Food Device Contest Wrap up

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from Macrofab, a weekly podcast show about all things engineering, DIY projects, manufacturing industry news and food device design Derby roundup. We're your hosts electrical engineers Parker Dillmann and Stephen Kraig. This is episode 427. So before we get to the round up of the design Derby, I want to talk about some podcast stats. We don't have a lot of stats, I guess, to share.

Parker Dillmann
This this is the one I just wanted to though was 86 percent of y'all and we're gonna call y'all breakers now.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, I like that. I like that.

Parker Dillmann
But you're the one who came up with it, Steven.

Stephen Kraig
Did I? I don't remember that. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. You were just like, I'm gonna call people breakers now.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, well, I like it. I was

Parker Dillmann
a couple of 5 I was a couple episodes ago. You just like you, like, did the outro, and you said you called them Breakers.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, nice. Okay. Well, our listeners are called Breakers. I like it.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. So 86% of Breakers listen to the entire episode. That's Every single second of it.

Stephen Kraig
That's that's honestly kind of crazy because because in some of the other stats I've seen in just podcast in general, the numbers are never that intense. Intense in terms of, like, how long people actually listen. 86% of y'all listen to the whole episode, so thank you.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Thank you so much because the average is 42%. Yeah. Yeah. So y'all y'all are dedicated.

Parker Dillmann
Thank you, Breakers. We're gonna start a email notification for the podcast when it comes out. There's gonna be like a mailing list you can sign up for. It's not gonna have any new information, it's just an email that goes out says that lets you know that the podcast is live Because we're switching from releasing on Tuesday mornings of the episode, we're switching back to Fridays. So Friday at noon, you can listen to our our podcast.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Great way to to, start the weekend.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Great way to start the weekend. Start

Stephen Kraig
the week. Podcast, and then take a half day and go home. Yeah. Exactly. Be a breaker.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Be a breaker.

Parker Dillmann
And then please review the podcast. We haven't had any reviews in a while. So if everyone that that are breakers that are on our forms, form.macro.com.talk every week about the podcast, take some time, go review the podcast, or or just, like, click the star thing and just, like, type in a period.

Stephen Kraig
Or just say, like, good, I like, or something like that. Well, I mean, they could also put, I hate listening to these people. You could. You could.

Parker Dillmann
I I can't there are people that hate watch and hate listen things. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Seems like a waste of your time.

Parker Dillmann
Time? Yeah. There's so much media and just stuff to do in modern society that, I don't know, just bogging yourself down with negativity doesn't sound like a productive use of time.

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. Side tangent, but still connected to this. Whenever whenever I'm going to look at reviews for almost anything, I first start by just gathering, like, what does what do the reviews generally look like? Is this a thing where it's, like, everything is 5 stars? It's got 30 bazillion 5 stars or whatnot.

Stephen Kraig
If that's the case, I'm I typically don't care about the people who put 5 stars. It's like, great. Everyone thinks that. I go to, like, who's saying the one star? Like, what about those people thought one star was appropriate?

Stephen Kraig
This is especially true with, like, okay. You you you wanna pick up a bicycle helmet on Amazon, and you go and you find the 1 bicycle helm helmet that has 500,005 star reviews. Like, what was the person who got the bad one? What are they saying? You know?

Stephen Kraig
Like, what are the outliers? Got in

Parker Dillmann
a bike wreck. Had brain damage now.

Stephen Kraig
What? Oh. Yeah. Right.

Parker Dillmann
Right. One star.

Stephen Kraig
So yeah. I don't know. Go go go review the podcast, please. It would really help us out. So thank you.

Parker Dillmann
I can see the review now. Five stars. Getting me brain damage. Give me Recommend the circuit break podcast.

Stephen Kraig
Did not like bicycle helmet. A plus plus would listen again for 86%.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Alright. So the food device design Derby, we had we ran a contest earlier this year. It wrapped up a couple weeks ago. We're finally getting to the episode where we can actually talk about wrapping it up because we had a couple guests, and then we had a we actually took a week off of recording, and we had a we that's when we posted the the the Batman episode, which was awesome.

Parker Dillmann
I that I love that episode.

Stephen Kraig
I kinda wanna do more, like, rando episodes like that because where where it was, like, a unique topic, but fun, or or unique and and offshoot. I don't know. I I had a lot of fun doing that one.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I have one on the list, and it's the a back to the future episode. Oh. Where we talk about, like, you like, tech in the future and back to the future and, like, how much of it is real, like, actually came true? Like, the little the little pizza they put in the microwave, and they they press one button and it

Stephen Kraig
and it expands and pops into a full size large pizza?

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Love it.

Stephen Kraig
In the hoverboard. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Mister Fusion.

Parker Dillmann
Miss well, that we don't have that yet, unfortunately. Maybe we will by the time we talk about it.

