This week's topics are: Porsche's Synthetic Gasoline, Record Chip Manufacturing Sales for the year 2022, and the Raspberry_Pi Social Media Firestorm.
More manufacturers sign on to the US CHIPS Act. Will spending $53 billion help actually help out our electronic supply chain problems? Find out!
PCB serial numbering? Parker and Stephen cover their thoughts on applying a unique identifier to PCBs in production for inventory and testing control.
Parker
Stephen
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 began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Hello and welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast. We are your hosts, Steven Gregg and Parker Dolman.
This is episode 250 255. A way, by the way to work done.
That's it, guys. We can't count higher than eight bits.
And my memory runs out. Okay, so last weekend, I did the extra life charity. So an update is
you're alive.
I'm alive. Yes, I am alive. It was a 24 hour video game stream. Actually, I went for like, 24 hours and 30 minutes.
overachiever here.
Yeah, overachiever, and special. Thanks, everyone that donated because we hit my I hit my goal. It actually exceeded it. We got we raised $2,600 for the Texas Children's Hospital network. So I like to thank everyone that donated stop by the stream. Watch me die couple times. That kind of stuff.
So So what was your original goal? original goal
was $500. Okay, you blew away the goal. And yeah, on Wednesday, when the podcast went out, it immediately blew past 1000. And so I increased it to $1,337. And yeah, and then early Sunday morning, we blew through to 3600. Nice. So. So you played all the half life? Well, not all to have all the half life two games, correct. And got all the achievements, all the achievements, every single one, we only missed one achievement on the first game, which is there's like lambda symbols all over the entire game. And I've gotten them all before, but I couldn't remember all of them. And we missed like five or six. But we did get all the achievements and all the expansions. Nice. So one, one achievement out of like 100 ciments. I think it's pretty good. And my achievement tracker worked great. I was pretty so excited. That thing worked out.
You're the only person who codes extra scripts on top of stream to do that. So congratulations. Yeah, thanks.
I coated up stuff for one for 24 hours is like it's only useful life like a very finite amount of time. Yeah. And took about 24 hours of figuring out how to make that work.
Well, you might you might do something like this again, right? Oh, yeah,
for sure. But so I know how it just increased my JavaScript, CSS, HTML stack knowledge got increased a little bit.
There, the amount of knowledge for all of those words you just said in my head is more just like a heap of crap that's just sort of lying in my skull somewhere. Like there's no, there's no stack there. No, no, stack? No, it's just a pile of crap.
Yep. All right. So let's go down to some actual news. We touched a little bit on this last week, I think, or is it? I think it was two weeks ago. But yes, go. You're right, two weeks ago, is because No, because last week was the election. And so we didn't really talk about anything like this. But we will read an article called how Biden may handle China and electronics trade. And I thought this article was really interesting, because it's a an opinion piece, I guess, is a good way to put it. That basically just goes through all the things that's currently going on with the federal government, and how they might change when Biden is in office. Um, there's currently a act called the chips act. And I need this job. I need the job that comes up with these acronyms. Yeah, yeah. Because I think you'd be good at this. Because chips is creating helpful incentives for producing semiconductors. It's like, that's awesome. So basically, this is a act that incentivizes the construction of semiconductor manufacturing facilities and equipment here in America. I don't think it's been passed yet, but it is getting there. I basically it's just like, telling manufacturers hey, you need to build your factory here. So I don't think there's any like trade regulations or anything is just like incentives for companies to build stuff here. Well, that that stuff being semiconductors. Now, if you read Biden's I think what was it called? Made in America? Yep. Was that page called? Made? All of America, all of America? Yes. He calls for $300 billion in new funding over four years for r&d, and breakthrough technologies like AI and quantum computing. But then after that, it doesn't say anything else about that. Like, it's really, really high level.
Guess. Do more, I poke you with a stick do more manufacturing. Yeah. So he also called for us semiconductor supply chain resiliency.
Yeah, that's the next thing is his only comment on China really, is on like, IP protection and stuff, but aggressive, this is a, quote, aggressive trade enforcement actions against China. And that's it. Like, what's that mean?
Aggressive trade enforcement actions against China, you know, like, like Trump or not. That's what Trump was attempting to do with the tariffs. He was actually taking aggressive trade enforcement. So I don't know, I was talking with my, my boss earlier today about this. In so many ways, it seems like the Biden administration, like their, their rule of thumb is just do not Trump thing, you know. And so that would that would kind of lead towards hey, let's just eliminate the the tariffs. But we were also contemplating the idea that's like, well, those things are probably fairly lucrative and the government's not usually very willing to get rid of another source of revenue. So I wouldn't be surprised if the tariffs stick around.
