Need a Professional to take a quick look at design

[finite pebble]

you don't need to know them all or buy them, but knowing they exist and why is great

[exotic kernel]

the safety ones

[finite pebble]

and a lot of places publish free snippets from IPC standards. Sierra Circuit's DFM guide (sign up with your email and you get it free) has a bunch of IPC info in it

[finite pebble]

safety ones will really depend on what you're building

[exotic kernel]

im 100% gonna need to know the safety stuff

over here building stimulator circuits lol

[finite pebble]

at a company, they'll have a compliance engineer whose job it is to know that

again, holistically, good to know about it, but not always required

[exotic kernel]

ok i wont spend too much time on it

right

[finite pebble]

only really small companies don't have compliance engineers.

(others might chime in, but every company I've worked at with > 100 employees had a compliance engineer. never been anywhere smaller than 140)

[exotic kernel]

i think i wil learn just from reading some ipc stuff

im such a rookie ill probably learn something significant

[finite pebble]

to build your own company, yes you would. To work for a bigger company, you need to be aware of them, and knowing them more intimately is a bonus, but I'd focus on good design and theory fundamentals well before that

[finite pebble]

Get the Sierra Circuits DFM guide

and read that altium blog post I sent

[exotic kernel]

ok i will thank you daniel

[finite pebble]

those are great primers

[dry grove]

Are you made of money? Safety certs are like years salary kind of cost

Medical startups need a crapton of funding, unfortunately

[finite pebble]

yeah I didn't even mention this; those standards are big bucks

there are engineering firms that specialize in helping you design for cert (or doing design for you) for those kinds of products, since the cost is so high

again, this plus other reasons is why I wouldn't worry about those certs - a big company will have those certs and it's not your job to know them inside and out

that's why the "compliance engineer" role exists

[exotic kernel]

Im just gonna learn about the design rules they use for certain types of circuits 🤣 🤣 🤣

This is madness

[tawny wasp]

I would have also expected standards to be free, given that they are supposed to be, well, standards.
At least on the front of scientific papers we're very slowly moving into an open access direction, e.g. my university since a couple years enforces that all published material be available open access as well.

[finite pebble]

I agree would be nice. There’s no fundamental reason they have to charge for them, but that’s the model most of the industry operates on: IEC, IEEE, IPC, JEDEC, MIPI are the ones I’ve dealt with and they all charge $

[dry grove]

Yeah standards cost an absurd amount to produce because theyre often designed by committee

A 1 hr meeting with all the stakeholders can be ten thousand dollars when you do the math

[stable leaf]

This is simply an uninformed opinion and it is wrong.

Standards provide valuable benefits to all. But they not only require significant investment to develop, but also to administer, maintain and service.

It is the later part you subsidize when you purchase a standard.

The PCBs we all develop can be produced inexpensively and with high quality because of these standards. You benefit from them for "free" even if you don't own a copy of them.

[finite pebble]

I’m on your side here 😉

By “no fundamental reason” I mean that orgs could donate their time. I previously stated that the current model requires investment.

Wish you would have read my earlier comments

@stable leaf

@stable leaf

@stable leaf here

[finite pebble]

I wish you wouldn’t assume I’m uninformed in this area

@stable leaf

I tempered my responses with “yes I agree it would be nice if everyone made standards free”, and my implication is you could structure the industry ground up around free information for all, but that’s not how it works. I think if you had read the full context you would have seen that.

I’ll grant that the wording “no fundamental reason…” is misleading. What I meant to say is “a model could probably function where information could be freely exchanged, but that goes against the grain of how the industry operates”

Anyways, hope that clears things up 👍

[finite pebble]

Out of curiosity, are you in school? I had it in my head you were working as an EE in Italy, right?

[tawny wasp]

doing my masters in Switzerland haha
not sure who of the regulars is from Italy

[finite pebble]

Prob saw that you had an espresso machine and assumed 🤡

Which is funny considering I also have one

[tawny wasp]

lmao tbf it is made in Italy 😂

[finite pebble]

Maybe that’s what I latched on to

[dry grove]

ebastler is in italy

[finite pebble]

Ahhhh

[exotic kernel]

Are we all german in here?

Or of german ethnicity?

Ive been noticing a lot of people in these chats are

[dry grove]

not in over 100 years

[exotic kernel]

What?🤣

[exotic kernel]

@dry grove @stable leaf @finite pebble @tawny wasp how often are you guys doing rf related stuff on your pcbs. Like for example, what are the absolutely necessary things to learn?

