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Electronics Design and Manufacturing in Laymen's Terms
June 13, 2013 |Estimated reading time: 1 minute
So what do those specialist terms mean that you come across so often in the world of electronics production? Do buzzwords such as DFT and DFM, slip through and just keep going? This is jargon that speaks directly to specialists, but is confusing to those a little further removed from the world of technology.
Nevertheless, perhaps due to the manifold use of these terms, they do generate an appropriate degree of curiosity among the readers. That's why we are keen to explain a few terms in straightforward language, i.e., without scholarly definitions. This will enable the uninitiated to get a sense of what these terms are about and why they are important.
From Idea to Product
Explaining electronics in a few words is nigh on impossible. Controlled management of electrical currents or voltage is virtually always the foundation. The execution usually entails assembly of electronic components, which together are to ensure the requested functionality.
Concrete products often include printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs), which involve components being installed on so-called bare boards.
Creating such a product starts with designing an electronic circuit. The client makes it clear to the designer what requirements the circuit will need to fulfil. The doorbell presents us with a very simple circuit that we can use for the purposes of illustration. The ingredients? A source of electricity (power, such as a battery or transformer), some wire, a button and a bell (or gong). The circuit is so straightforward that we don't need a designer for it.
Things get a little bit more complex when a designer is tasked with designing the electronics for a new piece of equipment. In such cases, the designer has to know step by step what the equipment has to do. In the case of a coffee machine, for example, various processes are run through step by step, all of which need to be checked. Is there water in the coffee machine? Does the water have to be heated? To what temperature? Does coffee need to be ground? How much? And so on. The electronics steer all the facilities in the unit, such as the heating element, the grinding mechanism, etc.