Yeah, especially where with a quote like that aggressive trade enforcement actions. It's it feels like, either we want to keep those tariffs around, or more tariffs is what sounds like.
Interesting. Honestly, it sounds more like it sounds like there could be some verbal diplomacy that is akin to the screensaver in Jurassic Park where it's like a that's the form of aggressive trade enforcement.
And this is the funny thing is I think the majority of people like the majority of people in America don't remember about these tariffs. Probably not like how that was all what was it? 20 it was early 2019 and all 2018 was like this stuff.
Yeah, but but but but I bet you if you ask the average American they would probably say that they noticed price increases on things
maybe I mean, if we really want to get in the weeds on it's like I would like this is me personally I would like to see increase in tariffs but on because because we talked about this previously is the tariffs are on like components and like sub assemblies, and which doesn't really hurt the larger companies as much because they have their whole they have a whole factory in China right? And they pump out microwaves well they ship a home microwave the United States or toaster. Right? But if you're are if you're a Steven Craig toaster, Inc. You know, you're only putting out like 10 artists and post toasters a week. Our does it does it and but you so you're sourcing your sub components in China, but you got a pair of tariffs from those sub components. But big box toaster doesn't have to have any tariffs because they have a full you know, they're importing the full toaster already ready to go.
It's a conspiracy from big toaster.
Seriously from big toast.
Wait, am I going to have to pay tariffs on that very special chip with the bagel pin? Yes. On top of that, man.
It because of China. Yeah. Well,
it's the little guys like me trying to make all my special artists and toasters were the ones getting screwed here. You know? Yeah, exactly.
So I'd like to see it rewritten to be more of it tackling fully assembled products. That's what I would like to see.
Well, I wonder I wonder how much it's trying to tackle sub assemblies because of the whole Made in America thing where a simple assembly gets here. We put one screw in it and put it in a box and claim that is made in America. I wonder if that's what the tariffs were really trying to attack? Well,
we covered similar stuff, but when you start digging down into like the tariff codes for it, it's like, huh, this is oddly very specific. I wonder what constituent is. Is this?
Yeah, what what Congressman was like, Oh, I I own motor controllers for six kilowatt motors. But no more than six kilowatt no less than six kilowatt. Let's just write that in.
Yeah, it's very weird. What what the cut offs are on some of that stuff? Yeah,
it feels very Porky. Yeah.
It's like Transformers. Like we were talking about transformers, like, the transformer stuff is like large transformers is protected. Like you can't import there's a lot of tariffs on large transformers, but yellow tape transformers don't have tariffs, because no one makes them those in America at all.
Right, exactly. Yeah,
there's no mom and pop transformer shop that makes those anymore? Well, they probably could. It's just, you know, a congressman doesn't care about them. So that's if I'd like to see taken off of like actual components and put on full on toasters final, final assembly, because that's what's that's what's really hurting, I think,
Well, okay. Okay. I see some I see some potential issues with that. Because there's, it would be so easy to create a loophole to say, well, this is not a final assembly, because we haven't put the quality control sticker on it. Yeah, I know, it would be really hard to say,
well, there's already there's already legislative and that's not legislative. But there's already the tariff, not tariff, but the import import stuff already has, like, legislative on, like, what it means to be made in America, basically, like the majority of the value added to the product has to be done in the United States.
I bet you could loophole that to where you say, like, Oh, if it was tested by an American, then there's a lot of quality and a lot of value in that test, you know?
Well, the it would be the value, that test would have to double the value of the toaster. Probably not that hard. But so the so the thing is, you'd have to have two toasters, one would have to fail, and you have to destroy it, and the other one gets passed. And, and all that it gets that made America sticker. Right, right. And then there's God, it's just dripping with value at that point.
You know, I'll get so when I first moved up to Denver, my folks came with me to kind of just help move. And I remember we went to a thrift store. And we saw a toaster there. And I was I didn't have a toaster at the time. So I was like, Hey, let's pick up a toaster. And they had a toaster at the thrift store. It was like $12, or something like that. And I was like, Yeah, you know, if I really want it, I'll come back and put $12 down. And we went to Walmart later to just pick up some random stuff. And they had that exact same toaster, but brand new, and it was 799. Like, it was cheaper, directly off the shelf.
