How to Decide on Your PCB Layer Ordering, Pouring and Stackup (with Rick Hartley)

Do you pour copper on your signal layers or not? Thank you very much Rick Hartley. Credits to Daniel Beeker, Lee Ritchy and Susy Webb

Links and Credits:

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It is much appreciated. Thank you,
- Robert

[p_mouse]

They should teach this kind of stuff on the university. That's a thousand times more useful than most other things.

[marcov]

This is PCB design gold. Saving this to reference over and over again. Lots of great information and it's delivered in a way that is easier to understand than digging through all my books. Thanks for this!

[dreamofmirrors]

You have done so much for the PCB community. Thank you! And thank you, Rick!
I do have a comment about routing high speed signals in the middle of the board (in order to get the power delivery near the surface). At speeds above 10gbit the via stubs will create significant problems (reflexions) which will require backdrill.

[Victor-Zaporotskiy]

On resonances in cavities and ground stitching vias.

An analogy came to mind. It's like if you had a container with water. By swinging it back and forth with some frequency, you could easily achieve huge water oscillations.

But. If you divided that container by partitions into many small containers, you wouldn't be able to achieve that huge water oscillations at that frequency.

This is how ground stitching vias, by partitioning big cavities into smaller ones, prevent resonances in PCBs.


Thank you, Robert, for your videos! They are extremely useful.

[_pence]

The most informative video on PCB design I have ever come across. You asked the right questions, and the guest was very experienced and prepared.
This one should be included in the curriculum for any aspiring PCB Design Engineers.
Thank you for the great work.

[mspeir]

I am so grateful that I found your channel! I'm a hobbyist with no formal education. I've learned so much from your videos. I've only ever designed 2 layer boards, but am about to start a project needing 4 or possibly 6 layers. I found you just in time! A lot of what you cover is over my head, but the principles are easy to understand and I'm better for it! Thank you!

[ats]

Great video. Rick Hartley has really changed the way we think about EMI!

[guillepk]

This is a very important job you're doing, Robert. It's great that there is now a good source for all the nitty-gritty details of designing a good PCB. Kudos!

[ReverenddMEOW]

it has been awhile, aside from your channel, I clap my hands at the end, which is unreachable on far too many other channels!

You Rock, Maestro!

[sameer_c]

You have done so much for the PCB design community and the people who are new to this that saying thank you would be an understatement now. Please keep doing the great work and teach people how to be a good electronics engineer.
Love to Rick Hartley and you both ❤️.

[ArnabMYT]

Thank you Robert. Your talks with experts like Rick Hartley and Eric Bogatin are videos that I visit every few months. Very grateful...

[lucabelvederesi]

Very very very very very and again very good! Thank you Robert and Rick, this video should be like a mantra for a PCB designer! And remember, the energy is... on the field!

[PrzemRS]

Robert, you always makes videos few days later when I'm asking myself how to resolve a particular problem :D Thx!

[victorbrooks]

Hi, Robert! Could you share with us the Rick's presentation on this topic? It seems to be extremely useful.

[raulhernandezfernandez]

Thank you very much for your time and your video!! The title of my notes for this video: Print circuit board layer stack up (Gold dust)

[ai]

this Q&A style is very helpful, I only understood it the second time Rick has explained if after your questions

[vejymonsta]

Incredibly valuable knowledge shared in this video. This will change the way I tackle my board stack-ups in the future, although I can't imagine I'll ever need to worry about such high density concerns. Definitely this should give me more confidence when I press the "place order" button.

[niflheims]

I’m a software engineer but always have been attracted to electronics. I have worked almost 4 years with low level embedded (bare metal) code for a payment related company. Loved reading datasheets and schematics. Passively learned tons from it (by asking myself what I was looking at and why it was done like this). I had to move to another field but still do a little arduino like stuff in my free time.
Always wanted to give Kicad a try, especially since I got into the rabbit hole of custom mechanical split keyboards. Stumbled on Phil’s Lab videos. Next on Rick Hartley’s and now yours. Love Rick’s explanations and stories. He clearly is the rickiest Rick 🙂
Anyway I’ve learned a whole lot of exciting stuff thanks to you all. Kudos.

[EPtechser]

Thank you Robert, for sharing this video conference with Rick. Even though I am not into multi gigabit designs it made me more conscious of the effect of fast rise times. Most of the boards I design are 2 and 4 layers and looking at this video made me realize I have to be especially mindful of digital signals with fast rise times on these low layer count boards and minimize the EMI effect. Thank you for that.

[larcomj]

I saw a similar presentation by Rick at PCB conference years ago. i was amazed then and still am now. Thanks for putting this up so i can re watch a million times =D