Stephen Kraig
We just have we have Fusion Junior right now. Yeah. Fusion Junior.

Parker Dillmann
And so, yeah, if if you have any other ideas of, like, singular topics like that, let us know atform.macfab.com. I keep plugging it. So we had 5 entries to this contest. We we had judges that internal at Mac Crab pick 3 of them through these, projects, and they ranked they basically each judge picked 3 and ranked them from 1, 2, and 3, and then, like, the first place got 3 points, the second place got 2 points, 3rd place got 1 point, and then I just added up all the points from all the judges, and then that whoever had the most amount of points won. Is that a good way to explain it?

Stephen Kraig
That that's how it works.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So the judges we had we had the entire engineering team judge projects. I think it was 5 ended up being 5 engineers actually took the time to do it. Most of it was the, order review and test engineers, And then we Erin reviewed them, and she is, like, the facilities manager here at MacroFab. Chris Church, our co other cofounder and chief product officer spent some time to review the entries.

Parker Dillmann
And then Kalyn Smith, who was on the podcast long time ago, she's a software developer here at MacroFab, and she reviewed and did the entries as well.

Stephen Kraig
Very cool. Thanks thanks to all the judges for taking the time to review these and and give your thoughts on them.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So 3rd place the judges ended up picking is the pizza pouch, which is a, a a, like, wearable device that you can slide a piece of pizza in, and it will keep it nice and warm so you can eat it for later?

Stephen Kraig
It's empty. A pizza, a singular slice pizza fanny pack with a heating element.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. I just love how the how the I think it's also an IoT device too.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, it actually, like, full on connects, and you can get, like, stats on your pizza?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I think so. I think it does, like, Wi Fi control so you can see, like, the temperature of your pizza as well.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, wait. Okay. So it uses an ESP 8082 66. Oh, and it's controllable from your your from your mobile. That's cool.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So so you can probably adjust the temperature of your pizza.

Stephen Kraig
What I really like about this project is okay. The documentation that was put up on our forum is is is fairly comprehensive, but it's also creative at the same time going all the way from conception of the idea with, like, a full on hand drawn, like, this is what I think it's going to look like on the body. And it was, like something like this seems fairly simple in terms of, like, it could have just been, like, some lines and, like, a triangle to show the pizza. But, no, they went through the whole exercise of making a drawing with, like, full color on it. I love it.

Stephen Kraig
It's it's fantastic. Well, this is this is spot on exactly what we were looking to have done with this pro with this whole contest.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And they they designed a a custom PCB, manufactured it themselves, and did everything that way. I I would say the only thing you could improve on this project, and actually when I saw the drawing, the first thing I thought of was it could be like a pizza bandolier. You can have multiple slices of pizza.

Stephen Kraig
You could you could have the entire pizza just as different pockets. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And you can have different temperatures depending on the slice.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay. What would be cool get this. Not every not every topping on pizza likes to stay in, like, a warm state for a very long period of time. Right? Like, some of some some toppings can get soggy or they get really kinda gross or gummy or something.

Stephen Kraig
It would be cool if there was an upgraded version of this that was higher power that when you were thinking about that slice, you could throw some more toppings in and and, like, cook them real fast and and then have them ready and and more fresh. That would be cool. I mean, walking around with, like, a 200 watt heater on your chest might not be the best idea.

Parker Dillmann
And, like, a a tool battery clipped in to your waist?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Also, thumbs up on the black PCB. I'm I am a I'm a sucker for a good a good looking black PCB.

Parker Dillmann
A second place the judges picked was Jov Aqua. So Jov Aqua is it's kind of an interesting project it's a way to refill an automatic coffee maker but automatically

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Like like a like a a Keurig. You know, we we have a Keurig at my house, and I think at best, I can get 3 cups of coffee out of it before I have to refill the water tank. And so it's it's certainly a perception thing, but it it feels like every time I need a cup of coffee, I have to fill it up. And I have thought of this exact project multiple times of like, hey.

Stephen Kraig
Wouldn't it be awesome to create something that just autofills? And lo and behold, the Java Aqua solves that or scratches that itch. Yeah. And they built a a standalone, like,

Parker Dillmann
it has an enclosure, screen firmware and there was a unique way of how they were measuring the water so it wouldn't overflow. What was that?

Stephen Kraig
Wasn't there there's a water level sensor placed within the coffee maker water container.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Yeah. Because I think he was mentioning or they were mentioning that some these kind of units exist, but some of them use like a float, like a toilet bowl float. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But that can get, like, stuck. So

Stephen Kraig
Right. Right. Which okay. So so somewhat funny. I I installed about a month ago.

