Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast

MEP EP#212: The End of Electronics Manufacturing?!Chris Church Founder and current Chief Product Officer of MacroFab Inc The former founder of Dynamic Perception The former Co-Founder and Chief Architect of Alert Logic Was on the previous MacroFab Engineering Podcast episodes #127: Tariff Impacts #142: Supply Chain Conspiracy Securities COVID-19 Outbreak in China Topic today is the Coronavirus or COVID-19 outbreak in China and its impact on the global Electronic Manufacturing Supply Chain If you want to know more about the virus itself I suggest going to the CDC website ~80% of factories in general are back to work in China, but only about 21% are fully staffed PCB Vendors Extended holiday, workers at a lot of Chinese plants who went home weren’t allowed to come back for two weeks We have lots of production in Taiwan Taiwan blocked all entrance to mainland Chinese on the 5th of February, many limits still in place This is causing significant delays in engineering time for new PCB orders, as most of our vendors’ engineers went back to mainland China for the holiday, and haven’t been allowed to return PCBs going to Taiwan/Vietnam/Malaysia, etc. As soon as delays started happening, a lot of companies sent orders over to other Asian companies, of course, this caused a fast building backlog at those companies Prices going up in Taiwan, Vietnam, etc FR4 is now the real problem Even if production wanted to speed up in Taiwan, Vietnam, ect.. they can’t get the raw materials fast enough Mechanical / Custom Mfg Materials This is the biggest challenge for a lot of our customers Plastics and metals made in China are getting delayed by a month or more against the original lead times Factories are under-staffed and backed up with big orders Components Right now, most component suppliers are back up and running, even if under-staffed Small to mid-size orders won’t be impacted much, but high-volume orders sent direct to the manufacturers are getting longer lead times and higher prices Yageo is one of the vendors we’re hearing about, as of late last week pushing lead times out past a year on some bulk orders with price increases as high as 50% Vishay also has several plants closed as of Monday

20 Helmi 202048min

MEP EP#211: Credit Card Vigilantes - Skim ReaperPatrick Traynor CEO of Skim Reaper The Dasburg Family Preeminent Chair in Engineering in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida Christian Peeters CTO of Skim Reaper Ph.D Student in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida Skim Reaper What is Skim Reaper How does it work? Behind the name Did you know that when your PCB's first hit our production line we thought you were manufacturing a skimming device! Swipe vs Chip How did you start? What was the beginning of the project? The hardware itself Form Factor challenges Engineering Roadblocks you had to overcome? Growing your business What is your method for getting media coverage to spread the news about the Skim Reaper device Plans for future growth and market expansion So if someone detects a skimmer..what do they do?

12 Helmi 202052min

MEP EP#210: Valentina Toll Villagra and Kyle Dumont with Allspice.ioKyle Dumont Experienced electronics designer having launched consumer products at large companies and startups for over 7 years Has developed low volume products for government and military applications and high volume commercial products Valentina Toll Villagra Project Manager exploring the intersection of physical and digital systems at Allspice Worked at Amazon expanding its national customer fulfillment network and rolling out internal productivity, collaboration and project management software applications to support the company's growth Allspice.io Rundown of the platform Where did the name come from How did it begin? The word “Agile” gets thrown around a lot. Mechanical engineers have 3D printing and Software developers have great design and test tools. What are your roles? Kyle – Development, strategy Valentina – Operations, customer success, marketing, product How big is the team? How does Allspice affect the engineer? The manager? Diff control? How is this implemented? Launch and the future? When does it launch? Are there plans to expand the offerings to other EDA tools? What is next?

6 Helmi 202044min

MEP EP#209: A Bad User ExperienceParker Pinotaur REV2 is flipping a machine now Light strips using APA-102C-260-NEW Brew Cart welded up! Gotta design a hoist to lift the grain in and out of the mash tun Stephen Simulation of the week Bandpass with monte Carlo and gaussian tolerance Fermentation controller More Parts! 40A Solid State Relay BEM-14840DA Tactile switch 700SP7M1QEAP2BLKBLK 4x4 tactile keypad ADC reading? RobotDyn Button Keypad 4x4 Module 4x4 membrane style - kind of industrial Yootop 2 pcs 16 Keys Matrix Membrane Switch Keypad Keyboard for Arduino Rapid Fire Opinion MagicWolfi from the slack channel asks "How is it done in the factory and maybe some ideas what to do at home? This is painful if it is more than a few boards." The 5 best arduino projects

