good if you can, if is power track more big. not 0.25 mm take 1.27 or little less. Is not very clear for me. please give me your opnions. Before i use 0.25 mm kicad setting now, i change for more if i can. But I m not sur

[@franciscoaleixo16]

First, thank you so much for these videos, these are great help as always and at a minimum can always serve as a reference. Secondly, normally this doesn't bother me too much, but your voice in this one had a lot of sibilance, have you considered exploring some de-essing techniques? It's of course normal, but maybe your recording setup may be exarcebating the effect. Regardless, great work!

[@RSP13]

Awesome

[@TheStevojl3]

Hey Phil, I’m just curious - do you work at a single company doing hardware design for your career or do you freelance?

[@mikewhite5511]

KZbin definitely needs a kind of keyword selector: I'm looking for your take on whether it's "better" to have say 2 small circuits done together on the same run, with a "cut" between the two, or just have them done separately. Keyword=pcb_fab or whatever .

[@kash9309]

sir now i ma in 11th std but I am soo interested to learn about pcb and all my father have done a startup of lighting company from there i have learn many things like soldering current reading and all i am confuse b/w study and business also if i learn pcb design so how to start i am iam not able to make you clear plz relpy don't ignore

[@tamaseduard5145]

👍🙏❤

[@christophorushansen3281]

Can I have the slides 😂?

[@dandin1862]

I really enjoy your videos but please do something with the sound. There's no need to compress and limit the sh*t out of your voice :) Personally, I can't watch the whole videos without breaks.

[@gregwoolley]

You make fantastic tutorials, a big thank you! I do have trouble though understanding your speaking. To try to understand why, I slowed down your video here kzbin.info/www/bejne/rna5n6ejjrF0iNksi=JFv_bNlpB7XzTwHJ&t=369 to 0.75 and I noticed significant slurring and lack of clear enunciation of your words and often a joining of multiple words together into an unbroken stream. I slowed your video down further to 0.5 but I still could barely understand what you were saying. Please, if you can, enunciate more clearly and precisely in your videos. Your tutorials are super informative and helpful, I appreciate your superb work, so please keep them coming.