Stephen Kraig
I installed an RO water system in my basement with a 15 gallon storage tank, And the solution was using a float valve, such that once it tops itself off, it closes off the valve. But I've thought of this multiple times while putting installing this system was like, if this float valve just decided to not close, This water system would just keep producing and and cranking out water all over the place. Javaqua is is, once again, funny enough, something I've I've I've thought of multiple times for other projects, but this one in particular is like, oh, man. I would love something like this that is more controlled and prevents overflow situations, which is exactly what was one of the main features of this.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And they even mentioned using a a float a float sensor as well. So what you can do is sure you have, like, a level sensor in your tank, but you also go, hey. You know, I probably shouldn't, like, pour it out more water than I know my tank holds.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
As, like, a double safety. Check yourself before you wet yourself.

Stephen Kraig
One of the things when I was reading through this, one of one of the one of the ideas that came to mind when I was looking through this project was because it has a brain in it and it's it's intelligent enough, I would actually consider putting a timer in the firmware for this. And and timing, how long does it take to fill an entire tank of of water? And anytime this device goes to do a fill operation where it turns on the valves and allows water to flow, I would start a timer and restrict it to that maximum time that I had empirically found. Such that if there was an issue, the absolute worst case overflow situation is you would dump one full tank. But in most situations, that would not be the the case, obviously, because there's a sensor.

Stephen Kraig
But but having that extra level of software protection that even though it's a bad thing to get water all over the floor, the worst case would be one full tank worth.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Instead of it just all over and just keeps going.

Stephen Kraig
Just nonstop. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And then 1st place picked by our judges is the Bar Buddy. So this is a personal bartender, and what I like about this project is they actually use it every day and entertain their guests with it.

Stephen Kraig
I'm sure it's a it's certainly a talking point. And with a first place prize, it'll be an extra talking point now. But one of the things I thought was really cool about this project is that the person who designed it, first of all, they started years ago. In fact, they said, I started developing the Bar Buddy right before COVID when I thought it would be fun to have a personal bartending machine at home. So the cool thing about this project is not only, you know, was it a first place win, but it's also a completion of a project that's been going on for a long time.

Stephen Kraig
So that gets big thumbs up from from my side. But, also, the person who designed it was a mechanical engineer who admits that they that electronics wasn't necessarily their cup of tea. The nice thing or the really cool thing about it is there's a lot of really good electronics work in here, including a lot of coding going on and, like, custom gooeys and and, you know, everything done on our Raspberry Pi. It's really freaking cool.

Parker Dillmann
I I do like they have a show off the iterations of the GUI. Yeah. And I love how the first iteration is totally what an engineer would make.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I have written software that looks just like that. Absolutely.

Parker Dillmann
And then, of course, the second iteration does actually yes. It's so funny that the second iteration is a lot like what I've done as well. I I like it a lot. I wonder what did they mention what software they were using for the Python because it was Python

Stephen Kraig
well it's tk is the GUI oh is it tikinter? Okay yep

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The the first one definitely looks like tikinter, but the second one, they somehow made tikinter not look like tikinter.

Stephen Kraig
You know, a a lot of times with all that gooey stuff, in my experience, you spend you spend a ton of time just getting it to initially work, And then you get your your actual code to function, and then you spend a ton more time after that getting it to look nice. That's usually, like, the progression of how gooey's end up, at least for me.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
So the the the bar buddy has, what is, 8 different pumps and basically keeps a a shopping list or a or a a stock of what is available. And what's cool is you can program in whatever drink you want, but then you can add parameters to the drink where you're if you want I like this drink, but I want it to be a little stiffer. You can apply that parameter, and it will adjust how it makes the drink for you, which is pretty cool.

Parker Dillmann
I would like a tequila sunrise plus plus.

Stephen Kraig
Plus plus, extra plus. Actually, that would be cool, next iteration. Not that you need to feature creep this, but if it did have voice commands where you could just say, hey, bar buddy, make me a tequila sunrise, and it just comes out.

Parker Dillmann
Could you imagine, like, Alexa, pour me a glass, and then it just goes, you've had enough. I'm cutting you off.

Stephen Kraig
Give me your car keys. Yeah. That's really cool.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Go check those out. We'll put all the links in the show notes, but we get to pick the circuit break favorite now.

Stephen Kraig
Well, before we do that, congratulations to all the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. Thank you for, entering and for all the hard work you put into it. These were not simplistic projects, and they probably took a lot of time. So thank you.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Thank you so much. So we have 2 more entries that we're gonna cover. 1 was the pocket fryer, which we talked about on a previous episode. That was our first entry, and that is like a cylindrical tube that is an air fryer.

Parker Dillmann
So you can cook you can fry up snacks On the go. On the go. And the second one was it's hot dog. It's a state of the art device that solves the pressing issue in our society, hot dog detection. When I saw this one, I I I shared it with, like, everyone here at Macra Fab.

