EP#427: Food Device Design Derby: Wrap up and Results

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Parker Dillmann (00:10):
Welcome to circuit break from Macrofab, a
weekly podcast show about allthings engineering, DIY
projects, manufacturing industrynews and food device design
Derby roundup. We're your hostselectrical engineers Parker
Dillmann and Stephen Kraig. Thisis episode 427. So before we get

(00:32):
to the round up of the designDerby, I want to talk about some
podcast stats. We don't have alot of stats, I guess, to share.
This this is the one I justwanted to though was 86 percent
of y'all and we're gonna cally'all breakers now.

Stephen Kraig (00:48):
Oh, I like that. I like that.

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

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

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

Oh, well, I like it. I was

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

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

Yes. So 86% of Breakers listen to the entire
episode. That's Every singlesecond of it.

That's that's honestly kind of crazy because
because in some of the otherstats I've seen in just podcast
in general, the numbers arenever that intense. Intense in
terms of, like, how long peopleactually listen. 86% of y'all
listen to the whole episode, sothank you.

Yeah. Thank you so much because the average is
42%. Yeah. Yeah. So y'all y'allare dedicated.
Thank you, Breakers. We're gonnastart a email notification for
the podcast when it comes out.There's gonna be like a mailing
list you can sign up for. It'snot gonna have any new
information, it's just an emailthat goes out says that lets you

(01:56):
know that the podcast is liveBecause we're switching from
releasing on Tuesday mornings ofthe episode, we're switching
back to Fridays. So Friday atnoon, you can listen to our our
podcast.

Yeah. Great way to to, start the weekend.

Yeah. Great way to start the weekend. Start

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

And then please review the podcast. We haven't
had any reviews in a while. Soif everyone that that are
breakers that are on our forms,form.macro.com.talk every week
about the podcast, take sometime, go review the podcast, or
or just, like, click the starthing and just, like, type in a
period.

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

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

Yeah. Seems like a waste of your time.

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

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

(03:39):
If that's the case, I'm Itypically don't care about the
people who put 5 stars. It'slike, great. Everyone thinks
that. I go to, like, who'ssaying the one star? Like, what
about those people thought onestar was appropriate?
This is especially true with,like, okay. You you you wanna
pick up a bicycle helmet onAmazon, and you go and you find

(04:01):
the 1 bicycle helm helmet thathas 500,005 star reviews. Like,
what was the person who got thebad one? What are they saying?
You know?
Like, what are the outliers? Gotin

a bike wreck. Had brain damage now.

What? Oh. Yeah. Right.

Right. One star.

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

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

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

Yeah. Alright. So the food device design Derby,
we had we ran a contest earlierthis year. It wrapped up a
couple weeks ago. We're finallygetting to the episode where we
can actually talk about wrappingit up because we had a couple
guests, and then we had a weactually took a week off of
recording, and we had a wethat's when we posted the the

(05:01):
the Batman episode, which wasawesome.
I that I love that episode.

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. Idon't know. I I had a lot of fun
doing that one.

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 andback to the future and, like,
how much of it is real, like,actually came true? Like, the
little the little pizza they putin the microwave, and they they
press one button and it

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

Yes. Love it.

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

Miss well, that we don't have that yet,
unfortunately. Maybe we will bythe time we talk about it.

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

And so, yeah, if if you have any other ideas
of, like, singular topics likethat, let us know
atform.macfab.com. I keepplugging it. So we had 5 entries
to this contest. We we hadjudges that internal at Mac Crab
pick 3 of them through these,projects, and they ranked they

(06:17):
basically each judge picked 3and ranked them from 1, 2, and
3, and then, like, the firstplace got 3 points, the second
place got 2 points, 3rd placegot 1 point, and then I just
added up all the points from allthe judges, and then that
whoever had the most amount ofpoints won. Is that a good way
to explain it?

That that's how it works.

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 thetime to do it. Most of it was
the, order review and testengineers, And then we Erin
reviewed them, and she is, like,the facilities manager here at

(07:01):
MacroFab. Chris Church, our coother cofounder and chief
product officer spent some timeto review the entries.
And then Kalyn Smith, who was onthe podcast long time ago, she's
a software developer here atMacroFab, and she reviewed and
did the entries as well.

