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Design Libraries
Obsolescence Information Management for PCB BOM Maintenance
In my home laboratory, the garage, I have many bins. One contains small springs, another gear-motors, yet another small bolts… and so on. Despite my girlfriend’s skepticism, these bits are actually very useful for fixing assorted gadgets and household appliances, and they also provide fodder for my weekend tinkering habits. Keeping track of what I have and where it is uses up quite a lot of mental capacity in itself. At work, the sheer volume of
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PCB BOM Creation as a Living Document
The other day my son bought himself a new phone because the navigator in his old phone was defective. Every time that he used the old phone for directions, he would end up getting lost. Although taking the time to get a new phone wasn’t in his plans, he could no longer afford wasting time trying to figure out where he was and where he needed to go next. His difficulties reminded me of the problems that I’ve seen in some PCB design groups where
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Bill of Materials Inventory Management and the Benefits of an Online Parts Request Documentation Systems
I once asked a family member to borrow some money to use as a down payment. His response included a counter-proposal that I didn’t understand, so I let it pass. Unfortunately by not understanding his answer to my request, I missed out on an even better opportunity than what I had initially asked for. That exchange has stayed in my mind as an example of how important clear communication is. In our world of PCB design, the need for clear
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Important Considerations in Your Embedded System's Master-Slave Communication Model
It can take a few weeks or months to finish a working prototype of an embedded system. Sometimes I would spend days working on a single part of the project. However, when your boss is looking for updates every day, it can be particularly distracting and hinder your productivity. When I started my design company, I learned not to repeat these mistakes on my team. Like a human, embedded systems come in various shapes and sizes, and more importantly
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The Importance of Compliance Awareness in Circuit and PCB Design
I had an English professor once who was a lot of fun, but man, his requirements for essay writing were brutal. Making a decent grade required a ton of work. I had to check and recheck my paper’s content to make sure that every detail he asked for was painstakingly covered. These tedious rituals, though annoying and painful, helped teach me how to be thorough with my research. This was something that came in handy when I began my career and had to
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How to Plan Ahead to Meet PCB Disposal Requirements
When I was a kid and learned to solder, I had a mentor that kept an old coffee can on his soldering bench labeled “Lead Waste - DO NOT THROW IN TRASH.” Wire snippings, solder bits, and the random metal detritus that accumulates on a soldering mat all went in there. Apparently, it got full every few years and he took it to a local electronics recycling place to make sure he wasn’t adding any lead or heavy metals to the environment. I was shocked
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How PCB BOM Management Tools Facilitate Efficient Communication Between Departments
Many years ago, I was a junior PCB learning the ropes of the trade in a large company. To help me understand the entire product production process, my boss took me on a tour of the manufacturing floor. The people that I met there were not rude per say, but I noticed a subtle attitude of, “Oh, you’re one of them” that puzzled me. The reason for their annoyance I found out later was that they would routinely suffer delays because of bad information
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Bill of Materials in Supply Chain Management: Part Inventory Control
Sending information to other departments and personnel is a regular part of the PCB design process. For purchasing, their part of this process starts when engineering sends them a bill of materials () for a new design. At this point in the design cycle, the is a preliminary document and it is constantly changing as are added, updated, or eliminated during the design cycle. The problem for purchasing is that this constantly changing data impacts
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PCB BOM Management: Spend Less Time on Your BOM and Reduce Delays in Manufacturing
Real-time solutions with management tools Cafeterias in colleges, summer camps, and schools are often known for serving up food that has a consistent quality and similar ingredients. For the kids who are tired of eating spaghetti with meatballs, this approach to food production is a downer. However, from a manufacturing point of view, using standard ingredients with minimal variety makes for efficient production. This is also true in circuit
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PCB Circuit Design Tips: Standard vs. Specialized Component Selection in PCB Design
As a kid, I was fascinated by hovercrafts. These nearly frictionless vehicles go from land to water without pause and spin 360s on demand like a carnival ride. I knew that the cost of a full-scale build would require mowing every yard in the county, so instead, I started by constructing a homemade radio-controlled model. It worked beautifully on ponds and flat parking lots, but in our hilly corner of the woods, the sleek craft required all of the
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PCB BOM Management Tools and Real Time Part Access: How It Will Help Your Design for Manufacturability
Have you ever been so ready to take off on a new project that you can’t wait to jump into it? Of course you have. As engineers that’s part of what makes us tick. We’ve got so many ideas running around in our head that we would rather forego sleep or food in order to create a design. Then it happens, some kind of delay forces us to lock up the brakes on our creative process. There are many scenarios that can do this, but one of the worst is when
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Circuit Board Design and BOM Management in Low Volume PCB Assembly
What’s the difference between Angry Birds and SpongeBob? I’m probably at an age where I shouldn’t be caring about these things, but choosing the wrong character for my son’s 5th birthday cake could spell disaster. As a designer, you probably can’t relate to my need to carefully consider the repercussions of choosing SpongeBob. However, you might understand it better knowing that I apply the same level of caution when designing for low volume
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PCB Layout Constraints That Help Manage Component Obsolescence
Just about everyone in the world of engineering has heard some variation of the “Iron Triangle” theory. It’s a popular way to talk about what is or isn’t possible among those given the task of getting things done. Basically, it is a philosophy that says you can get something done fast, cheap, or good; pick two. For example, when designing a PCB for an aircraft, cheap goes out the window, fast takes a back seat and quality is paramount
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BOM Automation: The Benefits of Having an Automated Bill of Materials in Project Management
I have some friends who founded a startup company to create and market a brilliant new product. Their product quickly became a success, but all their hard work was constantly undermined by communication issues between departments. It wasn’t long until the engineers found their creative hands tied, purchasing was buried under an avalanche of unreliable documentation, and the product build-in manufacturing was slowed to a crawl from incorrect and
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Using Flyback Diodes in Relays Prevents Electrical Noise in Your Circuits
What is a flyback diode, and how does a flyback diode protect a circuit? When used properly, flyback diodes can reduce electrical noise and prevent flyback voltages from building up.
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The Benefits of a Bill of Materials In Supply Chain Management
Some of the most complicated engineering projects I’ve worked on were made up of multiple layers of sub-assemblies. Before we could order parts for a new assembly, we needed to go through every component in each tier of the final product to ensure that they would meet the rigorous current, voltage, and temperature derating requirements for different customer applications. The first few times I had to do this, it was by merging dozens of excel
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BOM Part Number Management: Why It Should Be Automated
If you’ve ever worked with high voltages or have designed a high voltage circuit, you know that they always require careful planning. In my last job, we had been using a particular high voltage power supply circuit for years. When it was initially designed, the board took longer than usual to complete. While its design required some extra finicking, it was worth the effort. Everything was going well until the larger assembly's design was modified
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