Parker Dillmann
I'm like, this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen someone enter into one of our contests. What it is is it's a it's a camera with AI, custom electronics, and it detects if some if an object is a hot dog or not. There's a there's a so that's my pick is for the the circuit break favorite is the hot dog detector. It has a custom p so the reason why I'm picking that over over the the fryer is the hot dog actually has a custom PCB and is shown to work. Like, the video is actually really well done for it.

Parker Dillmann
And I like how it's just called the hot dog pie shield v 1 is the circuit for it. Yep. And it just says

Stephen Kraig
it has a screen that says that's a hot dog.

Parker Dillmann
Whereas the pocket fryer isn't shown to work. I would love to see in a video of that's actually a thing with all these projects is there's always a there's a video or demonstration of it actually functioning. Whereas the PocketFire, unfortunately, just has a prototype that is said to work, but, you know, it's the Internet. I can't trust anything. I can't even trust if AI knows if it's a hotdog or not.

Stephen Kraig
So I am actually going to recuse myself from this, from from the circuit break favorite pick. And the reason why is because one of these remaining 2 that's out there is somebody that I know. And so in a out of an an effort of of not playing favorites, I'm gonna recuse myself from this, so I will let Parker be the deciding vote in that.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, I'm I'm going for a hot dog. So congratulations to hot dog, the AI hot dog detector.

Stephen Kraig
I think I think that project I I lost it when I saw that video come in just because of how ridiculous how ridiculous the project is. So so so the the person who who made the hot dog project, I I I originally said, hey. We're doing a pro a a contest if you want to enter, and they thought about it for, I don't know, a a while. And I just love that the end result is that this is what they came up with. Just a device that detects if something is or is not a hot dog.

Stephen Kraig
And and we made a joke actually after the the project was submitted. We made the joke about it would it be possible to find a way to get the Hotdog project onto a satellite, onto a CubeSat, and send it up into space and have it flip around and view the Earth and confirm if the Earth is or is not a hot dog.

Parker Dillmann
And if it's a sphere or flat. No. No.

Stephen Kraig
No. No. No. No. We need the real pressing questions here.

Stephen Kraig
Is the Earth a hot dog or not? We still don't know until we send the hot dog bot into into space.

Parker Dillmann
You know, I mean, can we crowdfund that? How much does it cost to send a CubeSat?

Stephen Kraig
I was looking it up actually just as out of a joke. The the numbers are they they they they vary wildly. I've seen some numbers as low as, like, $2,000 and other numbers as high as $50,000 to send a CubeSat into space. So I think, honestly, the the the probably the best way to get something into space is to find a college student that is part of a program where they send their thing up and say, hey. How can we tag along a hot dog bot on your key set?

Stephen Kraig
Because you

Parker Dillmann
could just pipe in the video feed from, like, a SpaceX launch.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, that's true.

Parker Dillmann
And they can just and they can just always detect if there's a hot dog or not in that that web stream.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. You know?

Parker Dillmann
Elon it shows Elon Musk in the stream, and it says there's a hot dog right there.

Stephen Kraig
The the the guy who designed it was telling me Jesus. The guy who designed it was telling me about how they how they came across one of the ideas, and they were looking at some AI. It's called YOLO v 8. Yeah. You said you said 8 by

Parker Dillmann
the way.

Stephen Kraig
Basically, it it takes an image, and then it identifies a whole list of anything that it realizes in that image. And when they were looking at this AI model, they noticed that one of the things that it is capable of detecting is a hot dog. So they just put a flag for, did a hot dog show up as one of the items? But there's, like, hundreds of other items that it will, you know, detect or maybe not 100. I don't know.

Stephen Kraig
But but, apparently, that's they were like, oh, hot dog done. That's it. It's it's there's already a hot dog AI model. Oh, I freaking love it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So the winners, those those four winners, they'll I'd probably within the next couple weeks, we'll send out the prizes. I had to finish building the trophies. Alright. I have all the PCBs and everything.

Parker Dillmann
I said they get time to actually build them. But, yeah, I I built some custom PCBs and, like, a 3 d printed base, and, like, the PCBs light up and all that stuff. A little cool I think nice so if you go to form.macfab.com you can see the trophy

Stephen Kraig
it's actually a really cool trophy. Yeah. So congratulations to all 4 winners. Yep. Yet yet another successful contest.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So so we should be running another contest soon. We don't really know exactly oh, I remember what it is now. So it's gonna be a, like, an IoT wearable contest.

Stephen Kraig
I I think we'll have a role you can't read No. You can't resubmit. No. No.

Parker Dillmann
You gotta be new. No. But there was a there was a funny name for it. And, actually, funny, Aaron came up with it. I don't remember it anymore, though.

Parker Dillmann
I have to go look that up.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Because we're trying to do contests more regularly now.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I wanted to try to do oh, I like to do is 4 a year, but if we can get 2 done this year because this one's gonna last longer. Mhmm. But if I can get 2 done this year, I'll be pretty happy.