How do you make a toaster and make money for 799 and ship it halfway across the world? I just it's crazy. The mind boggles.
I know how but oh, we'll talk about another podcast. Yeah, you
won't say it right now.
We'll see about that topic.
So actually, so so back to your your, the chips act, uh, you are excited about about having, or potentially you would be a good candidate for someone to name things like that. My boss sent me an email today. And it was one of the I don't know, how do I put this it's a little bit of a click Beatty email because it was like, Are you understanding the new regulations that are coming through? Will this affect your business? You know, it's one of those guys Oh, yeah. But But of course, like I was interested because I don't know. I'll click on the link see what it says. And on October 28, the European chemicals agency, the E ch. A, formally launched the Get ready for this. substances of concern in products database, the S CIP. Which, what? What the hell does that mean substances of concern in products? Like, is this like this? 2.0 Or like, like, super Rojas?
Or was it? Was it prop 62 was a prop 69 I don't know California prop 420 16.
But like substances of
concern, apparently prop 69 Is the DNA initiative. What Oh, that for California. What's the one with lead with that's on? That's on every product? The one
with lead? That's that's realize.
California has got one. Oh, yeah. Well, there's a prop turned 22?
I don't I don't know which one they do. I know that they
just lead. It's basically it can
add mercury.
It's any material that's not been proven to not cause cancer. That's what it's for. Not been proven to not cause cancer, you have to put that sticker on it, because could potentially cause cancer, because we haven't proved it can't cause cancer,
and anything known to the state of cancer to cause California. Yes.
Sorry for everyone. Oh, proposition 65 is what it is. Warning consuming foods or beverages known to be captain LED. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What's the what's the thing from Star Wars where? Gosh, what am I thinking about from the original trilogy of operation? 66 or something like that?
Oh, it just execute order. 66.
Yeah, order 66. That's
what it is. Yeah, it's from a Revenge of the Sith.
Right. All right. Kill all the young Ling's huh. Well, we'll have to we'll have to see how all of this plays out. I think I think the next handful of years are gonna be really interesting. It's gonna be, it's gonna be another roller coaster ride.
It's always gonna be it's gonna it's gonna be a roller coaster.
Maybe America should just say, you know, we've been in, we've been in some kind of bad relationship for the past 200 something years. We just, can we take four years off and just have some meantime? Let me get back to it. All right. So, so the other day, I got the inkling to buy a Raspberry Pi four. So I have a Raspberry Pi, I have a two, I have a three. And I have a four. Now I don't remember
which video it's 400. Yet,
I you know, I want I wanted the 400. But I wanted the PI for eight gig and the the PI 400 doesn't do that. And the whole purpose of me buying this pie is I'm setting up a server. And so like it has, like, effectively a one time setup. And then I don't need to access it again. So I didn't need to pay for the extra little fancy keyboard. I can just plug in a USB keyboard. Although the PI 400 is really cool. I kind of I kind of dig it.
I like it a lot too. Did we talk about that at all in the podcast? No, we haven't. I think we just talked about it offline. Yeah, for a bit. But anyways, we'll talk about after after your adventure.
Well, so it's the adventures just beginning. So I gotta have
to one.
Yeah. Well,
here's the thing I'm reading orient
prologue. God we are we're way in like, Raspberry Pi origins here.
Oh, so we're reading the back of the book in the bookstore still? Oh,
yeah. No, we're even before that. We're like opsis We're the person trying to bind the book and choose what color it is.
