Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1381013
20 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2021 Star Date 1988 "We prefer to help ourselves. We make mis- takes, but we're human—and maybe that's the word that best explains us." —Captain James T. Kirk Now in the late 1980s, there's this new method for designing PCBs. I've looked at it. It's a new soware program called OrCAD that lets me export this file—ASCII, I believe—that has all the connections from the schematic, and then import this to the graphic layout portion of the program. is is a great time- saver, especially for doing the schematics and pre-sketch of my boards. It's a little slow on my new 286 computer because it uses a lot more memory space than AutoCAD does. Also, I can't get a good printout with the dot matrix printers for our photographers. e image is too grainy, even when reduced. Guess I'll still need to do a tape-up of the boards. Glad I got my EET degree, though, as these layouts are getting tougher. I keep getting asked if I know how to do a twisted pair on a circuit board. Don't know if that's even possible yet. And it would take up a lot of real estate to do some- thing like that. Finally! We got new inkjet plotters that cre- ate an image that can be photographically reduced. It's a bit of a slow method and we have to run the plotter overnight for some of the larger jobs. When no one is around, unfortunate events will happen. One design got totally stuck printing one hole pad many times over and made a mess of the plotter. Have to be careful not to put down multiple pads in one location as those plotters are expensive. But it sure makes great plots of schematics, and doing changes to the design are much easier now. Star Date 1998 "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" —Dr. "Bones" McCoy I'm a designer, not an engineer! Oh wait; I am an engineer now. I'm working with the Microso hardware team for mice, gaming, and keyboards. Good team of layout people we have here. I love the new soware programs I'm learning—P-CAD, Protel, more OrCAD, and PADS. I've been learning a lot about mass production from Tim Bucwalter. One of our other co-workers, LaVern Mullet, asks if I want to go check out this PCB design course. ey are going to have a three-day workshop next week and we could sign up for it now as they have a few spots open. Some guy named Dieter Bergman is going to be teaching it and he's supposed to know a lot about PCB design. Figure 1: 2008–2018 era: Philips electronic toothbrush.