Newbury Innovation Electronic Design

What is the difference between copyrights and patents?

The terms patent and copyright are familiar to most of us as types of intellectual property protection, but it can be hard to know exactly which one applies when it comes to your own work. The short answer is that patents protect a physical invention whilst copyrights protect expression and creativity, and so the intellectual property in question will determine which type of protection is required.
What can be copyrighted?
To gain copyright for your work, it must be an original creation and fi…Read More

Designing the fit between PCBAs and mechanical assemblies: often overlooked.

There are two common issues associated with designing and manufacturing products that have PCB (printed circuit boards) in them:

Fitting of the electronics in the box or its associated mechanical assembly
In among the challenging and fascinating digital signal processing, sensitive signal analysis, advanced firmware, etc. the problem of making sure the PCBA (assembled PCB) will fit seems trivial: so sometimes no one does the groundwork. The product is made, and the PCB will not fit in the …Read More

A Basic Overview of the Process of Design to Manufacture for Electronics

When an engineer first starts the development of an electronic circuit, the terminology, data and general knowledge of manufacturing processes can be overwhelming. That said, the basic structure and the processes that must be followed are quite straightforward really, it’s just a question of having them explained simply: this is the purpose of this post.
If your design is straightforward the advice in this post is probably adequate – you don’t need to follow the follow-on post links I’ve placed…Read More

A View of Development Costs

Many organisations developing products are faced with an immediate dilemma: How much will it cost and how long will it take? The quandary doesn’t stop there because it is always necessary to balance risk against gain by introducing milestones at which viability and feasibility can be checked, and if there is limited knowledge of the route the project’s likely to take everything becomes problematic.

In this post (diagram below), I have tried to outline the major stages, costs and deliveries fo…Read More

Design for Manufacture (DfM): electronic component selection

As most of us know, the supply of electronic components is relatively unreliable (parts becoming obsolete, suddenly going out of stock with a long lead time, etc.). Fortunately, there are a couple of simple rules that can mitigate this commercial risk, and both have their root in the design function.

Use PCB Train for less demanding components

Pull up resistors, decoupling capacitors and any other component in a design that really doesn’t require the highest specification, should all be pi…Read More