Circuits Assembly blog

I have mentioned numerous times that the first purpose of RoHS is to help make recycling easier. So RoHS was developed to support WEEE. One would imagine that, in doing this, the EU was primarily concerned with recycling in the EU.

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Fortunately, thousands of folks in the Third World will benefit from RoHS, as much recycling is performed by poor people in these countries. When they recycle non-RoHS-compliant scrap electronics, they are being poisoned by lead, cadmium, mercury, and smoke from non-banned organic compounds. This sad situation was again recently brought out in a New York Times article.

As more and more waste electronics becomes RoHS compliant, the amount of toxic material that these people are exposed to will become less and less. It still shocks me that, when I point out this benefit, a person comments something like this:

“You mean I have to put up with RoHS just to help these people?”

It is my fervent hope that very few of us feel this way.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Eons ago, (well, it seems like eons) when IBM designed its original PC, it took note of the success of the Apple II with it’s modular expansion system — easily accessible card slots with loads of clear documentation — and added its own variety of modular expansion system. By doing so, the cost of accessories to consumers stayed low, the cost of installing or replacing said accessories stayed low and a whole new industry emerged to create compatible accessories.

I just read a Twitter Tweet (“Tweet” sounds too cutesy to me, so I’m never quite sure what to call those; maybe a “Twoot”?) from Mike Buetow that linked to an article about the latest Toyota recall. It seems that there are a couple of specific solder joints prone to cracking in the ECM (Engine Control Module) of certain models.

The last time I had any real data on the cost to replace an ECM, it was on the order of $1,500. Just scanning around the Internet, I found numbers ranging from $1,000 to $2,000. I’m guessing (I am speaking from near complete ignorance) that maybe two or three hours of that are labor at $90/ hour. That’s a lot of cost in the electronics as well as labor hours that can’t be used for billable hours. With so much of new cars being electronic, this issue is only going to become more extreme.

So, why can’t the auto industry take a cue from the PC industry? Create a standard, easily accessible, electrical bus with standard, easy to manipulate mechanical attributes. Even if they were just standard within each manufacturer, it would still be a big improvement.

Consider this scenario: Buy a Toyota mid-size-car ECM at the local auto parts store. Take it home, plug it into a USB port on your home computer. It auto-runs a link to a specific web site. Enter your car’s VIN number and the site loads firmware that matches the ECM to your car. Take the ECM outside, open your hood, flip a few latches on the water-tight electronics box, pull the old one out and plug the new one in. There you go. Done.

Instead of what is pretty much a massively expensive dealer-only operation, you have half a dozen standard bus ECMs to choose from and about 15 minutes of work that’s not much more difficult than installing a new printer on your PC. And, you’d have less expensive aftermarket options as well. And, a new industry would emerge to design and build those aftermarket options.

Duane Benson
Sadly, not in my lifetime, Batman…

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

Methinks Paul Otellini is feeling the heat — and I don’t mean the kind from his company’s chips.

The first non-engineer to run Intel, Otellini complained this week that the US government isn’t doing enough to create jobs.

“I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs,” Otellini complained. “The next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

True that, as long as OEMs like Intel use domestically trained engineers to move all their design to lower-cost nations not for intellectual reasons but to save a few bucks. The inconvenient facts Otellini so casually ignores are that American companies are sitting on record cash reserves, and no one would claim the US government should be in the business of forcing them to spend their treasure.

Ideologies aside, this is a tired canard. One can’t logically complain government inherently is the problem and in the next breath say that government needs to solve their problems. One can’t complain government isn’t doing enough to protect their IP and in the next breath say the laws are too onerous. That’s just whining.

In fact, even Otellini doesn’t seem to believe his own words, having at a conference last fall credited China’s rebound in part to its stimulus package. Let’s get at what Otellini really wants: A government handout. He is oh-so-proud of having garnered what were effectively tax-free plants in China, without stopping to consider that such blatant corporate welfare places the burden on the individual taxpayer. (Keep in mind, however, what you and I pay in taxes is not his problem.)

Still, based on his comments, one could picture Otellini formulating the following financial strategy:

Taxpayers give money to the government, which gives it to companies, which invest it in Asia (or just sit on it).

I’m just not sure what problem that solves.

Does Otellini really think China is a long-term answer and that its intentions are benign? Has he not considered the possibility that China and other poor Southeast Asian nations are doing anything they can to attract wealthy businesses, and that once it has the supply chain monopoly in place, those businesses will be forced to pony up? Intel is a pawn in a much bigger game, and he is betting his bank that he can cash in his chips before the house calls.