Stephen Kraig
You know you know what would be actually okay. Get this. In relation to what I said earlier, this would be funny. You a contest where you have to finish a project that you've had lying around, and you just enter that that in. And you get extra points if the project is older and you finish it.

Stephen Kraig
That would be funny. Like, the cat feeder one reminder. If If you just finished it, you would get some you would get some extra points for that. I love it.

Parker Dillmann
Honestly, if we if I wrote down what that contest was called. I This is gonna kill me.

Stephen Kraig
I remember talking about this, but I don't remember a specific name for it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Because I don't think I told you about it yet. Yeah. I don't remember it anymore. It had some, like, cool name, and I'm, like, blinking on it now.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Well, we'll be announcing it, I don't know, sometime soon.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Probably in a within a month or so. Yep. Because we're trying to we're trying to partner up with some other companies and stuff with it too. So that's taking a little longer.

Parker Dillmann
But, yes, another contest. It's gonna be, like, wearable IoT. Man, that is such a cool name. Well, this is making for a great podcast, isn't it? You wanna go into our next topic?

Parker Dillmann
Sure.

Stephen Kraig
Let's go ahead and do it. So it's 2024. What's up with our manufacturing files? And it wasn't necessarily trying to be super clickbaity with this, but I actually kinda had a little bit of an argument in our engineering department the other day about manufacturing files for for PCB and PCA work. And it really brought up a question of the files that we create for PCAs and PCBs, specifically fab drawings and assembly drawings.

Stephen Kraig
We kinda went around the engineering department and started asking the question, why do we even do it? Like, what's the purpose of actually producing these files? And especially with it being 2024, which I I hate it when people say it's year x, y blah blah blah. But I I figured it would be fun to say that. The the the real question is, like, what is the purpose of creating assembly and fabrication drawings?

Stephen Kraig
And is there a better way we could be doing this? Doesn't it seem at least in in in from my opinion, it seems that our our manufacturing of PCBs is pretty damn standardized. You can go to any contract manufacturer and say the same thing to them, and it typically means the same thing to every single person. Why is it that these assembly and fabrication rules or drawings or information, why is that not baked into it, into our EDA tools? Tools?

Stephen Kraig
I do know that, you know, fabrication and assembly drawings are kind of one of the areas where you get to explain to your Centimeters things that are unique about your design. And I do understand there's plenty of, the the the there there's usefulness in that, and I understand that that that that's a place that is outside of the digital world where you can give instructions that are unique to whatever your design is. But in my experience, it's actually semirear that you need to tell your Centimeters something that is so unique that you need a a specific drawing for it. Now at the same time, I can understand that a fabrication or assembly drawing is a controlled document that you can have reviewed and approved and, properly released within your company. And so that that does give weight to why we would create something like that.

Stephen Kraig
But I have not experienced an EDA tool yet that kinda has a single button click that just craps out everything you you need for

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Your it it generates your PCB specifications because well, that's what you're talking about with this this assembly dock is, like, what kind of surface finish? What's the stack up? What is sometimes they will put in, like, the minimal trace width and that kind of stuff in there.

Stephen Kraig
Well, but but yeah. But even above and beyond that, you you have you know, does this need a particular IPC class of manufacturing?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. 2. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
You know, things of that sort. But but all all of these notes are not, like, unique to your company. These are very standard things that go on drawing. So, it like, I we were talking about this just the other week. I could totally see an EDA tool having a wizard that steps you through, and it says, does your board need blind, buried vias?

Stephen Kraig
And you click yes or no. Does your board need IPC class 2? And you click yes or no. And then it goes and it spits out an assembly drawing for you and and A

Parker Dillmann
PDF. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. A PDF that Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
It's funny because

Stephen Kraig
does it all.

Parker Dillmann
Is is at MacroFab, that's kind of what the macro platform does is give you that wizard.

Stephen Kraig
You know, and and that was something I was gonna get to. The MacFib platform is your assembly drawing effectively.

Parker Dillmann
Effectively, yes. Yeah. So, like, when you upload your your Gerbers or your design file, like, if it's KiCad or Altium or whatever, and then it it will give you all the specifications, and and click I want IPC class 3 or my I need that I need enig finish I need all this stuff and then because what happens on the back end is we standardize all that information and actually produce a assembly draw well, it's not really assembly drawn. An assembly document

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
That goes to the fabs that's standardized. Right. So we take all this information and standardize it into one format. And that's what these drawings are supposed to do. My favorite thing though is most CMs, I found, do not read these assembly documents

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
At all. Right. Because this is this is why. Because we'll get documentation from customers, and we and they're like, you know what? And we go and start piecing through that documentation, and we find we will almost always find conflicting information.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
Like, they'll send us a PDF or, like, an email or a PDF that will say, these are my specifications, and then we'll find, like, a crusty 5 Xerox scanned Gerber file that has the specifications from, like, a long time ago that just, like, that's contained in their frame.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
Like, their drawing frame, and it will have completely conflicting specifications for this draw for this PCB.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Like, it'll have different stack up or have, like it's calling out leaded hassle. We're, like and then the PDF says that they sent us says they want finish. Like, almost I wanna say at least half of the packages that we look at have conflicting information like that. And when we bring it up to customers, most of the time the customer will be like, oh, just use the PDF that which is that's the newest thing.

