It seems like everything is so complicated these days, especially in electronics design … which is more and more products everyday.
Why are they so complex? “Hey, our cell phone takes pictures, sharpens knives, mows the lawn, pays your bills, steers your car, and cooks dinner, all by voice command!” Give us a break!
Unfortunately, the reason so many electronic products are stuffed with features is that it is relatively cheap to add features to them! Do we consumers really want or need those functions? That is an entirely different question. Often, the answer is no. But the manufacturers add them, in many cases, simply so they can advertise that they have more features.
It costs a lot more to carefully determine what features are most wanted and to design electronics so that they are feature-rich, yet easy and intuitive for people to use. That is why this vital step is often shortcut.
Ever had trouble figuring out how to program your VCR? Did you ever think that perhaps it’s not really your fault? It’s the fault of the engineers who designed a lousy user interface to the product. And you think they are bad? Try using a combination VCR-DVD player!
There is second reason why manufacturers keep cramming more questionable features into products. In the case of products like cell phones, sales have slowed down because most people who wanted one have one. So, the phone manufacturers keep adding features in order to try to find ones that motivate people to buy new phones. They keep looking for that latest cool feature that people will be willing to buy a new phone to get.
Similarly, digital camera manufacturers keep coming out with cameras with more and more megapixels. Two megapixels, then 3.2, then 4.0, then 5, now 6, 7, even 8. Do consumers need 7 or 8 megapixel cameras? Not in the least. For shooting snapshots or sharing pictures online, a 3.2 megapixel camera is more than adequate. Really.
Why then, do manufacturers keep extending the capability? It is as we said above: 1) so they can advertise they have it, and 2) to try to get people to stick their old camera in a drawer and buy a new one.
Our advice: It pays to look carefully at the features being offered in the products you are interested in. Don’t assume that a product with more features (or higher numbers) is the better choice. Often it is not, it is just more complicated to use! And, there is more to go wrong.
BLOATWARE
There is a similar phenomenon in software. It is called “bloatware.” Programs that are overloaded with features, especially those not essential to the basic purpose for the software, carry this moniker.
Often, in the software industry when people are working on the next versions of software products, the programmers would say, “Hey, I can add such-and-such feature with only 100 lines of code.”. That’s not much, since a software program can have hundreds of thousands of lines of code. But often it was a feature the users would have no need for. Too often, these kind of features make it into software products, and they become bloated with unnecessary features. Bloatware.
Gold is a wonderfully versatile element, with applications across all areas of science and technology. From dentistry to electronics, gold can be found in just about anything due to its high resistance to several types of corrosion and chemical reactions. It also has great electrical conductivity, making it almost invaluable to many fields of electronics; from domestic to industrial.
But with the rising prices of gold over the last few years, it is becoming an extremely costly resource for electronics manufacturers worldwide. Data compiled by the World Gold Council suggests that 2010 was the highest year on record for gold demand, with 326.8 tonnes ($12.9 billion) of gold changing hands.
For the first quarter of 2011, 79.8 tonnes of gold ($5.1 billion) have been sold/purchased by the electronics industry alone says the W.G.C.
Though the weight of gold traded has only gone up 1% in Quarter 1 2011, the cost has increased 25% because of the increasingly rapid rise in the price of gold. The chip production and wire bonding electrical industries alone are predicted to consume 130 tonnes each over 2011. Though these are two extreme cases (the 2 biggest applications for gold worldwide), the figures for the money and resources being traded are mind blowing.
However, the gold consuming industries won’t be worrying about dwindling resources any time soon. The Japan National Institute for Materials Science (N.I.M.S) estimate that across 3 of Japans techonology land fills alone, there are more precious metals than the world will consume in an entire year. A company who specialises in salvaging valuable metals from land fills (Ashai Pretec) managed to save 15 tonnes of gold in 2007.
The N.I.M.S. stated that if the land fills were to be exploited properly, it would push Japan into the the top 5 countries for metal exports!
Either way, only 13% of the world’s gold usage (550 tonnes) is recycled annually. Meaning there is still plenty left to be reused and remanufactured.
Dr.Holliday of the W.G.C. has stated that the electronics industry may have to switch from gold to a more available and sustainable material such as copper.
