Nanjing Estun uses Altium Designer to clock up high speeds
“The rate of equipment upgrades and developments in new technology mean that EDA tools need to meet new standards in high-speed complex routing. Altium Designer has shown that it can step up to these challenges. Our high-speed designs are being completed more quickly and meeting our design performance targets.”
Liao Fuquan,
Research and Development Manager,
Nanjing Estun Industrial Automation Ltd
The need
Electronic devices have offered and continue to offer modern society considerable work and lifestyle conveniences. For instance, in the manufacturing industry, it has been Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines that have revolutionized production methods and automated processes. A lot has changed since CNCs were introduced in the late 1940s, when they were first programmed using punched tape. Today, these machines are much more sophisticated, able to complete highly complex tasks without human interaction.
Helping to move CNCs and AC servo systems into the new age is Chinese developer and manufacturer, Nanjing Estun, which has been developing these devices for over 15 years. Today, manufacturers require high-speed servo machine controls capable of efficiently completing very precise and automated actions. Realizing the design challenges involved, Nanjing Estun decided to update its electronics design tool.
The challenge
Understanding that high-speed designs present several routing challenges for electronic designers, Nanjing Estun knew it required a powerful rule-driven design, layout, and editing environment to control signal trace impedance and maintain its design integrity. During this process, designers need to closely monitor routing paths, and without proper signal integrity analysis they can face signal integrity issues and multiple board iterations if the boards fail to reach performance specific targets.
When developing it high-speed designs, Nanjing Estun needed to carefully manage signal reflections within its designs. Signal reflections are most common in systems with high clock speeds. They usually occur when high-speed signals travel along complex routing paths, and designers must battle against high component density to alleviate this effect. The noise or ‘crosstalk’ generated from these reflections can greatly affect signal integrity and the performance of any neighboring transmission lines on the board.
The solution
By upgrading from Protel 99SE to Altium Designer, Nanjing Estun took take advantage of Altium’s latest high-speed design capabilities. Altium Designer offers signal integrity analysis, interactive impedance controlled routing, design rule checking (DRC), differential pair length-tuning, and mutual length tuning and matching. These features are all incorporated within Altium Designer’s unified environment, and allow Nanjing Estun’s electronics designers to compile and check their PCBs at any given time in the design cycle. Using Altium’s suite of intelligent checking features, Nanjing Estun can closely monitor the layout of the board and identify integrity issues early on in the design process.
Simulations are also an important part of the signal analysis process, and with Altium Designer, Nanjing Estun can take full advantage of industry-proven algorithms included within its reflection and crosstalk simulations. This simulator automatically and accurately calculates the net node voltage transmission line, and tests for any reflections that will potentially affect design performance. By identifying these potential problems early on, Nanjing Estun can prevent time-consuming design iterations and costly manufacturing builds later in the development process.
The results
By employing Altium Designer as its tool of choice, Nanjing Estun is now achieving remarkable results. Because Nanjing Estun now has a tool that supports its high-speed designs, it can easily manage signal integrity and meet electromagnetic interference standards. The combination of Altium’s rules-driven design and intelligent routing systems let Nanjing Estun is able to identify impedance issues early in the design process.
Nanjing Estun has seen an increase in efficiency of 30% for both board layout and revisions. This has a flow-on effect, because electronics designers are spending less time on layout and revisions, Nanjing Estun summarizes its improvements as follows:
| Before Altium Designer | After Altium Designer | |
| Time to do revisions | 10 hours | 7 hours |
| Man-hours spent on each PCB | 30 hours | 21 hours |
Product information
Nanjing Estun has a long history in the CNC and AC servo system industry, specializing in developing, manufacturing and servicing automated industrial machines for sheet cutting. Its extensive range of products and services include an automatic control equipment shear pack, mechanical press drive, machining production line control system solutions, as well as color motion control systems, a range of exchange servo drive systems, and permanent magnet synchronous AC servo motors.
Customer information
Since being founded in 1993, Nanjing Estun has grown into one of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province’s top 50 foreign-invested high-technology companies, with over 150 employees.
For more information visit: http://www.estun.com/