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

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 apiece of pizza in, and it will
keep it nice and warm so you caneat it for later?

It's empty. A pizza, a singular slice pizza
fanny pack with a heatingelement.

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

Oh, it actually, like, full on connects, and you
can get, like, stats on yourpizza?

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

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

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

What I really like about this project is okay.
The documentation that was putup on our forum is is is fairly
comprehensive, but it's alsocreative at the same time going
all the way from conception ofthe idea with, like, a full on
hand drawn, like, this is what Ithink it's going to look like on
the body. And it was, likesomething like this seems fairly

(08:41):
simple in terms of, like, itcould have just been, like, some
lines and, like, a triangle toshow the pizza. But, no, they
went through the whole exerciseof making a drawing with, like,
full color on it. I love it.
It's it's fantastic. Well, thisis this is spot on exactly what
we were looking to have donewith this pro with this whole
contest.

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

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

And you can have different temperatures
depending on the slice.

Oh, okay. What would be cool get this. Not
every not every topping on pizzalikes to stay in, like, a warm
state for a very long period oftime. Right? Like, some of some
some toppings can get soggy orthey get really kinda gross or
gummy or something.
It would be cool if there was anupgraded version of this that

(09:52):
was higher power that when youwere thinking about that slice,
you could throw some moretoppings in and and, like, cook
them real fast and and then havethem ready and and more fresh.
That would be cool. I mean,walking around with, like, a 200
watt heater on your chest mightnot be the best idea.

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

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

A second place the judges picked was Jov Aqua.
So Jov Aqua is it's kind of aninteresting project it's a way
to refill an automatic coffeemaker but automatically

Yeah. Like like a like a a Keurig. You know, we we
have a Keurig at my house, and Ithink at best, I can get 3 cups
of coffee out of it before Ihave to refill the water tank.
And so it's it's certainly aperception thing, but it it
feels like every time I need acup of coffee, I have to fill it

(11:02):
up. And I have thought of thisexact project multiple times of
like, hey.
Wouldn't it be awesome to createsomething that just autofills?
And lo and behold, the Java Aquasolves that or scratches that
itch. Yeah. And they built a astandalone, like,

it has an enclosure, screen firmware and
there was a unique way of howthey were measuring the water so
it wouldn't overflow. What wasthat?

Wasn't there there's a water level sensor
placed within the coffee makerwater container.

Yes. Yeah. Because I think he was
mentioning or they werementioning that some these kind
of units exist, but some of themuse like a float, like a toilet
bowl float. Yeah.

Yeah.

But that can get, like, stuck. So

Right. Right. Which okay. So so somewhat
funny. I I installed about amonth ago.
I installed an RO water systemin my basement with a 15 gallon
storage tank, And the solutionwas using a float valve, such
that once it tops itself off, itcloses off the valve. But I've
thought of this multiple timeswhile putting installing this

(12:15):
system was like, if this floatvalve just decided to not close,
This water system would justkeep producing and and cranking
out water all over the place.Javaqua is is, once again, funny
enough, something I've I've I'vethought of multiple times for
other projects, but this one inparticular is like, oh, man. I

(12:36):
would love something like thisthat is more controlled and
prevents overflow situations,which is exactly what was one of
the main features of this.

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

Right.

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

One of the things when I was reading through this,
one of one of the one of theideas that came to mind when I
was looking through this projectwas because it has a brain in it
and it's it's intelligentenough, I would actually
consider putting a timer in thefirmware for this. And and
timing, how long does it take tofill an entire tank of of water?

(13:34):
And anytime this device goes todo a fill operation where it
turns on the valves and allowswater to flow, I would start a
timer and restrict it to thatmaximum time that I had
empirically found. Such that ifthere was an issue, the absolute
worst case overflow situation isyou would dump one full tank.

(13:57):
But in most situations, thatwould not be the the case,
obviously, because there's asensor.
But but having that extra levelof software protection that even
though it's a bad thing to getwater all over the floor, the
worst case would be one fulltank worth.

