The one they talk about football fields for a long time

Circuit Break Podcast #355

The One They Talk About Football Fields For a Long Time

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Mandatory USB Type-C for everything? Parker and Stephen discuss the current EU ruling and preparing your PCBA design for contract manufacturing!

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Tour MacroFab's ITAR-Compliant Facility

December 2, 2022, Episode #355

If American Football is a game of inches, the tolerance of the field, markings, and measuring devices must be lower than that.... right?

End of 2022 Engineering Questions?

  • What trends in the past few years have changed PCBAs the most in the last few years?

    • Weird SMT packages are starting to become more normal
    • PCBs themselves are being used more as a structural part of the overall product
  • What do you think will be the next “big” thing that will change the way EEs design PCBs?

    • Rigid Flex changed the way compact consumer devices where designed
    • Advancements in mosfet technologies and materials increased power densities

PDM

  • Listener Questions
    • During the project do you plan on hosting it so it’s accessible somewhere like GitHub?
    • Why plan for peak currents on constant current rating on the pins?
    • What are the plans for customer connections? 

StarWars Christmas Special will be December 13th

  • Returning Cast! Roz, Chris Kraft, and HyR0n!

About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
  Parker Dillmann

Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.

In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.

In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.

Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
  Stephen Kraig

Stephen Kraig is a component engineer working in the aerospace industry. He has applied his electrical engineering knowledge in a variety of contexts previously, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing, audio electronic repair, and synthesizer design. A graduate of Texas A&M, Stephen has lived his adult life in the Houston, TX, and Denver, CO, areas.

Stephen has never said no to a project. From building guitar amps (starting when he was 17) to designing and building his own CNC table to fine-tuning the mineral composition of the water he uses to brew beer, he thrives on testing, experimentation, and problem-solving. Tune into the podcast to learn more about the wacky stuff Stephen gets up to.

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

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Mandatory USB Type-C for everything? Parker and Stephen discuss the current EU ruling and preparing your PCBA design for contract manufacturing!

Big mattress is coming for you

Big Mattress is Coming For You

Come celebrate the third anniversary of the MEP as Parker and Stephen discuss a potential video game.