We Ask You - Electronics Blog Würth Elektronik

How about PCB design for high speed signals, EMI, power distribution and routing etc.

Simon

I'm not in an industry that is associated with designing new equipment/products, so we don't subscribe to some journals.

It's nice to see the latest developments, such as the one you posted about the high power wireless charging.

A regular blog that has a some lines about a change in technology, or availability and then links to find it, would be useful and interesting.

Since Wurth are a great sponsor of the various challenges, then it cannot be considered spam.

In nearly every aspect of makers/hobbyists the use of buck/boost circuits will be featured or needed, so some basics of these and where efficiencies are to be had would be useful.

Unfortunately for most ready to use items you are competing against cheap asian sourced products, so you're looking for the difference in why they would need to use a Wurth/partner product.

(If you recall I used the TI chips in the Wireless Charging challenge as they were co-sponsor).

Your recent post about becoming involved in the Formula-E racing was very interesting, and maybe your blog could include information related to that (obviously not to assist the competitors).

From your initial post it's clear they intend to use the series to further normal everyday electric vehicle development, rather than the limited benefits the highly specialised Formula 1 racing brings.

Cheers

Mark

Hi Simon,

I would like to see some small electronic builds centered around some of your new or interesting components. It would be nice if they could be scaled up to useful applications but just a basic learning experiment with them would still be great.

John

Hi guys

Thanks a lot for your great input on this. This is absolutely appreciated.

So far I put the following things into my basket:

• high speed signals, EMI, power distribution and routing for PCB designs
• latest developments/changes in technologies e.g.: high power wireless charging
• linking back to full articles or particular topics is appreciated/convenient - to be able to go deeper into the topic
• covering most used topologies like buck/boost or/and relate to them in some way
• no cheap Asian products - check
• additional topics about the electronic market, which relate to the improvement of products and applications (e.g. Formula E)
• new and/or interesting developments of components (if best, relating to use cases or experiments/tests)

Feel free to add/comment on these first ideas and do not hesitate to share any additional thoughts on the topic.

Thanks

Simon

Hi Simon Sir,

Looks like you already have the bases pretty much covered. Since Wurth is doing buck/boost technologies, I was wondering if you could add stuff like materials and technologies in electronic components.

In the past few years, we have moved from air core inductors to solid state inductors- Now we are moving towards Low Temperature CoFired Ceramics which allow us to fabricate passives on die along with silicon junction devices and even High-K materials for electronic substrate. It would be interesting to see a take on how the demand for faster AND more efficient AND more COMPACT electronics has influenced this shift in component manufacturing.

I was intrigued with the subject when the challengers of the InTheAir Challenge were provided inductors of different types- Multilayer Ceramic capacitors of different sizes and upon some research discovered a lot of interesting things. Lots of questions came to my mind.

How does one choose the type of component?

What are the pros and cons of each type?

What other properties do these materials exibit?

What else is coming?

I work on microwave materials for electronic applications and the effect of this kind on research on devices today is quite interesting to me.

Additionally, RF/High Frequency PCB design is an interesting topic to me. Not just talking about PCBs for FPGA and other devices but techniques for layout of Antennas, Chip antenna and Baluns etc. As wearable tech a IoT come of age, it is a useful discussion for product designers.

Lastly, the hackathon approach to DIY. A lot of people spend loads of money on buying breakout boards, gettings PCBs and then making a project while at the end the project no longer is DIY but rather an Assemble it Yourself. The hackathon approach is "Use what is available" and guys like me have been doing it for decades due to a multitude of reasons. It would be nice to see household stuff recycled and the electronics present within them understood and reused.

Hope some of this makes sense and does not veer off into a tangent.

Thanks again to you guys for the support in the InTheAir.

Regards,

IP

Hi Simon,

I would add some basic topics such as:

Electrostatics, what you need to know, what it can do, and how you can tell if it is affecting your build.

Electromagnetic induction, what you need to know, what it can do, and how do you limit its effects in your circuits.

Stray capacitance, same kind of topics as above.

Ground loops, what they do, how can you tell if you have one, what you can do to correct a ground loop, how you can design so that you do not get any ground loops.

In general, I think the basic audience will be coming at the topics with little or no formal training.  So you might want to set up some links to basic electronics so they have some idea where to begin and where you have found trusted sources for what they need to learn.

Put as many examples into the discussions as you can.  People learn by seeing an idea fleshed out into a block diagram and then how the final circuit follows the design.  Always identify testing issues so that you begin to impress upon people that they will need to test their ideas at some point and the sooner they consider what test equipment they need, the more prepared they can be.

List the needed test equipment for each example.

Hopefully these issues will give you some good ideas.

You might want to work with the top members to preview the posts and provide an initial set of comments.

DAB

Hi Simon,

As a software dude with working knowledge on electronic design, I would be very much interested with:

- PCB layout and design, including best practices in routing

   - trace widths, trace clearances, particularly high speed signals (HDMI, USB etc)

   - ground planes, design considerations for 4-layer boards or more

   - common pitfalls in hardware design

   - component selection (as suggested above)

- tips around RF circuit design, antenna (trace, chip, aerial) tuning approaches

regards,

Christever

Hi Simon,

For some of the newer members a brief overview of what your company makes and what they would use it for. Würth Electronics has so much to offer and I feel this would be a great way to get members understanding the component use better.

Dale Winhols

Hello Simon,

A bit late, but not too late I hope; I agree with the "materials"  section of inderpreet. Few blogs tell something about it, and it's useful to be able to retrieve it somewhere on the web. The basics like switch mode topologies are interesting too, especially for beginners or to get a slightly different point of view.

The blogs I read when I did more specialized high speed designs:

- Eric Bogatin

- Andus.de

   This last one is a competitor to you, but their newsletter was both informative on general PCB manufacturing, as well as telling some more backgrounds on why some options were more expensive / more difficult then others. They also had a showcase of some "latest cool PCB" they had made. I think this would be a great feature for you too; you could show what those who are in the front of the field are doing to inspire others.

I'm still reading:

- The application notes of Jim Williams (because they have great content, and offer good insight in design, even when re-reading)

- LTSpice's  paper journal

- some articles by EDN, mostly white papers by chip vendors

Hi Simon,

I would like to back Christever's proposition on PCB design and additionally what to consider when using your electromechanical components (examples are welcome).

Since I'm just a hobbyist I don't know much about that.

Also, since Würth produces different types of inductors it would be nice to see a guide on inductor type selection for specific applications. When I recently built my solar battery charger I only cared about inductance and rated current - I'm sure there are more things that I had to take into account.

Thanks,

Dragan