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

Just nonstop. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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

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 Ithought was really cool about
this project is that the personwho designed it, first of all,
they started years ago. In fact,they said, I started developing
the Bar Buddy right before COVIDwhen I thought it would be fun
to have a personal bartendingmachine at home. So the cool

(14:58):
thing about this project is notonly, you know, was it a first
place win, but it's also acompletion of a project that's
been going on for a long time.
So that gets big thumbs up fromfrom my side. But, also, the
person who designed it was amechanical engineer who admits
that they that electronicswasn't necessarily their cup of
tea. The nice thing or thereally cool thing about it is

(15:21):
there's a lot of really goodelectronics work in here,
including a lot of coding goingon and, like, custom gooeys and
and, you know, everything doneon our Raspberry Pi. It's really
freaking cool.

I I do like they have a show off the
iterations of the GUI. Yeah. AndI love how the first iteration
is totally what an engineerwould make.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I have written
software that looks just likethat. Absolutely.

And then, of course, the second iteration
does actually yes. It's so funnythat 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 softwarethey were using for the Python
because it was Python

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

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

You know, a a lot of times with all that gooey
stuff, in my experience, youspend you spend a ton of time
just getting it to initiallywork, And then you get your your
actual code to function, andthen you spend a ton more time
after that getting it to looknice. That's usually, like, the
progression of how gooey's endup, at least for me.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the the the bar buddy has, what is, 8
different pumps and basicallykeeps 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 youwant, but then you can add
parameters to the drink whereyou're if you want I like this

(17:03):
drink, but I want it to be alittle stiffer. You can apply
that parameter, and it willadjust how it makes the drink
for you, which is pretty cool.

I would like a tequila sunrise plus plus.

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

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

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

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

Well, before we do that, congratulations to all
the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placewinners. Thank you for, entering
and for all the hard work youput into it. These were not
simplistic projects, and theyprobably took a lot of time. So
thank you.

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 previousepisode. That was our first
entry, and that is like acylindrical tube that is an air
fryer.
So you can cook you can fry upsnacks On the go. On the go. And

(18:31):
the second one was it's hot dog.It's a state of the art device
that solves the pressing issuein our society, hot dog
detection. When I saw this one,I I I shared it with, like,
everyone here at Macra Fab.
I'm like, this is one of thefunniest things I've ever seen

(18:51):
someone enter into one of ourcontests. What it is is it's a
it's a camera with AI, customelectronics, and it detects if
some if an object is a hot dogor not. There's a there's a so
that's my pick is for the thecircuit break favorite is the
hot dog detector. It has acustom p so the reason why I'm

(19:16):
picking that over over the thefryer is the hot dog actually
has a custom PCB and is shown towork. Like, the video is
actually really well done forit.
And I like how it's just calledthe hot dog pie shield v 1 is
the circuit for it. Yep. And itjust says

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

Whereas the pocket fryer isn't shown to
work. I would love to see in avideo of that's actually a thing
with all these projects isthere's always a there's a video
or demonstration of it actuallyfunctioning. Whereas the
PocketFire, unfortunately, justhas a prototype that is said to
work, but, you know, it's theInternet. I can't trust

(19:59):
anything. I can't even trust ifAI knows if it's a hotdog or
not.

So I am actually going to recuse myself from
this, from from the circuitbreak favorite pick. And the
reason why is because one ofthese 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'mgonna recuse myself from this,

(20:26):
so I will let Parker be thedeciding vote in that.

Oh, I'm I'm going for a hot dog. So
congratulations to hot dog, theAI hot dog detector.

I think I think that project I I lost it when I
saw that video come in justbecause of how ridiculous how
ridiculous the project is. So soso the the person who who made
the hot dog project, I I Ioriginally said, hey. We're
doing a pro a a contest if youwant to enter, and they thought

(21:03):
about it for, I don't know, a awhile. And I just love that the
end result is that this is whatthey came up with. Just a device
that detects if something is oris not a hot dog.
And and we made a joke actuallyafter the the project was
submitted. We made the jokeabout it would it be possible to

(21:27):
find a way to get the Hotdogproject onto a satellite, onto a
CubeSat, and send it up intospace and have it flip around
and view the Earth and confirmif the Earth is or is not a hot
dog.

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

No. No. No. No. We need the real pressing
questions here.
Is the Earth a hot dog or not?We still don't know until we
send the hot dog bot into intospace.

You know, I mean, can we crowdfund that? How
much does it cost to send aCubeSat?

