Epec's Blog | Electronics Manufacturing Solutions

When our customers are in the preliminary stages of launching a new SMART HMI project, they typically reach out seeking advice on the best way to start. With what can amount to a near infinite number of HMI design options and system feature combinations, brainstorming an embedded firmware project can quickly become overwhelming. Where does one begin? How does the firmware work? What level of detail is required now?

“The power of the Internet of Things comes from the ability to collect a lot of data and convert that into useful information.” ~Bertil Thorvaldson, ABB Robotics

While that is a very simple concept to understand, manufacturing Internet of Things (IoT) technology into most products can be a significant investment of time and money for companies. As a designer and manufacturer of medical, commercial, industrial, and military products, we are working with many customers on implementing IoT into their products to improve the customer experience and provide an additional revenue stream.

In front-end engineering, we must gather as much manufacturing information as possible from the printed circuit board data we receive. This includes customer service notes, customer emails, and the general spec, if available. Usually there is enough information to release a printed circuit board (PCB) package to manufacturing. However, I have found many gray areas that haunt our engineering department.

As custom manufactured cable assemblies have grown in complexity, it has become far more common to see various electronics integrated directly into the finished design. The inclusion of electronics into a cable assembly design can consist of adding a switch, PCB, LED, or a multitude of other components. Once added, these components offer a much higher level of sophistication to the cable assembly while allowing the included electronics the ability to withstand a much more rugged working environment.

EMI (electromagnetic interference) and RFI (radio-frequency interference) are disturbances generated by external sources that impact a cable assembly by degrading the assembly's performance or completely preventing it from functioning. These disturbances can cause problems ranging from an increase in error rates of the signal being transmitted through the assembly to total loss of any electronically readable signal.

A pure notch or band stop filter (also called band reject filter) works by creating a Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) resonance over a narrow bandwidth. This creates near total reflection over that bandwidth, while having very little reflection in the surrounding pass bands. By the nature of their creation, these notch filters are typically narrow band. Bandwidth comes linearly with added resonators, increasing size and loss.

Over the past several years there have been several instances where battery suppliers that manufacture the highest technology batteries have run into financial difficulties (think A123, Boston Power) or change their business model and no longer want to supply small/medium volume applications (Panasonic). This has created several problems for OEMs as they have designed these cells and have passed all of the certification testing for UL, EMI, CE and UN DOT 38.3.

The typical use of a diplexer (three-port device) enables source transmitters operating on two separate frequencies to use the same antenna. In other applications, the diplexer allows a single antenna to transmit and receive on discrete frequencies. Additionally, a diplexer will provide the ability for an antenna to transmit and receive simultaneously.

When designing and manufacturing passive broadband high frequency cascaded LC filters (inductor and capacitor), a lot of undesirable component interactions can occur if not properly managed. The goal is to minimize the difference between an RF microwave filter design constructed with ideal components and one using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and custom manufactured components.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) continue to shrink. As each generation of miniaturized components comes along, board designers find themselves able to work within ever-smaller PCB footprint sizes. While this is great news for consumers (compare the size of a 1994 portable phone to one of today’s models) it presents difficulties for fabricators.