Stephen Kraig
The old drawing.

Parker Dillmann
Ignore the old drawing. The old drawing is there because it's an artifact that someone set up ages ago, and we don't use it anymore. It's just part of our manufacturing, which is, by the way, insanity to think about that your manufacturing package has conflicting information in it. It should not. It should not.

Parker Dillmann
It should be, what you're talking about earlier, a controlled document Yeah. That is approved and is correct. That's the why you that's why you do it. And so you can say, this is what we want to build and has everything in it, all the information required to build it.

Stephen Kraig
Well and and and the both those drawings, fabrication for PCB and assembly for PCA, both of those drawings are the engineers way of telling their production or no. Sorry. Not production. Procurement team, this is what I wanna buy. Such that the person who goes out and buys the board doesn't have to know all the intricacies of it.

Stephen Kraig
They have a drawing that literally says, get it with these specifications. And that would be amazing and fantastic if we lived in a world where people cared about making sure that information was right on those drawings. But as Parker was saying, maybe 50% of them are wrong. And so having worked at multiple CMs, I've experienced that too where I get a drawing and the very first thing in my mind isn't, oh, I'm gonna look at this drawing and follow that. It's I have to check this drawing for this person who gave it to me, because I can't trust that they did it correctly, because the the the initial or the the original intent of an assembly drawing or a fabrication drawing has lost its meaning.

Stephen Kraig
They don't mean the same thing that they used to. Some people think that they are gospel truth, and they will completely go thermal nuclear if you fail to do something on that drawing. And then like Parker said, some people are like, oh, no. Just ignore it. I'm sorry that I even sent it to you.

Parker Dillmann
Right? Yeah. And because yes. Because there is that small percentage when you bring this up that there's conflicts in their their assembly draw or in their in their manufacturing files is so some of them say ignore the old stuff. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Another majority says, oh, thank you for bringing that up. We didn't know there was a problem. And they go and fix it on their end. Right. Great.

Parker Dillmann
But then there's that's actually, the thing is out of, like, a year's worth, so, like, 1,000 of these, I think we only get one that actually just gets pissed off.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Like, they they basically just rip you and say, what do you mean there's conflicts? Right. Right. Like, something that we did wrong.

Parker Dillmann
Like, we might get one of those, which is very

Stephen Kraig
important. Centimeters. You should know how to do this. No. Exact exactly.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Oh, yeah. But then we also get a small subset that is, like, we didn't know there's a problem. Our Centimeters just took care of

Stephen Kraig
it. Right. Which is that's that's a big problem too. Yeah. That so it's like, what the what did the Centimeters do then?

Stephen Kraig
Because we as

Parker Dillmann
a as the new Centimeters, we have no idea what they did. Right.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Like, did they use the old one or they use

Stephen Kraig
a new one? The world may never know. No.

Parker Dillmann
We're usually that pops up. We're like, can you, like, send a picture of your board

Stephen Kraig
so we can figure

Parker Dillmann
out what the old Centimeters did?

Stephen Kraig
Right. Which which okay. That's the that's the mark of a good Centimeters if you ask me where they're like, okay. There's a conflict. We're gonna let you know.

Stephen Kraig
We're not just gonna plow forward and make decisions. And then if there is, you know, further things that need to happen, they work with you. Like, okay. Send us a picture. We'll fix your documentation for you in terms of we'll tell you what you need to go change on your document.

Stephen Kraig
You know? It's not your job to change their document for them. But but

Parker Dillmann
You've done that before, though. That's okay.

Stephen Kraig
I mean Trust me. I have 2. I trust me. But but but but it it I hadn't even thought about it until earlier today where I was like, wait. Why are our EDA tools not producing this thing that people think is a 100% must have?

Stephen Kraig
That makes no sense to me.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I wonder if even, like, odb plus plus or the I p c what's the I p c equivalent?

Stephen Kraig
Oh, I don't even remember. It's a number. Right?

Parker Dillmann
IPC 2581. Yeah. I wonder if those have all that information in

Stephen Kraig
it. Okay. So ODB will Or can. ODB has effectively your Gerbers. It has your netlist.

Stephen Kraig
It has your bill of materials, and it has your stack up. So it has it has some of the items that are in there, but I don't think it has all of them.