So I'm not a Linux guy. I'm not a Ubuntu guy. I'm not any of those. I don't do the pseudos or the Nanos, I'm not any of those kinds of guys. And but like I'm playing with it, and it's and it's interesting. And really, the whole reason why I'm
I'm trying to get into this is because I found an open source ERP system called ERP next, that really got me intrigued that I want to play around with ERP next, or ERP is an enterprise resource planning system, which is basically in a nutshell, it's an all in one software system for a business where you can handle accounting, HR and Payroll, manufacturing, sales and purchasing your CRM system, your projects, blah, blah, blah, all of it, you can kind of have it under one umbrella. And I've worked with a handful of ERP systems. Throughout my career. I've done ifs. I currently do a Lima which isn't a full ERP system, but it's, it does more MRP stuff, but it's similar. At macro, Feb, macros had basically developed an ERP system kind of and then and then stitched together third party software to make it ERP. But I've always been Enjoy playing around with ERP systems. I'm a I'm a dork. And so when I saw that this was an open source ERP system, I was like, this would be really cool to play around with and see if it's something that is worthwhile for, on my own side, doing my own thing, but also possibly at work because we, we have QuickBooks and we do a bunch of other stuff on the side along with our manufacturing programs, what would it look like if we unified everything? So I saw ERP next, and it is a full ERP system that runs on Linux. And the reason or the first thing that came to mind is like, Oh, can I set up a Raspberry Pi Server, such that I or anyone else could just log into it if they have user access, and then have an ERP anywhere for the cost of a Raspberry Pi. So I've been trying to install stuff on this. And it's, it's been a nightmare so far, mainly because like, the one thing I don't understand, or just don't get about coding, guys, just because like my brain just doesn't work that way is like,
Y'all just know what to do. Like, like, it doesn't make any sense to me, like, your coding guys, just like they see, like, bazillions of characters fly past them. And they're like, Oh, well, that means this. And that means I need to do that. And you understand what's happening under the hood. It's like, how do you learn all this shit, you know, you get all this?
See, you see, they look at a PCB, and go, Wow, all those electrons flying around, and you're like, I know what that mean, yeah, formulas to make that work. It's the same thing. It's just experience.
Exactly. And that's the whole thing. Like I'm, I'm putting some effort into kind of like, get my feet wet and not be one of those guys, that's like, What the hell is going on? The biggest, the biggest problem is, if you don't try, right, if you don't put some effort in. And if you put effort in and find out that you absolutely detest doing something, and then stop doing it, at least you put the effort in, right. But if you just look at something and say like, I'm never going to touch that, then add on, whatever that's off on a tangent. So I'm trying to get this ERP next installed on a Raspberry Pi. And I probably bid off a little bit more than I could chew because ERP next is not necessarily intended to be used on a Raspberry Pi. And it's not like there's lots of instructions on how to install this on a Raspberry Pi. But but the thing that really kind of drove me to it is the fact that boon to is now available as a full install on Raspberry Pi. And most of the instructions for ERP next is to is to install on a virtual machine running Ubuntu. So it's like, hey, you know, I'll give it a give it a shot. You know, I got a I got a funny side tangent about this Raspberry Pi, because I totally my ATD kicked in super hard the other day when I when I was researching ERP next. And I researched it, it was like this is something I want to try. Let me go get a pi for because they just because and so I drove over to Microcenter. And I know that they have pi fours in the eight gig version because I just wanted the beefiest pie I could get. Let me let me have the beef guy. So I go over, and I'm looking all over the place, I can find pi threes, I even found pi two, I finally walked around the corner and in the counter or the desk there, they have pi fours in the two and four gig version. But their website said that they had pi fours in the eight gig version. And, and so I found I find this kid who's working there. And I was like, Hey, I'm looking for a pie four in the eight gig version. And he kind of like snaps his fingers and like points over and like, beckons me to follow him. And we go over to this little glass case that's over on the side. And he's like, now, you know, this thing is really powerful. Right? And, look. I'm not paraphrasing, not paraphrasing here, like this guy is like, also run super, super hot. You gotta be really careful about this. Like, okay, cool. Yeah, that's all right. I'll take it. And and he's like, Hey, you're gonna need it. You're gonna need a case with a fan on this thing. And you're gonna need the very specific power adapter. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's a 15 watts. I read that on the on the website. And the kid kind of like stopped for a second because like, I could tell that he didn't know what 15 Watts meant. I just knew he knew he knew you needed that brick. And he was very specific. It would not work with any other power supply. And then he tried to like reel it around. Like he knew what he was talking about. He goes, Oh, yeah, 15 Watts, no less and absolutely no more than 15 watts. And I was like, cool kid. Cool. Cool I was fun. But uh, yeah, so I bought their, their super magical 15 Watt brick, because that's the only thing that could ever power our pie.
It's got the electrons and the polarity.
Oh yeah, yeah, cryogenically aligned copper, right?
Nitrogen infused.