“Some low-end sub-contractors and foundries have been aggressively promoting copper as the main wire bonding packaging solution, as well as advocating alternative non-gold contact finishes,” says Dr.Holliday, “this record demand shows that gold remains the metal of choice for manufacturers looking for durability and reliability in component manufacturing.”
Nikola Tesla, born on 10 July 1856 grew to become known as the father of modern electronics. His most wonderful invetion, aptly named the ‘Tesla Coil’ in his own honour. A type of resonant transformer circuit used to produce high voltage, low current, high frequency alternating current electricity, however they do produce higher current than the electrostatic machines.
Used to help research many of Teslas electrical engineering innovations, this brilliant piece of kit has many applications in the research and development of electrical kit. Even today, over almost 150 years after it’s inception! Things like pcb assembly would probably be a much more complicated process were it not for several of Teslas incredible inventions, innovations and ideas.
But there was one particular innovative use of Teslas coils that i doubt even he would have foreseen…
A Musical Instrument!
Brilliantly nicknamed: The Zeusaphone
The guys behind this wonderful performance are: The Masters Of Lightning: Steve Ward, Jeff Larson and Terry Blake
There are videos all over the web of these guys performing various melodies and memorable tunes; and several more describing how they create music with these immensely powerful electrical rigs.
We hope you found this as entertaining and impressive as we did here!
We recently covered an open source 3 dimensional printer known as the “RepRap“, designed and built by Adrian Bowyer – a senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath.
After looking over Adrians Vimeo channel, we discovered an interesting time-lapse video of the hand-made RepRap prototype that Bowyer had lovingly nicknamed “Darwin”.
Built by hand and manufactured in four hours, over two days in April ’07 – “Darwin” went on to help inspire Bowyer to create several peripheral extensions for the RepRap machine – and even to share the design and instructions under public license! Allowing anyone to build their own RepRap CAM machine.
The Newbury Blog will be profiling the lives of some of the most influential figures from the history of Electronics. Who better to start our examination of ‘Electronics Superstars’ than Paul Eisler, the inventor of the printed circuit board.
Paul Eisler was born in Vienna in 1907. He studied engineering at the Vienna University of Technology. After working in Belgrade installing radios in trains, he returned to Vienna to work as a printer. Unfortunately, he was forced out of work by the fascists in 1934 and emigrated to England in 1936.
Whilst living in a boarding house in Hampstead, without work or a work permit, he began to make a radio using a printed circuit board. Then in 1941, he engaged Henderson and Spalding, a lithography company in Camberwell, to invest in his circuit board design via a specially created subsidiary of the company, called ‘Technograph’. Sadly, he neglected to read the contract before signing it and inadvertently forfeited the rights to his invention. It was a pretty standard employment contract; he agreed to submit any patent right during his employment for a nominal fee of £1, but it also gave him 16.5% ownership of Technograph.
He managed to obtain his first three printed circuit patents for a wide range of applications. They were split out from a single application submitted in 1943 and finally published after long legal procedures on June 21 1950.
After the war ended, the United States opened access to his printed circuit innovation. Since 1948, it has been used in all airborne instrument electronics. Very few companies acknowledged or licenced Technograph’s patents and the company had financial difficulties. He resigned from Technograph in 1957.
Among his projects as a freelancer, were films to heat ‘floor and wall coverings’ and food. The wallpaper idea was viable, but interest waned after the advent of cheaper energy resources following the discovery of natural gas in the North Sea.
Eisler invented many other practical applications of heating technology, such as the pizza warmer and rear window defroster, but he was not very successful in commercialising them. He will always be best remembered for his contribution to the electronic assembly industry by inventing the printed circuit board.
Think about the last time you broke something in your home – a cup, a plate, a coat hook, a window handle, the battery cover on your TV remote, a component in an electronic device, a hinge, a switch. Instead of having to throw away the whole device, or trawl the web trying to find a costly spare part, imagine if you could recreate the item you need on your very own 3D printer. Now imagine if such a 3D printer could make all its own parts, as well.
The notion of self-replication is nothing new, but until recently such technology was either the realm of science fiction or well beyond the budget of the average home user.
Researchers at the University of Bath gained worldwide attention in 2005 when they announced the RepRap project. It’s an open source self-copying, rapid-prototyping machine that can manufacture mechanical parts and even reproduce itself.
RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper – a self-replicating machine often referred to as a 3D printer that can manufacture components by building them up in layers of plastic. This technique is known as Fused Deposition Modelling Rapid Prototyping.
The team behind the RepRap concept have put together all the instructions needed for anyone to build their own RepRap. So, if you’re a keen electronics hobbyist, why not build your own 3D printer? It’s an electronic assembly project that’s not only fun but will provide you with a really useful device that would cost thousands of pounds to buy ready-assembled.
A top new piece of electronic kit has been developed by Cornell University, the lab of Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago, and ‘iRobot‘. Known as “The Universal Jamming Gripper” – this robotic arm is capable of picking up a whole array of odd-shaped and weighted objects with ease!
It is capable of pouring drinks, writing, picking up eggs without breaking them, and even picking coins from a flat surface!
Theres no need to change the ‘hand’ of this arm for different objects; coffe, a balloon and a vaccum do it all.
Intrigued? Check out the video below!
An odd, yet entirely plausible concept! The possible uses are almost endless!
Just another technological innovation that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible and what isn’t!
We hope you enjoyed our quick glance over this awesome tech, feel free to take a look for yourself for more information & innovation!
Can you use a cheap domestic oven to re-flow lead-free solder paste? We thought it would be fun to find out. And may be, if it worked, some of you might find our experiment useful.
Our industrial SMD reflow oven is 4 metres long, has 8 convection heated computer controlled temperature zones, and consumes 30Kw of power and only cost £40,000!
An Argos Cookworks Mini Oven, (part number 423/4827) is 50 cms wide, has a 60 minute timer, consumes 1300 watts and costs £39.99.
(Currently in stock at Argos: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4234827/Trail/searchtext%3ECOOKWORKS+MINI+OVEN.htm ).
It’s certainly cheap, being only 1 thousandth of the cost of our industrial oven. Even the cheapest commercial bench-top reflow oven we have seen will set you back around £800.
So you would think an oven costing just £40 should not work, or we would all be out of business.
Read on to find out if it did.
We tested the mini oven like this.
The oven was modified by removing the crumb tray. No other changes were made.
After a few dry run reflow cycles with a temperature profiler to guide us, we homed in towards the correct times and settings.
A test sample based on a 1.6 mm FR4 double sided PCB with 0805 components mounted on lead-free solder paste was made up. This was placed in the centre of the middle tray.
The Cookworks Mini Oven temperature knob was set to 190 C.
The timer was set to 5 minutes and the oven was allowed to heat up.
After 5 minutes, the oven door was opened for 30 seconds.
Then the shelf was slid out to allow the board to cool down a little more.
The completed board was removed and placed on the crumb tray.
A visual inspection showed all the joints were nicely reflowed without any sign of granular paste or solder balling.
So the solder joints looked good. But had we over-cooked the SMD components?
The pcb temperature profile was monitored with a calibrated temperature logger. The red trace on the chart below shows the temperature profile as measured by a thermocouple in free air.
The blue, green and orange traces are the temperatures of thermocouples attached to the pcb.
The heating rate, soak time, time above liquidous, delta t and peak temperature are all within the correct ranges for satisfactory reflow. The components were not overheated.
Our conclusion was that the mini oven worked remarkably well. In fact the temperature profile was far better than expected. Not bad for a £40 oven!
You may be able top repeat our experiment on your workbench. However, we don’t know whether every oven will behave in the same manner. Without a temperature logger, it is not possible to be certain. To ensure components are not fried it is essential to have a temperature log. Our next step will be to build a low cost temperature logger which anyone can construct. In the near future, we hope to be able to offer a ready to go “bare-bones” logger for sale at modest cost.
CNC if you are wondering; stand for Computer Numerical Control, when a computer is used to translate an image or data – into X,Y & Z co-ordinates.
Allowing for 3D mapping, so when these co-ordinates are fed through to a maching capable of milling a material, you can precisely craft a CAD (computer aided design) model into a real life prototype!
The students at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering took this concept and turned it into a cake decoration machine!
The ‘AutoFrost’ machine is talked about all over the web – simply Googling the name will return much more detail on the construction, concept and team behind this wonderous cake-based device.