Parker Dillmann
And Can you tell, yeah, can you tell your Centimeters that in that package that the material is, like, Roger like, was a Rogers, like, 4000 series. Is it Roger? I hope there's a Roger 4000 series.

Stephen Kraig
Aluminum board. Say that. There is a Rogers 4 100 4000 series. You got you got lucky.

Parker Dillmann
Okay. Material for the substrate.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. So here's the funny thing. Okay. So if if if if you say assembly drawing, what goes through my head is it is a set of instructions that tells somebody how you want your thing to be assembled. Right?

Stephen Kraig
The funny thing is having worked at the Centimeters, I I will get assembly drawings, and then I will get extra drawings that are like, here's how you assemble this thing. It's like, well, wait. Shouldn't these be one thing? Shouldn't these just be the assembly like, take for instance, you have through hole parts that need to be they need to be soldered at a certain height off the board. So you have to have a little jig or a little fixture or tool or something that sets the height of the parts off the board.

Stephen Kraig
In my opinion, the assembly drawing is actually a really great place to put that because that's how you assemble the board kind of thing. But I've had so many situations or experiences where I'll get an assembly drawing, and then I'll get this other word document or this PDF that's like, here's how to assemble these LEDs. And so once again, it just goes back to, like, why why do we have these assembly drawings if we're not using them for what they're supposed to be used for? And and I'll call out one other thing that I recently ran into that sort of grinds my gears. But on an assembly drawing, you typically show an a a top and bottom view of your PCBs, or at least that's the traditional way of doing it.

Stephen Kraig
Right? And you give reference designator indicators on that image, shall you say? Okay. PCBs are at the point now where I mean, they've been this way for a long time, but most PCBs are so dense that it makes no sense to actually put all the reference designators on an 8 and a half by 11 piece of paper. Because if you print it out, you it's you couldn't make the the font small enough to actually put everything on there.

Stephen Kraig
There's just no way for it to actually be readable. And so I can understand, you know, if we're talking about a through hole assembly from the eighties or or or whatnot, where you have giant resistors and everything spread out, and it's like, oh, this is where r one goes, and this is where c 10 goes. Like, that's a great situation where you can pull up the assembly drawing and say, yes. I see where these reference designators are. But on these they're trying to think of, like, a reference designator on a motherboard for a for a PC.

Stephen Kraig
Like, what the assembly drawing isn't gonna tell you anything about that, but yet we are such sticklers for having to do it a very particular way because what? Because tradition? Because that's how it's always been done? Because that's what the Centimeters expects? Like, what is the purpose of us actually doing it?

Stephen Kraig
Because this is burning engineers' time for what purpose. I know I I probably sound like I'm going around in circles here, but it's this is really this is really starting to bother me now that we don't have a better solution for this. And this is not a plug for Macrofab, but we don't have a better solution other than what Macrofab has put together. Because I think you guys have it right, because you do show reference designators. You do show, like, r one goes here and c ten goes there, and then all of basically, like I said, you guys have created the wizard for stepping through your assembly drawing.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was kind of the idea was to to standardize, well, it was the standardized stuff so you could you could assemble it easier. So less tooling and

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Less kind of having to do the engineering work on the back end to actually make the product or make the PCB correctly. So you didn't have to, like, parse a ancient Gerber. But go back to what you're saying about tradition. What happens is it's one of the it yeah. It's it goes back to it's always been done that way.

Stephen Kraig
Or that's the, quote, proper way.

Parker Dillmann
Sure. If you wanna say proper way.

Stephen Kraig
I that's why I said quote.

Parker Dillmann
We we had a we had a podcast a long time ago, and we had it was with Chris Gamble, and he had a quote that he said, which was it's traditions peer pressure from the dead.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's actually

Parker Dillmann
the name of the podcast episode too.

Stephen Kraig
This that sounds right. It sounds like something we would do.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And, apparently, it's a quote from something else because just googling that has, like, a bunch of other results that's not our podcast, which is a shame. Chris, you stole it from somewhere. But I think that's that's kinda what

Stephen Kraig
it is. I guess, hopefully,

Parker Dillmann
in this point, it's tradition's peer pressure from the retired people from our industry. Maybe they're not dead yet.

Stephen Kraig
But but okay. I don't wanna make it sound like assembly drawings have never had a Oh, exactly. A problem. I think they were absolutely critical. It's just, are they critical today?

Parker Dillmann
I would say they're they're in the traditional sense, no. If you do have weird specifications, that's the whole thing. It's, like, I don't know what I the, like, OD plus plus can handle in its specification side.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
Maybe I should. I probably should. I probably should go look and what it can handle there and Maybe poke our product team to be like hey You should like try to pull that stuff in automatically so our users don't have to like click those buttons But, yeah, I don't know if it handles it natively or not, or, like, how would you even send that information to that package generator?