I was looking it up actually just as out of a
joke. The the numbers are theythey 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 aCubeSat into space. So I think,
honestly, the the the probablythe best way to get something

(22:29):
into space is to find a collegestudent that is part of a
program where they send theirthing up and say, hey. How can
we tag along a hot dog bot onyour key set?
Because you

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

Oh, that's true.

And they can just and they can just always
detect if there's a hot dog ornot in that that web stream.

Yeah. You know?

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

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

the way.

Basically, it it takes an image, and then it
identifies a whole list ofanything that it realizes in
that image. And when they werelooking at this AI model, they
noticed that one of the thingsthat it is capable of detecting
is a hot dog. So they just put aflag for, did a hot dog show up

(23:42):
as one of the items? Butthere's, like, hundreds of other
items that it will, you know,detect or maybe not 100. I don't
know.
But but, apparently, that's theywere like, oh, hot dog done.
That's it. It's it's there'salready a hot dog AI model. Oh,
I freaking love it.

Yeah. So the winners, those those four
winners, they'll I'd probablywithin the next couple weeks,
we'll send out the prizes. I hadto finish building the trophies.
Alright. I have all the PCBs andeverything.
I said they get time to actuallybuild them. But, yeah, I I built
some custom PCBs and, like, a 3d printed base, and, like, the
PCBs light up and all thatstuff. A little cool I think

(24:21):
nice so if you go toform.macfab.com you can see the
trophy

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

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

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

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 itanymore, though.
I have to go look that up.

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

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

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

(25:51):
That would be funny. Like, thecat feeder one reminder. If If
you just finished it, you wouldget some you would get some
extra points for that. I loveit.

Honestly, if we if I wrote down what that
contest was called. I This isgonna kill me.

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

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

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

Yeah. Probably in a within a month or so. Yep.
Because we're trying to we'retrying to partner up with some
other companies and stuff withit too. So that's taking a
little longer.
But, yes, another contest. It'sgonna be, like, wearable IoT.
Man, that is such a cool name.Well, this is making for a great
podcast, isn't it? You wanna gointo our next topic?

(26:47):
Sure.

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 withthis, but I actually kinda had a
little bit of an argument in ourengineering department the other
day about manufacturing filesfor for PCB and PCA work. And it

(27:12):
really brought up a question ofthe files that we create for
PCAs and PCBs, specifically fabdrawings and assembly drawings.
We kinda went around theengineering department and
started asking the question, whydo we even do it? Like, what's
the purpose of actuallyproducing these files? And

(27:35):
especially with it being 2024,which I I hate it when people
say it's year x, y blah blahblah. But I I figured it would
be fun to say that. The the thereal question is, like, what is
the purpose of creating assemblyand fabrication drawings?
And is there a better way wecould be doing this? Doesn't it

(27:57):
seem at least in in in from myopinion, it seems that our our
manufacturing of PCBs is prettydamn standardized. You can go to
any contract manufacturer andsay the same thing to them, and
it typically means the samething to every single person.

(28:17):
Why is it that these assemblyand fabrication rules or
drawings or information, why isthat not baked into it, into our
EDA tools? Tools?
I do know that, you know,fabrication and assembly
drawings are kind of one of theareas where you get to explain

(28:37):
to your Centimeters things thatare unique about your design.
And I do understand there'splenty of, the the the there
there's usefulness in that, andI understand that that that
that's a place that is outsideof the digital world where you
can give instructions that areunique to whatever your design
is. But in my experience, it'sactually semirear that you need

(29:01):
to tell your Centimeterssomething that is so unique that
you need a a specific drawingfor it. Now at the same time, I
can understand that afabrication or assembly drawing
is a controlled document thatyou can have reviewed and
approved and, properly releasedwithin your company. And so that

(29:24):
that does give weight to why wewould create something like
that.
But I have not experienced anEDA tool yet that kinda has a
single button click that justcraps out everything you you
need for

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 tracewidth and that kind of stuff in
there.

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

Yeah. 2. Yeah.

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 goon drawing. So, it like, I we
were talking about this just theother week. I could totally see
an EDA tool having a wizard thatsteps you through, and it says,
does your board need blind,buried vias?

(30:28):
And you click yes or no. Doesyour board need IPC class 2? And
you click yes or no. And then itgoes and it spits out an
assembly drawing for you and andA

PDF. Yeah.

