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High-voltage products can experience multiple pathways to failure, and some of these pathways become safety problems for the users of these systems. When a product is energized up to high voltage, it could have a reliability problem resulting in a slow failure over time, or a spectacular failure resulting from dielectric breakdown. No matter which failure mode you want to prevent, both categories of failure modes are addressed by enforcing two...

Do you remember all the fads and obsessions you had as a kid? When I was younger, everyone was crazy about Pokémon and whatever electronic gadgets they could get their hands on. These two crazes eventually combined into one ultimate trend—the Tamagotchi. It was a massive hit, blending the excitement of portable electronics with the charm of tiny, unrealistic digital pets. Now, two major trends in the PCB world have also converged: Flexible...

One of the most important yet often avoided aspects of documenting a design is the formal design document. Too often we finish the design, generate fabrication, assembly, and validation documents then consider the job done. Properly capturing the system specification, design intent, design process and traceability back to the specification is a time-consuming and arduous yet very necessary task. The design document must capture all aspects of...

When it comes to PCB design, imbalanced power demands in your board can knock the wind right out of your sails. Power discrepancies can quickly turn the tide of your design process and can be extremely difficult to amend without having to do considerable rework. So what’s the solution for getting your voltage levels just right, and is it possible to increase the transmission of data while reducing your power consumption? To start, you’d need a...

With the advent of rigid-flex, we’ve been able to fit more in a smaller form factor than ever before. Not only that but rigid-flex designs have an edge over rigid designs in weight and reliability. I could write a blog on just the advantages of rigid-flex, but I’ll leave that for another day. Rigid-flex is great, but there are some things you need to be aware of when you work with it. What I’d like to highlight in this blog are the routing...

I always thought that to be successful you need to emulate the success of others. When I started my career, there weren’t any single board computers like Raspberry Pi, and no one took Arduino seriously for industrial applications. You can imagine how bad it was the first time I did maintenance on a general purpose controller that I designed. It was a fire alarm controller that had over 50 wires manually screwed onto it. I had to replace a...

As an engineer, I always feel like it’s a personal failing when I have to call someone else in to fix my stuff. Whether it’s electronics or the occasional bit of haphazard woodwork, I can’t ask for help until I’ve tried to sort it out. Plumbing, however, is another story. Then I call for help immediately. The problem with the impulse to fix your own stuff is that a lot of companies don’t actually want you to. I can’t count the number of times...