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Mechanical engineering has grown increasingly complex, with cross-functional collaboration now a core priority in electronics design. The need to consult various stakeholders, from neighboring PCB designers to procurement teams and manufacturers, brings with it more insight into workflow bottlenecks. But recognizing these challenges does not mean engineers should accept the time and cost constraints of outdated processes. Instead, they should...

Medical OEM buyers face unique pressures: strict compliance, lifecycle stability, and patient safety. Octopart centralizes sourcing, ensuring every part is easy to find, meets regulatory, availability, and traceability requirements. The Pressures Facing Medical OEM Buyers From surgical monitors to implants, medical devices are required to function flawlessly 24/7 in hospital environments and the human body itself. For purchasing teams at...

Mechanical engineers face tighter timelines, smaller product footprints, and rising pressure to align seamlessly with electrical teams.  In today’s design environment, disconnection between engineers can no longer go untreated. The demand on teams brings with it a need to simplify inter-departmental interactions, and communication is at the core of all developments.  Despite CAD adoption, design data still lives in isolated silos, making...

Many electronic medical devices incorporate mechanical form factors which restrict the size, space, and placement of components in the PCB. In the not-too-distant past, mechanical prototyping relied heavily on prototyped electrical and mechanical assemblies to ensure form and fit inside the device enclosure or in the intended deployment environment. However, today’s MCAD tools have helped to eliminate mechanical prototyping spins while enabling...

As robotics systems become increasingly compact, complex, and demand higher performance, the traditional boundaries between mechanical and electrical must be broken. Engineers face mounting pressure to ensure that every component, from printed circuit boards (PCBs) and connectors to enclosures and actuators, fits into more complex casing.  Design flaws related to fit, form and function can derail development, increase costs, and compromise...

As electronic products continue to become more compact and interconnected, the use of multiple PCBs within a single device has become standard practice. From modular medical equipment to industrial systems and consumer tech, multiboard design architectures allow engineers to optimize layout, improve serviceability and manage complexity through functional partitioning. Multiboard Design: The System-Level Challenge of Multiple PCBs But complexity...

Today’s consumer devices pack more electronics into smaller, more mechanically complex products than ever before. Mechanical engineers are under constant pressure to design slimmer, lighter, and more unique enclosures while keeping costs down. But even with well-developed skills in their own domain, one of the biggest challenges remains the outdated and disjointed workflow between mechanical (MCAD) and electrical (ECAD) design teams. A Web of...

As a mechanical engineer, you own the form, fit, function, and manufacturability of a product’s final assembly. But as products have become smarter and more connected, the PCB that powers them has transitioned from a simple component to be housed into a complex, 3D subsystem with its own mechanical constraints. Despite links between MCAD and ECAD software, engineering teams still rely on manual data sharing that compromise designs, resembling not...

The defining trend in modern electronics is a paradox: devices must shrink in size while expanding in power and functionality; this relentless push for miniaturization, from handhelds to wearables, has fundamentally reshaped the role of the mechanical engineer. The days of designing a simple ‘box’ to house a PCB are gone. Today, the enclosure is an active, elaborate system that must provide structural integrity, manage heat, and shield from...