Product Design: Designing for Reliability and Manufacturability

Challenge

Refine a proof-of-concept design to optimize product reliability, compliance to regulatory standards, and manufacturability.

Solution

Develop a system of circuit boards and interconnections for cost effective integration and manufacturing while adhering to industry and regulatory standards.

Summary

Assessing the viability of a product idea can be difficult. The process often begins with a rough design sketched on paper. As the research and development phases of the project move forward, one or more proof-of-concept prototypes are often required.

Topics: Electronic Contract Manufacturing, Electronic Engineering, Product Development

MathCad Circuit Modeling: Improving Circuit Design

Challenge

Meet aggressive project schedules while reducing hardware development costs by improving the circuit design process.

Solution

The addition of detailed electronic circuit modeling in the latest release of the PTC MathCad software environment provides a powerful tool to simulate, optimize, and document the circuit design prior to building a PC board.

Summary

SPICE simulation alone will only report the performance of a circuit design, but it will not recommend component values to meet the design goals.

Topics: Electronic Engineering

Industrial Monitoring & Control: Boiler Control

Challenge

Create a modular, expandable, configurable and robust boiler monitoring and control system that can be used world-wide. The system must be able to connect to a wide range of external input sources as well as control external devices. Ethernet, USB and modem connectivity are required.

Solution

An NXP 32-bit ARM7 processor, multiple Microchip 8-bit PICs, Micro Digital SMX operating system, ANSI C, and the IAR Embedded Workbench were used to create this extendable, robust, highly flexible system.

Summary

Tecnova was asked to build the next generation of industrial controllers for a long standing customer. The customer's goal was ambitious – configurable enough to support multiple current product lines as well as future products not yet envisioned.

Topics: Electronic Contract Manufacturing, Electronic Engineering, Industrial Controls

Growing Market Share: Assessing Product Improvement and Cost Reduction

Challenge

Assist a client in evaluating the cost of developing owned intellectual property for future product generations against the risk of using commercial off-the-shelf intellectual property.

Solution

Estimate the production costs of existing product labor and material content to assess the amount of amortized intellectual property development costs in purchased component assemblies.

Summary

Product development companies understand that designs using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components can be cheaper and faster to implement than creating a fully proprietary product.

Topics: Electronic Engineering

Custom Electronics: DC Motor Driven Appliances

Challenge

Update the design and lower costs for DC motor driven laboratory appliances with consideration to aggressive price competition and rising customer expectations for performance.

Solution

Microchip motor control DSP, Austriamicrosystems quadrature encoder, STMicroelectronics IGBT, and Power Integrations switching power supply.

Summary

In a highly competitive global market, it is important to remain the leader in product innovation. Product performance can be a key differentiator, but cost concerns can make it difficult to compete, especially in the Asian market place.

Topics: Electronic Engineering, Motor Drives

Concurrent Design: Augmenting Your Engineering Staff

Challenge

Create a device for interfacing with RFID tags and physical access security mechanisms that would be developed concurrently with other components of a larger system product.

Solution

Microchip microcontroller, USB and RS-485 controllers, and custom designed switching power supply circuits.

Summary

Time-to-market pressures are often mitigated with concurrent development efforts for multiple component assemblies that make up a system. Executing concurrent design activities presents numerous challenges including resource loading and coordination.

Topics: Electronic Engineering, Firmware Development

Product Design: Designing for Reliability and Manufacturability

Challenge

Solution

Summary

MathCad Circuit Modeling: Improving Circuit Design

Challenge

Solution

Summary

Industrial Monitoring & Control: Boiler Control

Challenge

Solution

Summary

Growing Market Share: Assessing Product Improvement and Cost Reduction

Challenge

Solution

Summary

Custom Electronics: DC Motor Driven Appliances

Challenge

Solution

Summary

Concurrent Design: Augmenting Your Engineering Staff

Challenge

Solution

Summary

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