Yeah. A PDF that Yeah.

It's funny because

does it all.

Is is at MacroFab, that's kind of what
the macro platform does is giveyou that wizard.

You know, and and that was something I was gonna
get to. The MacFib platform isyour assembly drawing
effectively.

Effectively, yes. Yeah. So, like, when you
upload your your Gerbers or yourdesign file, like, if it's KiCad
or Altium or whatever, and thenit it will give you all the
specifications, and and click Iwant IPC class 3 or my I need
that I need enig finish I needall this stuff and then because
what happens on the back end iswe standardize all that

(31:18):
information and actually producea assembly draw well, it's not
really assembly drawn. Anassembly document

Right.

That goes to the fabs that's standardized.
Right. So we take all thisinformation and standardize it
into one format. And that's whatthese drawings are supposed to
do. My favorite thing though ismost CMs, I found, do not read
these assembly documents

Right.

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

Mhmm.

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

Mhmm.

Like, their drawing frame, and it will have
completely conflictingspecifications for this draw for
this PCB.

Right.

Like, it'll have different stack up or have,
like it's calling out leadedhassle. We're, like and then the
PDF says that they sent us saysthey want finish. Like, almost I
wanna say at least half of thepackages that we look at have
conflicting information likethat. And when we bring it up to

(32:50):
customers, most of the time thecustomer will be like, oh, just
use the PDF that which is that'sthe newest thing.

The old drawing.

Ignore the old drawing. The old drawing is
there because it's an artifactthat someone set up ages ago,
and we don't use it anymore.It's just part of our
manufacturing, which is, by theway, insanity to think about
that your manufacturing packagehas conflicting information in
it. It should not. It shouldnot.
It should be, what you'retalking about earlier, a

(33:19):
controlled document Yeah. Thatis approved and is correct.
That's the why you that's whyyou do it. And so you can say,
this is what we want to buildand has everything in it, all
the information required tobuild it.

Well and and and the both those drawings,
fabrication for PCB and assemblyfor PCA, both of those drawings
are the engineers way of tellingtheir production or no. Sorry.
Not production. Procurementteam, this is what I wanna buy.
Such that the person who goesout and buys the board doesn't
have to know all the intricaciesof it.

(33:56):
They have a drawing thatliterally says, get it with
these specifications. And thatwould be amazing and fantastic
if we lived in a world wherepeople cared about making sure
that information was right onthose drawings. But as Parker
was saying, maybe 50% of themare wrong. And so having worked
at multiple CMs, I'veexperienced that too where I get

(34:17):
a drawing and the very firstthing in my mind isn't, oh, I'm
gonna look at this drawing andfollow that. It's I have to
check this drawing for thisperson who gave it to me,
because I can't trust that theydid it correctly, because the
the the initial or the theoriginal intent of an assembly

(34:38):
drawing or a fabrication drawinghas lost its meaning.
They don't mean the same thingthat they used to. Some people
think that they are gospeltruth, and they will completely
go thermal nuclear if you failto do something on that drawing.
And then like Parker said, somepeople are like, oh, no. Just
ignore it. I'm sorry that I evensent it to you.

Right? Yeah. And because yes. Because there
is that small percentage whenyou bring this up that there's
conflicts in their theirassembly draw or in their in
their manufacturing files is sosome of them say ignore the old
stuff. Yeah.
Another majority says, oh, thankyou for bringing that up. We
didn't know there was a problem.And they go and fix it on their

(35:20):
end. Right. Great.
But then there's that'sactually, 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 getspissed off.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, they they basically just rip you
and say, what do you meanthere's conflicts? Right. Right.
Like, something that we didwrong.
Like, we might get one of those,which is very

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

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But then we also get a small
subset that is, like, we didn'tknow there's a problem. Our
Centimeters just took care of

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?
Because we as

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

Right.

Like, did they use the old one or they use

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

We're usually that pops up. We're like, can
you, like, send a picture ofyour board

so we can figure

out what the old Centimeters did?