Stephen Kraig
And how would you even know that they got it all correctly? You know? And let's say, like, parsed it and gave it back to

Parker Dillmann
you. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
And and so the the the argument I was I was saying earlier about, you know, an assembly drawing is a controlled document. I mean, technically, you can make anything a controlled document. Right? So you could put all your specifications in a Word doc and make that a controlled about an about an assembly drawing other than it looks like all the ones that came before it? Right?

Stephen Kraig
So it so it looks right. It looks engineer y.

Parker Dillmann
It it that's what it is. But it goes back to a control document. Yeah. It is something that you can stamp and say, this is what we want to get built.

Stephen Kraig
Right. Everyone agrees that what's written on here is what we're getting.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The problem is half the time, people just, like, gloss over it and just stamp it.

Stephen Kraig
Right. Right. Or or half the time, like okay. Say it's the 30th time you've built this board or whatever, and you have a new purchasing team or blah blah blah, and they don't even know that the assembly drawing is part of the design package. They just kick it off to the Centimeters like they've done, you know, a 100 times in the past.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I would I would say the biggest thing is on on the the kicking it off is just the design document or or the assembly document is you gotta make sure it's correct.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
That's that's where it's getting me is or, like, they up like, they make this, like, crappy PDF slash, like, word doc Mhmm. That goes along with it. It's like, why don't you just fix the old one? Right. So I don't I don't know what it is.

Parker Dillmann
It's I think it's just peer pressure from the dead man.

Stephen Kraig
You you know, one of the things we've implemented at work that I actually really appreciate, and it seems like it seems way over the top. But every time now we go out to order a board, we call a meeting with the responsible engineer. That's whoever designed the board. They get he they get a few people in the in the room, and they pull up the assembly drawing, and they read it, and they say, is this what we want to buy? And everyone in the room has to say, yes.

Stephen Kraig
All of the notes on here are is is is what we want to buy. Even if it's a rebuy of the thing, We still walk through it, and everyone goes, that's that's it. Go and buy it. And I like that. It seems like a, like, a ton of extra work, but, you know, like, in that sense, we're treating the assembly document like it's the the most important part of that.

Stephen Kraig
And and I think that's that's really valuable, But I could also see people thinking, like, that's just a massive waste of time.

Parker Dillmann
Right? I don't know. If you're the kind of person that thinks it's very important, you should be spending that much time on it, though.

Stephen Kraig
Agreed. And, you know, I've worked with CMs that think that they're most important thing ever, and I've worked with CMs that are like, yeah. Sure. Just give us the information in an email, and that's good enough. Right?

Stephen Kraig
And I'm not saying one is necessarily better than the other. It it it certainly just depends on what you're trying to get manufactured. I do wish that there was more emphasis, like I said, from EDA tools on producing that information because it is still those drawings are still generally considered the standard.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And you talk about it. The reason why this is so weird is people would just type them out in text in a certain like, in a specific layer in their EDA tool. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Parker Dillmann
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a document layer, and then it just gets exported out as part as a Gerber, which the fact that you can't even, like, search it in in a text editor.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Parker Dillmann
It's a visual document that that displays text.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vectorized text.

Parker Dillmann
It kills me.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. So that that actually goes back to double e's using EDA tools as drawing software.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. No. That's a 100% at at that point. Yeah. You know, I just came up with an idea.

Parker Dillmann
I wonder if I shouldn't say this in the podcast.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, what's up?

Parker Dillmann
Do is if you find an assembly drawing, export it as, like, our it it, like, export it, and, like, do OCR on it, and get the text. And then see if you can oh my. Oh, I'm writing this down.

Stephen Kraig
I'm gonna

Parker Dillmann
try this out.

Stephen Kraig
So so I'm I'm curious from all of our listeners or, I guess, all of our breakers. What are your thoughts on these drawings? Do you have to produce them for your your day job? And if you do, are you pro them, or do you think that there's another solution that we should be doing? I really would love to hear people's thoughts and and and see if there's, like, a trend and see if people, like, absolutely love them and wanna spend more time doing them or just absolutely hate them and want a more automated solution.

Stephen Kraig
So forum.macrofab.com. Go to our community and, let us know your thoughts on assembly and fabrication drawings. And if you have a better solution, if you have some wacko thing that's like, this is the way that I think we should do it, let us know.

Parker Dillmann
So thank you for listening to circuit break from MacroFab. We're your hosts, Parker Dillon. And Steven Craig. Later, everyone. Take it easy.

Parker Dillmann
Thank you, yes, you breaker, for downloading our podcast. Tell your friends and coworkers about circuit break, the podcast from Macrofab. If you have a cool idea, project, or topic you want us to discuss, let Steven and I and the community know. Our community, where you can find personal projects, discussions about the podcast, and engineering topics, and news is located atform.macfab.com. Give us a review too.

Parker Dillmann
We need those reviews.