[stable leaf]

Thanks for pointing out my oversight. I do appreciate it. As someone who has spent decades working on standards it is a thankless job and the whole discussion stuck a nerve. Sorry for calling you out so bluntly without having the full context.

[finite pebble]

All good!! I hadn’t had my coffee either, so it struck a nerve back haha

40+ years of experience is great, and glad to have your perspective

[stable leaf]

Pretty much all the time. Mostly NFC, WLAN, Bluetooth stuff. Some of it is unusual, but mostly routine.

I think I posted before about this...

Baseline is an understanding of impedance, phase, inductance vs. capacitance, parasitics, ideal models (spice), and Smith charts.

The rest is experience and applied knowledge.

That's my 2 cents.

[exotic kernel]

You know what this feels like, its like I just started a video game and I wondered into an area of the map where everyone is level 99

[stable leaf]

Hah... You're in Area 51. Just us aliens here 👽

[exotic kernel]

Exactly

Im just trying to make sure im spending my time on the right aspects

I havent gotten into phase yet

I understand parasitic mostly inductance capacitance and model. The smith chart looks terrifying

[stable leaf]

I used to think so... Then it just clicked when I had to impedance match an antenna.

[dry grove]

Rarely

I don't touch RF if its avoidable

[exotic kernel]

I was playing around in flastad trying to wrap my head around impedance matching. Still dont have a deep mental model of it

I kinda understand it but not to the extent that i could create it from scrath

Scratch

[dry grove]

It's maximum power transfer theory

Thevenin's theorem but with infinitesimal slices.

[stable leaf]

Look into w0qe.com and w0qe channel on YouTube. In particular, learn to play with SimSmith.

It can help develop your intuition.

[exotic kernel]

alright now let me ask you this... If I study all these things consistently everyday for years and really put an effort into it, do you think its possible that one day I could physically become a PCB

[broken musk]

i think thats a better question for @zenith bone 🤣

[zenith bone]

Nothing is impossible and besides you are what you eat 😋

[exotic kernel]

ich werde werden PCB

[zenith bone]

2 times werden behind each other ouch

[exotic kernel]

i dont even speak german lmaooo

[zenith bone]

Ich werde zu einem PCB

Is what you would say

[exotic kernel]

google translate sucks lol

my family tried to teach me but i was too lazy

[tawny wasp]

Ich werde eine Leiterplatte gewesen sein :3

[exotic kernel]

@finite pebble is the drawing sheet in kicad where you did the drawing stuff?

or should i just draw in the pcb editor and have it with my gerbers

[zenith bone]

Why gewesen sein? You were a PCB once but now you're not anymore? Sadge

[tawny wasp]

I will no longer be a PCB in the future

[exotic kernel]

lmaooo

[zenith bone]

Yeah but why

[exotic kernel]

I wasnt born, i was manufactured

[zenith bone]

Isn't being a PCB great ?

[tawny wasp]

I just like the grammatical construct of futur II
werde gewesen sein

[zenith bone]

Yeah future 2 my beloved funny thing

[exotic kernel]

the bread cutting competition will be held at 6pm

so if my components dont have that dot to indicate pin 1 they wont assemble it correctly?

[tawny wasp]

are you ordering with JLC? They have a nice 3d viewer where you can set your component orientation, and you can also check the component orientation they will use while the PCB is being manufactured, as they do the data preparation for assembly as soon as you order, but assembly needs to wait for the PCB to be manufactured first

[exotic kernel]

i was gonna go with pcbway becuase i heard jlc messes up boards

[broken musk]

ive had 0 issues with JLC

actually thats not true

they have put a couple resistors across completely wrong pads because they were close enough together, but i feel like they probably tombstoned and whoever fixed it didnt realize they were supposed to go the other way

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1184665422352617494/1393033534758977558/IMG_20250710_1957264432.jpg?ex=69de39d3&is=69dce853&hm=660c0201731642a66ff9fbfdfa8aa0c1f620489b63fe4adde61a052a95f92cae&=&format=webp&width=804&height=960

[exotic kernel]

well

i was told jlc wasnt good and you get what you pay for

[tawny wasp]

complete side note, but good god I do not understand the existence of trinamic

[broken musk]

motor go brr

[broken musk]

thats the only time ive had anything messed up from them

they also put a diode backwards somewhere on either that same board or another

wanst the whole batch, just that one board with those resistors placed wrong

[tawny wasp]

just seems like their entire offering is underwhelming, lacking in features and really overpriced, but the brand is really hyped for some reason

[broken musk]

they are expensive

but they are common in 3dp land so im familiar with them

[exotic kernel]

Dont even get me started

[broken musk]

unfortunately many designs using the TMC5160 dont bother to feed them 12V and instead feed them the motor voltage of 48-60V frying the internal LDO causing a tiny pinhole to appear through the plastic package and killing the driver

[exotic kernel]

Alright i think my board is good to go

where Do i make the manufacturer notes

[broken musk]

on JLC at the bottom where it says "remarks"

[exotic kernel]

i thought it was done through like a csv or pdf program

what are all those ipc things and what should I be exporting for manufacturer?