So last night, I actually spent, like two or three hours just playing around with installs. And then the part that the part that really sucks about working with Linux is like, it's actually easy to navigate around. And it's like, generally, like, easy to understand what's going on. There's just so much like, it gives you so much power. And it lets you know everything that's going on, as well, unless you tell it, I don't want to know what's going on. But like, in general, it's just like, well, you're gonna get everything. And I heard an anecdote A while ago, where somebody said, if you if you get a copy of Linux, you get a wrench that goes along with it, because you're going to need to fix every little thing that's up with it or tune it up yourself. And that feels really true. Like every little thing about it, is you're in control in a way. And that's cool. But it's also like, daunting. So I got like, 40% of the way through doing an install of ERP next, and what I think I might end up doing, because I'm going through all of this effort to, to just try this software, for fun. And my idea is, if this doesn't work out, I have a PI for that I can load games onto and just play like arcade games on my TV. So like, I'm not losing in this situation. ERP next has like a free trial where you can just run everything through like a cloud service for 14 days. So if I really get to the point where I'm just beating my head on a table, and I can't install things, I'll just try it for 14 days and see what see what it's like. But I kind of wanted to challenge myself and be like, Hey, can you actually get this thing to install? And I've gotten kind of far, but it sucks.
Yeah, when I started doing more software stuff at work, and using Linux more mainly for Python development, that kind of stuff is I ran into the same kind of issues you are where like, people assume your knowledge base. And so what you have to do is you when you ever you hit that roadblock, the seriously the best thing I found out is emailing the people who wrote that tutorial, or whatever, it may be like, I got this part. What what what are you expecting me to do now at this point? Because a lot of times is they will immediately email you back within like 12 hours and be like, Oh, that's actually a good point. That's a good gap there. Let me add that to the tutorial.
You know, so they, this one particular tutorial that I'm trying to go through has some bash, bash scripts that basically just like compile everything for you, in a sense. And I've already found some bugs and fix some bugs in their stuff. Because it's simple stuff. It's just all syntax crap. It's like, Oh, you meant to do this quotation as as opposed to that, even though their instructions are like we have tested this, and it works. And it's like, well, no,
it worked on that one particular computer that the intern was using.
You see, that's, that's the biggest thing that I think the bigger players like Apple and windows are the reason they're so bloated, it feels like to me is that they're, they're always trying to protect themselves against not being able to function, whereas Linux is like, well, if it doesn't function, you'll just fix it. Right?
You add what you need, right? Exactly. Yeah.
I don't know. It's fun.
Yeah, Python is like that a lot. You'll have like modules and stuff. And so when I hand a script off to another engineer, I'm like, have fun, just install whatever modules that complaints about that you need.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But I
am slowly started to work on and said, one off scripts is starting to work on a system with this. More JavaScript stuff I've been working on is a more web based system. For engineers, which would be a lot nicer.
It's very macro fab, have
you? Yes. And it's just instead of having to like, oh, I fix this one bug. Now I have to go find who's using this script and tell him to use the new one. Instead of just like updating it in one spot, ie a website. So cool. But yeah, oh, Raspberry Pi. 400. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I really like so a lot of people were talking about like, it's like the Commodores and stuff we're just kind of is it actually reminds me more of the tare especially the name, the Atari computers, the big computers like because that Atari 400 was a computer. So I think it's more like an Atari computer than a Commodore computer in my mind.
But actually more Atari, if they increase incremented it by 400. Every single time. Yes.
Which might happen?
Yeah, that'd be cool.
But they definitely got the four from it's a Raspberry Pi four inside of it. I do like the what how they have the the IO is like on the back. Because I'm totally envisioning using this for like, controlling fixtures and testing apparatuses at work. And like being able to plug the Raspberry Pi 400 into like the test fixture. And that's all you have to do. So you just like, plug that thing in with that to buy was at 20 connector. Hetero connector. Yeah, and
pythons native. So you can run any of your clients Python scripts on it?
Oh, yeah. No, it's, you know, the thing. It's got built in Wi Fi.
It's pretty rad and Bluetooth. It doesn't come in the eight gig version, which, you know, probably don't need, but depending on what operating system you put on it, they can be kind of thirsty for RAM.
Yeah. Probably the normal Raspbian was it was called Raspbian. They
stopped calling it Raspbian. I think they started confusing people. They just call it Raspberry Pi Oh s now.