29 Tammi 20201h 3min

MEP EP#208: Brian Kaczynski with Second SoundBrian Kaczhnski Brian earned his Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2001 Has worked since 1999 as a mixed-signal/RF ASIC designer focusing mainly on LAN applications such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, etc His passion for music and desire to bridge the gap between acoustic/electric instruments and music synthesizers (both analog and digital) inspire his current work Second Sound Why the name Second Sound? It sounds cool and refers to a quantum mechanical phenomenon How many employees? ACO100 and ACO160 ICs What is an audio controlled oscillator? Frequency detection ACO160 vs ACO100 Moving from custom Ic to Firmware solution? What drove this decision? How does this differ from the hardware solution? Will you be offering the ACO100 IC? Development Boards Integrated Circuit creation How did you go about designing these chips? Software? Required Files? What was your process of getting them manufactured? Tips and tricks for people wanting to manufacture Ics? Challenges and what to avoid? What changed to enable going from a chip design to a MCU firmware based design?

22 Tammi 20201h 4min

MEP EP#207: Beating Dragons with QuartersParker PinoTaur Revision 2 Passes smoke and programming test Onward to shipping it off to testers and programmers Have a friend that has a couple empty pinball cabinets List for Revision 3 Change fuse holders to Keystone 3588 Fix a couple none chamfered traces Update Logos Full backside artwork What is next for the PinoTaur project? LED Boards using the APA-102C-NEW-260 that I have been testing Wiring Harness Designs Audio Amp for the RPI PCM5122 + Class D Amp Stephen Simulation of the Week AC analysis 2nd order low pass filter Sallen-Key topology Two examples with different cutoffs and Q Next week - Monty Carlo and Gaussian distributions of tolerances Fermentation Controller Resurrecting the walking dead Schematic is getting updated Modifying system design for buttons instead of membrane switches This is for robustness Will be milling enclosures Most of the layout is complete Need to position screen

15 Tammi 202039min

MEP EP#206: The Analog State of Amazon Brand NamesParker PinoTaur PCBA should be done tomorrow when this podcast comes out PTH parts ordered from Mouser Brewery Setup Brewery Pots complete Tube straightening Need to weld the cart Go to a tiered setup just to reduce footprint? Dunno yet. Stephen Dave Jones to the rescue With spit... New resistor kit 3350 1% 1/4W resistors 134 Different Values Breadboard techniques LT spice Simulation Full Wave Rectifier Three different opamp choices LM741 TL072 OPA1678 Looking at the differences between the opamps and the diode choice Comparators Analog and Logic Input offset and bias currents Propagation Delay Overdrive Rapid Fire Opinion AllSpice SecondSound Frequency to Voltage converter ACO160

8 Tammi 20201h 6min

MEP EP#205: Disgusting SurgeParker MacroFab PCB Specification Update PCBs now have advanced PCB specifications Stack Ups Advanced Via management UL Logo control Surface Finish PinoTaur REV 2 PCBs arrive Assembled Soon to a pick and place near you Stephen Hellhound preamp Episode 199 Doing a partial product design prototype. Split into two. Back to back transformer design works well but has some unpredictable operation The primaries are not regulated as well as the secondaries Gyrator episode 173 Looked at the 4 band equalizer on my scope and compared to the SPICE simulations Almost 1:1 with simulation $10 dollar switch Alternative? 1004P6T1B4M7RE Rapid Fire Opinion Our favorite podcast episodes of 2019? Discrete Atomic Luffa Control Ben and Chris talking about 3D printers and Luffas Ken and Chip Gracey of Parallax Inc Chip and Ken are super passionate about semiconductors! Honorable Mention: The Fourth Rule of Robotics Thank you so much to our guests that have joined us on the podcast! Ben Heckendorn Chris Kraft Cliff Schecht Jason Cerundolo Al Williams Christopher Howell Phil Bresnahan Dillon Nichols Ken and Chip Gracey Kevin Beller Danny Rankin Roz Nickolas Peter Chelyapov Chrissy Meyer Greg Paulsen Shruthi Soora Gerard Hayes Zapp, Hyron, and the AND!XOR Team Joe Grand Mike Geyer Jeff Garoon Daniel Hienzsch David Guiness

1 Tammi 20201h 11min