Right. Which which okay. That's the that's
the mark of a good Centimetersif you ask me where they're
like, okay. There's a conflict.We're gonna let you know.
We're not just gonna plowforward 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 foryou in terms of we'll tell you

(36:44):
what you need to go change onyour document.
You know? It's not your job tochange their document for them.
But but

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

I mean Trust me. I have 2. I trust me. But but
but but it it I hadn't eventhought about it until earlier
today where I was like, wait.Why are our EDA tools not
producing this thing that peoplethink is a 100% must have?
That makes no sense to me.

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

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

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

it. Okay. So ODB will Or can. ODB has effectively
your Gerbers. It has yournetlist.
It has your bill of materials,and it has your stack up. So it
has it has some of the itemsthat are in there, but I don't
think it has all of them.

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

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

Okay. Material for the substrate.

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 thattells somebody how you want your
thing to be assembled. Right?
The funny thing is having workedat the Centimeters, I I will get

(38:38):
assembly drawings, and then Iwill get extra drawings that are
like, here's how you assemblethis thing. It's like, well,
wait. Shouldn't these be onething? Shouldn't these just be
the assembly like, take forinstance, you have through hole
parts that need to be they needto be soldered at a certain
height off the board. So youhave to have a little jig or a

(38:58):
little fixture or tool orsomething that sets the height
of the parts off the board.
In my opinion, the assemblydrawing is actually a really
great place to put that becausethat's how you assemble the
board kind of thing. But I'vehad so many situations or
experiences where I'll get anassembly drawing, and then I'll
get this other word document orthis PDF that's like, here's how

(39:18):
to assemble these LEDs. And soonce again, it just goes back
to, like, why why do we havethese assembly drawings if we're
not using them for what they'resupposed to be used for? And and
I'll call out one other thingthat I recently ran into that
sort of grinds my gears. But onan assembly drawing, you

(39:39):
typically show an a a top andbottom view of your PCBs, or at
least that's the traditional wayof doing it.
Right? And you give referencedesignator indicators on that
image, shall you say? Okay. PCBsare at the point now where I

(39:59):
mean, they've been this way fora long time, but most PCBs are
so dense that it makes no senseto actually put all the
reference designators on an 8and a half by 11 piece of paper.
Because if you print it out, youit's you couldn't make the the
font small enough to actuallyput everything on there.
There's just no way for it toactually be readable. And so I

(40:23):
can understand, you know, ifwe're talking about a through
hole assembly from the eightiesor or or whatnot, where you have
giant resistors and everythingspread out, and it's like, oh,
this is where r one goes, andthis is where c 10 goes. Like,
that's a great situation whereyou can pull up the assembly
drawing and say, yes. I seewhere these reference
designators are. But on thesethey're trying to think of,

(40:44):
like, a reference designator ona motherboard for a for a PC.
Like, what the assembly drawingisn't gonna tell you anything
about that, but yet we are suchsticklers for having to do it a
very particular way becausewhat? Because tradition? Because
that's how it's always beendone? Because that's what the

(41:04):
Centimeters expects? Like, whatis the purpose of us actually
doing it?
Because this is burningengineers' time for what
purpose. I know I I probablysound like I'm going around in
circles here, but it's this isreally this is really starting
to bother me now that we don'thave a better solution for this.

(41:24):
And this is not a plug forMacrofab, but we don't have a
better solution other than whatMacrofab has put together.
Because I think you guys have itright, because you do show
reference designators. You doshow, like, r one goes here and
c ten goes there, and then allof basically, like I said, you
guys have created the wizard forstepping through your assembly

(41:45):
drawing.

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

Right.

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

Or that's the, quote, proper way.

Sure. If you wanna say proper way.

I that's why I said quote.

We we had a we had a podcast a long time ago,
and we had it was with ChrisGamble, and he had a quote that
he said, which was it'straditions peer pressure from
the dead.

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

the name of the podcast episode too.

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

Yeah. And, apparently, it's a quote from
something else because justgoogling that has, like, a bunch
of other results that's not ourpodcast, which is a shame.
Chris, you stole it fromsomewhere. But I think that's
that's kinda what

it is. I guess, hopefully,

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

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

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

Mhmm.

Maybe I should. I probably should. I probably
should go look and what it canhandle there and Maybe poke our
product team to be like hey Youshould like try to pull that
stuff in automatically so ourusers don't have to like click
those buttons But, yeah, I don'tknow if it handles it natively
or not, or, like, how would youeven send that information to
that package generator?