With Intel’s stock trading at a 52-week low and new research reports — coincidentally, I’m sure — projecting Samsung to overtake Intel as the world’s largest semiconductor supplier in the next three years, my guess is Otellini’s comments come from his ego and his wallet, not his head. And maybe Intel’s problems stem from having a bean counter, not an engineer, at the helm.

Aug. 30 addendum: A-ha! Intel just announced it is lowering its third-quarter forecasts. Otellini’s comments are sounding more and more like sour grapes.

Industry sources are telling me that for the past three to four months, some OEMs have been issuing waivers on incoming parts, basically saying “we don’t care if they are fake, just build the product.”

Given what we know about the extent of counterfeit components, that’s a galling attitude. Have we not learned that you can only kick the can so far down the road before the road rises and the can comes back and hits you in the face?

Expect more on this as I keep digging.

What would Eisenhower do?

This commentary, from last week’s Boston Globe, correctly compares and illustrates the differences in viewpoints of the outgoing president (and former WWII general) and incoming president (and ex Navy hero) John F. Kennedy when it came to the nation’s military.

Dwight  Eisenhower famously warned America to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” His concern: those in position to inflate the need for military buildup inevitably would do so.

Kennedy, informed by the ongoing Cold War and the need to look strong in the face of a belligerent Kremlin, took an opposite approach, asserting the US would commit anything and everything to “assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

This debate is particularly relevant today because the staggering debt the US has incurred, much of it in the past decade, has renewed calls for budget cuts. And defense is an obvious target: military spending made up 24%, or $895 billion, of this year’s $3.7 trillion budget, and is forecast to rise 3.7% in fiscal 2011.

So even if the percentage of the defense spend over time has been fairly consistent with overall discretionary expenditures and, measured against the GDP (roughly 4%), consistent with its average of the past 20 years (not to mention 100 basis points lower  than the average over the past 40), it’s such a big number — almost matching the rest of the world’s defense spending combined and more than nine times larger than the military budget of China — it was inevitable someone would eventually take it on.

So we now stand with Defense Secretary Gates Robert Gates looking for cuts even among the most sacred of sacred cows, the military brass. That by itself isn’t troubling.

More worrisome would be cuts to blue sky research. And while I’ve opined my belief that the Obama Administration is cognizant of the need for military spending not just for the obvious reasons of defense but also the less-obvious need to compel next-generation research, the current reading of the tea leaves suggests some possibly big cuts are coming.

The truth is, much of the US PCB industry relies heavily on  hearty annual defense budget. One could argue, with the preponderance of evidence in support, that sans the US military, the domestic bare board industry would effectively cease to exist. Do we start weaning our spending on weapons even if it means putting people out of work?

This has strong echoes of 1961. As the Globe writes,  “Most distressing to [Eisenhower] was that Kennedy had gone into factory towns and proclaimed that Eisenhower’s stinginess on defense had cost American jobs.”

President Obama is lucky in the sense that Gates is not job climbing. His next job will be babysitting his grandkids — and that career will start in just a few months. He can, as journalists like to say, speak truth to power, without worrying about offending either his boss (Obama) or his subordinates (the entire US Armed Forces).

Secretary Gates sounds an awful lot like a modern day Eisenhower. Will his vision be realized? And will the potential cost be greater than the reward?

Quick. Pretend this is the footprint for a diode. Which way does the cathode face?

Okay, if you can’t figure out which side gets the cathode, how about the anode. Which side does it go on?

Hah! It’s a trick question. You can’t tell based on the limited amount of information available on this PCB footprint mock-up. Sadly, this image is all too frequently real. In theory, with a properly constructed centroid file (see yesterday’s post), we really shouldn’t need any marking on a PCB at all. And, if everything is properly done, and if no gremlins are swimming through the air, we won’t need any marking.

However, when you get the thing back in your shop and hand it off to a technician to measure current and signal quality and slew rate and all of that junk, or if something does go wrong and it needs some troubleshooting, those missing or ambiguous markings can make a big difference.

I’d go ahead and put a little diode symbol there or maybe an “A” for anode. You can use a “C” for cathode too but just make sure it’s clearly identified as a diode so it won’t be mistaken for a rogue capacitor.

Duane Benson
No. It’s not a contest. Just a question.

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

SMTA is sponsoring a contest  in which participants submit their self-produced videos in support of the SMTAI trade show and conference. Winners get free admission to certain sessions.

For info: www.smta.org/smtai/video_contest.cfm.

A little housecleaning is usually a good thing. Here at Screaming Circuits, we try to be as flexible as possible and we’ll do a lot of different things — standard and non-standard. But we really should, when passing on documentation, give out the standard form of data. And that’s what housecleaning has done for us today.