Okay. That seems to be fine. I mean, I don't see any reason why to not use that for what we what we do at work with it. For sure. So okay, next topic. Drawing wiring harness diagrams for contract manufacturing. So we're all over the place today. Yeah, it's a lot. So I think it was last week. Last week, I had to go draw some wiring diagrams up for our customer. And I was like, last time I did this was like four years ago, didn't really want to use Inkscape. Mainly because I have Autodesk fusion 360, which is like Uber powerful. So I was lucky enough to where the components that the customer wanted to use have, like models, that step files on their website. So I was able to download those, import those. And then I actually made all the harness all the scale. So like I did a, I imported the connectors as a step files. And then I did a sketch of where the center lines of old wires would go. And then I just drew a tube, I use like there's like a tube function that's a solid. So you can make a tube on all those and then I colored them what color the wires would be. And everything was a scale. So when I imported it over into the drawing feature of Autodesk which basically makes a a, you can make a page drawing. And I was able to do all the call outs for all the connectors with the part numbers were and you can do the color and call the specs on the wiring that kind of stuff. I was pretty happy with it. And this led down the rabbit hole of like how do you tolerance wires as well. And there's actually an IPC IPC document for it. What was that document name?
It's in Slack. He sent it to me. Yeah, I think it's I think it's interesting because Parker's sent me is wired IPC,
IPC, W H, M A hyphen, a hyphen, 620. That one requirements and acceptance for cable and wiring harnesses. That one that's actually the old one from 2002. It could be a different name now.
Yeah. But I mean, like, how much stuff changes, you know?
Yeah. It will change when we have $300 billion for AI and quantum computing. We have to make quantum harnesses now.
They're harnesses that can be connected to anything at any time. Unless you observe them. Yeah. And then they choose a connector they choose. You collapse the connector function.
Yes. Okay. Anyways, and I sent that over to you. They were fine. You said they were there. They're good. No, I
think they're good. The thing is they I think that they're super modern. And frankly, I think that we should go more that that route in engineering as a whole. And I say modern as in like, they're fully colored. They're fully, like, shaded, like they look more like an actual connector. And don't get me wrong, like I adore the old version or the classic version of engineering drawings. And there's a lot to be said about like, handing a machinist a drawing of like, the, the square, you want him to mill out of something, it doesn't need to be in full color or anything like that. But the way Parker did it, I really liked it because it looks clean. But it's also like, you don't have to have like a color call out table. It's like, the color is written on there. And you know, if you wanted to go further, you could write a note and say, like, color is depicted on drawing, because people have ability to see color on their machines. Now, nowadays, you know,
well, I did do I did color depicted on wires, and I called out the color in the text, because people are colorblind. So you can't just assume that they have you ever red and green wire? Which one do you cut? Blue. This PDF will self destruct in 543. But um, yeah, it was it was a fun little adventure to go down that rabbit hole. Now it's like one of those. Okay, now I have this process of building wiring diagrams. Now my choice of picking connectors is influenced by whether or not that company has a STEP file for it now.
Yeah, yeah, there's, there's a lot of truth to that, actually, because fusion 360 is really, really, really happy if it has a 3d model. And it gets really, really, really grumpy if it doesn't have a 3d model. And when you go to make a drawing or an assembly or something, and then you say, if you have like 99% of the items you need for your drawing, but you just need one more, and you don't have a STEP file and you just want to draw it like fusion is going to make it hard on your unfortunately,
it's going to make you want to draw the 3d model of it. Right. Yeah. And I think that stemming from, we're starting to move towards it used to, or trying to move towards the 3d realm as being the source of truth. I think we talked about this before with xometry Actually, where the 3d models are starting to become the source of truth, not the drawings anymore, because it used to be the piece of paper blueprint that you had was the source of truth. And then that's been started in the road away into well, actually, the 3d models more representative of the final product than the drawings can be.
Which is funny, because that seems like I don't know my stomach is turning a notch when when you say that, because it's like, that shouldn't be true. And but like, but now, you see easy crap like that all the time. Especially, gosh, I cannot tell you how often I run into drawings. They were like, it's impossible to use the drawing because like, you know, give you two dimensions. And they're two that you don't care about
and not reference to a single origin.
Yeah, they're not reference to anything that matters. Yeah, exactly. It's just like okay, cool. Thanks. I'm glad I know how long this weird thing that juts off the side of your connector is but like I don't know the size of the connector.
The worst is when you're trying to find where you should put like connector and relationship to like the edge of the board. And you're like I want to know okay, the center like the what solder lug right or whatever, maybe the back of any relationship of the connector. What is the end of the connector that overhangs the board? Where does that go? Good luck finding on half the connectors out there.