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

you. Yeah.

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 andmake that a controlled about an

(44:30):
about an assembly drawing otherthan it looks like all the ones
that came before it? Right?
So it so it looks right. Itlooks engineer y.

It it that's what it is. But it goes back to
a control document. Yeah. It issomething that you can stamp and
say, this is what we want to getbuilt.

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

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

Right. Right. Or or half the time, like okay. Say
it's the 30th time you've builtthis board or whatever, and you
have a new purchasing team orblah blah blah, and they don't
even know that the assemblydrawing is part of the design
package. They just kick it offto the Centimeters like they've
done, you know, a 100 times inthe past.

(45:24):
Yeah.

Yeah. I would I would say the biggest thing is
on on the the kicking it off isjust the design document or or
the assembly document is yougotta make sure it's correct.

Mhmm.

That's that's where it's getting me is or,
like, they up like, they makethis, like, crappy PDF slash,
like, word doc Mhmm. That goesalong 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.
It's I think it's just peerpressure from the dead man.

You you know, one of the things we've implemented
at work that I actually reallyappreciate, and it seems like it
seems way over the top. Butevery time now we go out to
order a board, we call a meetingwith the responsible engineer.
That's whoever designed theboard. They get he they get a

(46:24):
few people in the in the room,and they pull up the assembly
drawing, and they read it, andthey say, is this what we want
to buy? And everyone in the roomhas to say, yes.
All of the notes on here are isis is what we want to buy. Even
if it's a rebuy of the thing, Westill walk through it, and
everyone goes, that's that's it.Go and buy it. And I like that.

(46:47):
It seems like a, like, a ton ofextra work, but, you know, like,
in that sense, we're treatingthe assembly document like it's
the the most important part ofthat.
And and I think that's that'sreally valuable, But I could
also see people thinking, like,that's just a massive waste of

(47:09):
time.

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

Agreed. And, you know, I've worked with CMs that
think that they're mostimportant thing ever, and I've
worked with CMs that are like,yeah. Sure. Just give us the
information in an email, andthat's good enough. Right?
And I'm not saying one isnecessarily better than the
other. It it it certainly justdepends on what you're trying to

(47:37):
get manufactured. I do wish thatthere was more emphasis, like I
said, from EDA tools onproducing that information
because it is still thosedrawings are still generally
considered the standard.

Yeah. And you talk about it. The reason why
this is so weird is people wouldjust type them out in text in a
certain like, in a specificlayer in their EDA tool. Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like adocument layer, and then it just
gets exported out as part as aGerber, which the fact that you

(48:20):
can't even, like, search it inin a text editor.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

It's a visual document that that displays
text.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vectorized text.

It kills me.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right.
Well, okay. So that thatactually goes back to double e's
using EDA tools as drawingsoftware.

Yes. No. That's a 100% at at that point. Yeah.
You know, I just came up with anidea.
I wonder if I shouldn't say thisin the podcast.

Oh, what's up?

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 thensee if you can oh my. Oh, I'm
writing this down.

I'm gonna

try this out.

So so I'm I'm curious from all of our
listeners or, I guess, all ofour breakers. What are your
thoughts on these drawings? Doyou have to produce them for
your your day job? And if youdo, are you pro them, or do you
think that there's anothersolution that we should be
doing? I really would love tohear people's thoughts and and

(49:38):
and see if there's, like, atrend and see if people, like,
absolutely love them and wannaspend more time doing them or
just absolutely hate them andwant a more automated solution.
So forum.macrofab.com. Go to ourcommunity and, let us know your
thoughts on assembly andfabrication drawings. And if you

(49:58):
have a better solution, if youhave some wacko thing that's
like, this is the way that Ithink we should do it, let us
know.

So thank you for listening to circuit break
from MacroFab. We're your hosts,Parker Dillon. And Steven Craig.
Later, everyone. Take it easy.
Thank you, yes, you breaker, fordownloading our podcast. Tell
your friends and coworkers aboutcircuit break, the podcast from
Macrofab. If you have a coolidea, project, or topic you want

(50:28):
us to discuss, let Steven and Iand the community know. Our
community, where you can findpersonal projects, discussions
about the podcast, andengineering topics, and news is
located atform.macfab.com. Giveus a review too.
We need those reviews.

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