[broken musk]

not for notes afaik w JLC

[broken musk]

you can upload the component placement information like this in a pdf

zip it with your gerbers and mention it in the text notes

[exotic kernel]

• gerbers

• compontnet placement

• Notes

[broken musk]

I just use the JLC fabrication toolkit plugin for exporting the gerbers and pnp files

id do that and then add the placement info pdf to the gerber zip is creates

[exotic kernel]

Recommended settings for General PCB design?

[tawny wasp]

depends on who's manufacturing. Also you usually set this before routing the board 😅

[exotic kernel]

you know im nothing but a capacitor

[tawny wasp]

if you're going with PCBway check their capabilities

[exotic kernel]

minimum trac of .15mm

is what I saw was ok

i guess what im really asking is what are the best to avoid higher pcb prices

[tawny wasp]

jlc defaults are .1/.1 (width and clearance), 0.3/0.45 vias iirc, and 0.2 copper to edge clearance

[exotic kernel]

thank you

[tawny wasp]

aisler does .2/.2 and whatever other values by default

[exotic kernel]

im using pcbway calculator to see what makes it more expensive

[tawny wasp]

and .09/.09 on multilayer boards. they do however manage to manufacture even down to .08/.08, but tend to enlarge vias to .3/.56

[broken musk]

can do .3/.4 vias

[exotic kernel]

would someone mind taking a quick look at those real quick and tell me if anything is blatently messed up

[exotic kernel]

@finite pebble @stable leaf @tawny wasp @dry grove This is my Final file Im going to send to manufacturer. Is this good enough, is there anything missing or wrong?

[tawny wasp]

is what they claim. Then they just enlarge it without asking

[broken musk]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

i use .3/.4 for all my designs

never had any issues

[tawny wasp]

have you looked at the manufacturing files from JLC?

[broken musk]

i actually have not

looks like they enlarged the annular to .5

er to .45

hole is still .3

[tawny wasp]

lucky you, I had my vias at .3/.45 and they enlarged them to .3/.56 lol, in most cases reducing the clearance to .08mm lol

[exotic kernel]

all my vias are .00000000000000001mm. They collapse into blackholes the moment they're manufactured

[exotic kernel]

What do you guys think about getting someone to help you with a design and learning from them vs trying to figure it out yourself? Is there a healthy balance or should I lean heavily towards getting people to teach me in my early stages of becoming an engineer?

[twin spade]

Both important, you can learn new techniques from people and create and make decisions and trade offs in your projects.
You can learn on your own from data sheets, app notes and youtube

If I have a choice I like to choose things that are fun and interesting

[stable leaf]

What's different about being an engineering student vs. being an engineer? A student needs to learn how to solve a problem. An engineer has to use both knowledge and experience to define the problem.

It's the later part that you learn by working alongside engineers. That's the mentoring that is most valuable.

I wouldn't be in a rush to skip over what professors will teach you. That is the foundation for the rest of your career.

[exotic kernel]

You guys know of any good swithcing mosfets for boost converters? like ones that are commonly used? My switching will be around 2-3A and the output voltage will be 150V max, 100khz.

[finite pebble]

Digikey is a good place to start. Infineon are quite good, but there are lots of brands to choose from

[broken musk]

I don't think there's really a "commonly used" part

There are so many different PNs to choose from because they all have different specs necessary for different applications

Only one off the top of my head is like a 2N7000

But that's not HV nor gonna be fine with 3A

[exotic kernel]

Do you think that if I look at the MOSFET and concentrate really hard, I might be able to change the gate charge with my mind?

[tawny wasp]

if you charge it up it will slowly leak electrons into the surrounding air, does that count?

[exotic kernel]

I was thinking of affecting the collapse of the electrons wave function when they go into super position with my consciousness but ill settle for the slow leak

[zenith bone]

I will steal your electrons

[exotic kernel]

How dare you

[zenith bone]

😝😋

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