Right have fun with that. Yeah.
Man boils my gears.
So I tried to I tried something new the other day in in a connector drawing. Because I've never done this before. But I had five wire harnesses to to get quoted from a place and I had like, not a lot of time to do it. So normally when I do my drawings, I make them super pretty. Like I will model out the wires or model out like if it's ribbon connectors, I'll do the ribbon. I'll even paint the red stripe down the side of the ribbon. I'll make it look super nice. Because I want it to be if it gets screwed up it ain't my fault. You looked at my thing wrong. Like I want it to be rock solid. But I had five harnesses to make they were super complex. They won one of these five had 20 different wires on it have different colors, different lengths, that all terminated one side had a 20 It was a 20 Conductor connector, and then they broke apart into some of them were three wires Just go to this connector, some to go to this one, two of these go to this other three pin where one is missing. And like all of this crap, it was just super crazy. And it would be a nightmare to model all of those wires going over those places. So I tried a new thing where I drew just the connectors on, I drew the 20 pin on the left side and I drew all the various two and three pins on the right side. And then I drew one wire that goes off to a middle point in between those and then spawns off into a bunch of other lines. And I just wrote above that line 20 conductors.
It's like a bus, like a bus. Yeah, I
basically did the bus, a bus drawing. And then I also put a table that was like pin one of this connector connects to pin one of this connector and is this color and is this length. And it was like a really comprehensive table. And I did that for all five of these wiring harnesses. I kind of didn't like it, because it's not up to the normal standard that I did. But I was I was up against time. Like I just couldn't do it that way. I had to knock them all out and basically one day, and I sent them off and and I got quotes back overnight on them. And like there was zero complaints. There was nothing about no questions about anything. I was like, oh, okay, well, that actually worked.
That's the best feeling is when you send out get some free quotes. It is no EQs No, they just, here's how much it cost. Yeah, here's the price. Yep. And even better if you get a lead time with that, too.
Hey, you're asking for too much now. Have you sent us up for quotes yet?
This one? No, I'm not doing that. So I'm gonna bet you actually supply chain hasn't I haven't heard anything back. So I'm gonna assume everything was good there. But I'm actually gonna be drawing harnesses for a senator this week. So I can actually talk about because I will be getting those quoted out. So I'm actually I think, yeah, I should draw those out. And I'll be able to share those as well. So I can share, like the process I did. And then I should share also like the quotes I get back from Senator for those harnesses. Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah, yeah, like any questions I got on him. So maybe, you
know, I guess it looks like you use the fusion default title block. Yeah, there is the possibility, because I've done it at work to create your own custom title block. But it's kind of goofy, the way fusion does it, like, you would think that fusion would be like, Oh, you're gonna have your own title block, you have your own company, you know, you're gonna customize it, to have your stuff on it, you basically have to create a brand new title block, and then save it as a file somewhere in the file structure. And it's a template. And then anytime you open a new drawing, you have to point to that. And it just feels really clunky. And it's like, come on, like, this is a, this is a drawing like, we expect we're going to be doing this very often, you know, so I don't know it feels really clunky to do. And, and it's really, I had to spend a bit of time figuring out how to do more than one sheet. Because I know there's like there's a button down at the bottom that allows you to see that. But if you add more sheets, it doesn't necessarily import the title block correctly to the second sheet. Yeah, exactly. Parker's face is like what what is like, it's so weird to have like this program that does so much stuff. But then when it comes down to something that seems fundamental, it's tough. But you know what, I feel that fusion is kind of going the route that you're saying where? Yeah, the drawing is super important. But the 3d model matters a lot more to them. So maybe that's the case.
And the thing is, when you do the dimensions in the drawing, it's pulling straight off the model. That's actually what's nice thing is like, once you do that, and you got to go back and change your model, because like, oh, I need to do revision. All your drawings get updated automatically.
Oh, yeah, it cascades. It's a castle. It's
like, oh, yeah,
it's so good. Yeah, you don't have to you don't have to, like handle all that stuff. It just does it for you. Yeah, that's pretty nice. I think they're gonna put some more effort into making their 2d drawings better. At least that's what I've read. Oh, for
sure. I think that's going to wrap up this episode. Yeah. So that was the macro fab wiring diagram, podcast. Sure. We'll go with that. That's alright. We're your host, Parker, Dolman and Steven, Greg. Lay everyone.
Take it easy. Artists and toasters.
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