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Technology
The Problem With Using Excel Templates For Your Bill of Materials
Let’s give credit where credit is due: templates can be very useful tools. I’m not really the artistic type, and artistic templates have really helped enhance my documents and presentations. Templates are useful for certain tasks, but using a bill of materials template for a new electronic device is not one of them. Moving from a finished design to the assembly stage for a new product is no simple task. Your manufacturer needs detailed
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How to Optimize HDI Design in Electronics
Neutron stars seem like the stuff of science fiction. Imagine stars as large as the sun exploding in a blinding supernova. Better yet, consider how the spectacular explosion peels the outer layers of the star away and leaves a small, continually collapsing dense core. Gravity pushes the dense matter together to the point of protons and electrons combining into neutrons. As the star’s gravity becomes 200 billion times stronger than the Earth’s
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Ceramic vs. FR4 Multilayer PCBs: When to Use Either and How
Ceramic materials electronics are specialty materials used as PCB insulators and as substrates for IC packages. Today, ceramic production capacity for PCBs is easy to access from overseas vendors, and these materials see significant use in aerospace and automotive industries. Ceramic PCBs offer particular advantages over FR4 boards, although there is no single “ceramic” material. The current set of commercialized ceramic materials for PCBs are
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Comparator Propagation Delay in High Speed Mixed-Signal Design
When I began my journey into the wonderful depths of electronics so long ago as a student, I wondered how so many interesting and important functions are built into everyday electronic devices. Input signal and voltages were fresh in my head and I was worrying more about a power supply than inverting inputs. It wasn’t until later that I started to fully understand the versatility of op-amps and how they could be used to build comparators
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PCB Layout Tips to Design a Clap Switch Circuit
I’m a self-professed workaholic. On a typical workday, lunch breaks become nonexistent as I obsess on my latest project or focus on clearing my list of tasks. During my off-days, however, I move to the opposite end of the spectrum. I became the epitome of laziness as I spend the whole day unwinding. I become immobilized as I sink deeper into the couch while watching my favorite TV shows. In these moments, I wish I could prepare dinner with a
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Linear Devices in Electronics and How They Affect Your Signals
Many cultures view time as linear or as something that moves along a straight line. The flow of time moves from past to present to future. Other cultures, however, have a different perspective about time. Those see time moving in cycles. History repeats itself and all human events occur in cycles. Linear devices in electronics have nothing to do with how we perceive time, but they do matter for how your circuits perform and how they should be
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PCB Design Guide to Controlled Impedance During PCB Routing
In June 1831, Sir James Clark Ross discovered the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula in Northern Canada. While the term “discovery” seems to indicate that the North Magnetic Pole is static, the North and South Magnetic Poles, in fact, move continuously. The Earth’s magnetic field changes over time and as those changes occur, the positions of the poles also shift. Given the rate of movement at 55 km per year, we may have another meaning
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Using Kirchhoff’s Law to Determine Sufficient PCB Trace Thickness
For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of peanut butter. Back in elementary school, my mom limited my peanut butter intake to a thin spread on a slice of bread. This didn’t come close to satisfying my cravings so I’d sneakily add a generous inch of peanut butter on sandwiches without my mom’s knowledge. My peanut butter thickness preference, unfortunately, did not help with PCB trace thickness in earlier days of hardware design. It wasn’t
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Medical Technology Innovations and the Electronics That Enable Them
Ten years ago, who would have thought one of the world’s largest medical equipment manufacturers, General Electric, would look to exit the industry and sell-off its medical equipment business? It is also a fact of life that changes like these tend to drive companies to look for profit opportunities in other industries. In the 21st century, with a rapidly aging global population, you have the likes of aerospace giants, such as Lockheed-Martin and
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Competitive Exoskeleton by Project March from the Delft Technical University Dream Team
Judy Warner : Robbert, please tell us about your major at Delft Technical University and your role at Project March . Robbert de Lange : I’m studying civil engineering and my role on the Project March team is Acquisition and PR. Presently, I have taken off a full year of studies to focus full-time on Project March. Warner : What motivated you to take a full year off of your studies to invest in Project March? De Lange : Beyond all the academic
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Mary Elizabeth McCulloch Developed Voz Box and Project Vive
Judy Warner : It’s so nice to talk with you, Mary Elizabeth! Please share your background, education and what inspired you to choose engineering as a vocation. Mary Elizabeth McCulloch : I was always good at science and math and I graduated from Penn State University with a biomedical degree in 2016. Both of my parents were very inspirational in my choice to pursue engineering. My Dad studied physics in college and is now an engineer who
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7 Benefits of In-House Fabrication and Additive Manufacturing
If you are like 98% of the PCB designers out there, you know what it can be like to run through the gauntlet of outsourcing a design to a third-party manufacturer to receive a prototype or two. The process is usually a little painful, often pricier than you’d have hoped, and leaves you waiting for longer than you’d expect. I often think that the manufacturing process is similar to going out to dinner at an overrated restaurant; you’ll wait on an
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Incorporating DFM for Panelization in Your Electronics
Oftentimes, in a larger production environment, companies seek small tips and tricks along the manufacturing route in the hopes of significant cost savings. As a ‘low hanging fruit’ of costs savings, manufacturing is (or at least should be) a highly discussed topic early on in the design phase. Keeping manufacturing principles and specifications in mind at the design stage is what is known as design for manufacturing (DFM). There are a handful of
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Hybrid or Compact: Fractal Antennas in PCB Design
The Mandelbrot Set was always a popular poster among my fellow students when I was in college. The zoomed-out picture hung on dorm room walls and even appeared on some graphic t-shirts. The fact that no one seemed to know about the Mandelbrot Set or understand fractals didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how useful fractals could be in designing antennas. There are many antennas in the PCB world including: microstrip
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Augment This! How AR is Changing PCB Design
If you’ve yet to play with an AR or VR experience, you should! The emerging technology is quickly becoming a game changer for industries such as entertainment, healthcare, education, military, and the list goes on. Providing, quite literally, an infinite amount of potential applications, it’s no wonder that so many industries are affected by and are embracing the new tech. While VR places the user inside an entirely manufactured environment, AR
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What’s the Future of WiFi for the Internet of Things?
I’ve come to adopt several different modes of communication between the different social circles in my life. Slack, messenger, texting, calling, letter writing and various other messenger services - all of which are unique to particular people or friend groups. Most of the time, I can barely keep track of them all and more often I end up sending the right text to the wrong person. IoT protocols are just as diverse, and new options come out
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Electronic Product Life Cycle Management Avoids Unpredicted Application Results
Everyone has a smartphone these days. Well, everyone except my grandparents. They still use clamshell phones and perfectly happy with them. The rest of us have moved on to leaner and meaner communication devices. Eventually, the product life cycle for clamshell phones will end and they will be relegated to the history books. A look back through the history of technology reveals that no piece of technology can thrive forever. Project life cycle
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