Robust Electronic Design

I'm lazy, a cheapskate, and always have more projects that I want to do than I can possibly fit into my schedule or afford. Therefore when I *do* take on a project I want to do it as efficiently and effectively as possible. So I strive to:

• Eliminate unnecessary/ redundant tasks whenever and wherever possible.
• Do each necessary task right the first time, so I only have to do it once!

Even better than learning from my own hard experience, I have found, is to learn from other people's experiences. Especially when they are so kind as to write down what they have learned, and to publish it so that their hard-won knowledge is freely available to anyone who takes the time to read it.

Over the 29 years that I have been working full time in the electronics and computer industries, I have been directly involved in putting 110 complex electronic products into mass production:

• Developing firmware/ hardware/ software for 12 intelligent terminals, disk drives, tape drives, printers, and other peripherals at Sycor from 1973 through 1977.
• Personally developing 35 testers for 28 products, and debugging another 35 testers designed by other test engineers, for printers, electronic typewriters, keyboards, disk drives, and other peripherals at IBM from 1977 to 1990.
• Developing 35 power supplies, local area network (LAN) adapters and controllers for digital-office products at IBM and Lexmark from 1990 to early 2002.

• Reuse large chunks of my previous designs.
• Get a design almost perfect on the very-first try.
• Build sufficient flexibility into our first-pass prototypes, that with some component changes and maybe a little manual rework, we can get them fully functional, reliable, and meeting all (or almost all) of the applicable worldwide:
  • Product safety standards.
  • Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards.
  • Electromagnetic immunity (EMI) standards.
  • Electrostatic discharge (ESD) immunity standards.
  • Telecommunication standards.
• Learn so much from our first-pass prototypes that we can usually go into production on the second-pass, with no manual rework required.

We built 20 EVT cards just before Thanksgiving. By December 5 we had an In-Circuit Emulator (ICE) debugging boot code, and starting to load the operating system. Two weeks later we had 18 cards fully functional, having reworked the cards by drilling out one via, removing two resistors, cutting two traces, and adding three short wires. (We never did get the last two cards working.) Then our Industrial Design folks threw us a zinger-- they demanded that we shorten the card by 2.5" so that it would fit inside the smooth curves that they envisioned for the product's plastic covers! By putting in up to 19 hours per day in card layout, for a solid month, we just barely managed to shrink the card to 12.5" x 7.9" and still build our second-pass Design Verification Test (DVT) cards by mid-March 2001.
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This card went into mass production very smoothly on July 19, 2001-- just under one year from start to finish-- and recently received a Third Place in Mentor Graphics' 2002 Technology Leadership Awards program. In Spring 2002 Lexmark announced the X620e and X750e MFP's, which also use this controller card.

This breakneck pace of developing one huge controller card after another was affecting my health, which was already dicey from having been treated for colon cancer in 1995. So I jumped at Lexmark's offer of an unpaid (but with full medical benefits) Pre-Retirement Leave of Absence, to last until I reach age 55 and can officially "retire".

On December 7, 2001 I incorporated Robust Electronic Design, Inc., which I deliberately modeled after dBi Corporation. Don Bush, a valued coworker and good friend for almost 20 years, had formed dBi as an EMC consulting/ testing/ approval company after his retirement from Lexmark in 1995. I thought that Don had the ideal setup for an engineer who wanted to remain technical, but was tired of working for other people. Don wasn't in a position to bring me into dBi (my first hope), but he gave me a lot of advice and encouragement, and we discussed ways that the two companies could work together once I got things rolling.

Then, just before Christmas, Don died. I wound up buying dBi, because together I felt the two companies could offer clients a full range of services from literature searches for prior art, through design and development, testing and approvals, to failure analysis of manufacturing and field problems.

If you are involved in any kind of electronic design, and whether you are looking for help right now or not, I encourage you to look around our web site http://www.r-e-d-inc.com/ ( http://www.dbicorporation.com will also take you there). I will be adding to this web site as I have time, and as we run into interesting non-proprietary problems and solutions.

In addition to running two companies, going after ESD Engineer/ ESD Technician/ EMC Engineer/ EMC Technician certifications, and working on becoming a Registered Professional Engineer, I am doing research for my second technical book.

My first book, Electronic System Design: Interference and Noise Control Techniques, concentrated on designing electronic equipment to work.

My second book will focus on designing products and equipment to operate safely and properly under adverse conditions, while meeting worldwide legal requirements. A large part of the book will be based on the research I did while writing the article "Designing Electronic Equipment for ESD Immunity" for Printed Circuit Design magazine:

• Designing Electronic Equipment for ESD Immunity- Part 1.
• Designing Electronic Equipment for ESD Immunity- Part 2.
• Designing Electronic Equipment for ESD Immunity- Annotated Bibliography.

• Reading-- an average of over 300 books and over 900 magazines/ journals cover-to-cover every year, 95% of them on technical subjects.
• Writing about technical subjects-- many design guidelines, one book so far with another one started, magazine articles, and newsletter articles.
• Creating and maintaining web pages .
• Participating in amateur radio activities-- I'm active in the Bluegrass Amateur Radio Society (BARS) and the Pioneer Amateur Radio Club (PARC).
• Fox (hidden transmitter) hunting.
• Serving as the Hamfest Chairman for the Central Kentucky ARRL Hamfest, which attracts 650-750 hams each year. This August 3-4 we will be putting on the 2002 Kentucky ARRL State Convention in Lexington, Kentucky.
• Designing/ constructing/ testing antennas.
• Building/ enhancing the KY4ATV Amateur television (ATV) repeater.
• Participating in Blue Grass Mensa activities-- active for almost 20 years, and currently Webmaster, Assistant LocSec, Proctor Coordinator, Proctor, Secretary of the Singles Book Group, printer of Lexicom, and host of monthly Games Nights.
• Finding and buying technical books.
• Traveling and camping with my long-time girlfriend Carolyn (25+ years) in my 1995 Roadtrek Popular 190 motorhome "Trekkie"-- going metal detecting, and visiting family, zoos, museums, festivals, engineering libraries, used book stores and library book sales.
• Helping Carolyn with her web site.
• Building dulcimers.
• Woodworking.
• Metal working, welding, and blacksmithing.
• Collecting tools.
• Exploring, mapping, and protecting caves.