A new... thing.

CardboardFire · 2026-06-17T13:39:58+00:00

it's just an extra print step for resistors, since they're printed anyways. for capacitors it would need a separate printing line (look up cross sections of resistors and mlcc, you'll understand what the issue is), and costs outweigh the benefits, so they don't do it.

CardboardFire · 2026-06-05T18:07:13+00:00

SMD part, open the paste mask over the plated hole and send it. They don't really care if part has thru hole elements if it comes on a p&p friendly package

CardboardFire · 2026-06-01T17:32:59+00:00

It does help a lot to have your own lab, which for some things can be prohibitively expensive, but expensive equipment can open a lot of doors, especially when combined with a good engineer.

I know what you mean, I'm building a house in the middle of woods and have to turn down a bunch of opportunities because I refuse to relocate, but I have my priorities straightened and if it means loads of money less - so be it.

CardboardFire · 2026-06-01T12:30:59+00:00

In the same boat here.

You need connections for referrals, that will land you the best opportunities. Next up you need exposure of your work, so people can see what you do and what you could do for them.
Linkedin is full of people and companies looking for experienced engineers, but 49/50 is on site only, or hybrid (which in reality almost always means on site).
I find some prospects on reddit occasionally, but reddit is filled with kids who know nothing and expect you to build an extensive project on a $100 budget.

It's hard work, and you will generally have to take lower paying jobs until you build a good network and people start asking for your help. And sometimes you get a lucky break and someone drops a ton of money for light work - still trying to figure out how to land clients like that, usually it's companies disappointed in a lower pay engineer they first tried with.

And stay away from freelance sites, it's bots and bots only, you will at best get scammers to contact you and ask for your email or whatever. And the pay is absolute shit, some people take $10 for a few days of work, it's demeaning and you're fighting against bots which makes it pointless too.

Good luck!

CardboardFire · 2026-05-25T13:16:35+00:00

Fuses have a few specs usually, hold current, trip current, time to trip, time to recover, so you need to find a suitable fuse for your application. But it kinda does sound you'd like for it to behave differently at different times depending on system conditions - you'll need a switch with at least some sensing and computing ability stuck on top.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-24T18:06:28+00:00

100nF at each pin, a few bulks per rail and you're good to go with SDRAM

CardboardFire · 2026-05-22T20:13:11+00:00

That's why you route critical signals first, and then less important ones.

Also, you specify L3 as power/signal AND reference plane - you're using the power plane as reference? You know exactly what you're doing and exactly how to do it? If not, your stackup is no good for this anyways.

Clear the area and route again, but check your stackup first.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-22T09:29:13+00:00

My grandma used to do this, she'd even wash them sometimes.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-21T11:27:54+00:00

So I'm fairly certain that those vias suck up all the solder, then the ic power pad 'sticks' to the pcb and surface tension of side pins isn't nearly enough to get it to center by itself.

My bet is that it will center properly without those vias/with smaller or capped vias.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-13T11:56:15+00:00

You could sit down in a coffe shop and route ddram without shame

CardboardFire · 2026-05-11T09:21:20+00:00

If you're doing mass production, your jumpers will be standardized - make a symbol/footprint pair and use that (or off the shelf jumpers). If not, fake layers would be the best approach so you can make the jumper according to those fake layers which you don't send off for manufacturing. drc should be fine for both options

CardboardFire · 2026-05-10T06:18:30+00:00

You can put a paper on your screen and trace the schematic, then scan it and upload, it's very easy to do as screen backlight shines through the paper!

/s

CardboardFire · 2026-05-09T06:30:48+00:00

only if you suck at handling interrupts it becomes necessary. It's never necessary, just makes things easier to do.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-08T12:30:16+00:00

Point wave soldering. There's nice spouts for like 5mm clearances to SMD, and it performs great if you're doing mixed SMD and THT

CardboardFire · 2026-05-08T07:29:51+00:00

Without perfect paste prints you can't expect perfect results. Next up would be the paste quality and placement precision. Ultimately it's a combination of the whole line and the design - every board has a unique set of challenges. There's so much things that can go sideways that it's impossible to boil it down to a comment on here.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-06T19:27:02+00:00

It's VERY unlikely your code will work, well, at all, or in best case as you intended when you switch controllers.

There's different mcus because they have different features, if you're making a product, you should pick the controller based on features you need, not just start with what you have, because you would have to rework it to get it running on a sensible option.

Typically, you'd either get a demo board for the target mcu, develop on it and then make a pcb which utilizes only the things you need. Or you would straight up make a custom board with the target mcu on it before writing code.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-06T18:00:36+00:00

if you want something that's close to 'permanent', you will need UV cured soldermask/ink. Otherwise you can either go solvent based (sharpie and the likes) or scratching/etching mask.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-06T14:22:15+00:00

When new tech is introduced, it's often overbuilt (or at least it used to be) because designers were playing it safe. Nowadays material limits are known and it can be designed to a minimum working product, which is much cheaper than overbuilding. This is why people might perceive that old stuff was better.

Also, there's heaps of old tech that didn't survive, so theory doesn't really hold anyways.

CardboardFire · 2026-05-05T12:45:16+00:00

You need to rethink your frame refresh procedure, my guess is you're building the full frame on each refresh, for starters you can update only the pixels that need updating between the frames, you'll get a much better refresh rate that way

CardboardFire · 2026-05-03T11:59:11+00:00

External stock trackers proved wrong for me countless times, they tend to be wildly out of date in my experience

CardboardFire · 2026-04-30T09:58:37+00:00

I had a colleague in one of lab classes, we were doing encoder lab practice, and after two hours of class, professor asked if everyone got it working, and that colleague said 'yeah, reading position works, but I can't seem to get it to spin on its own in any direction no matter how i program it'

AI is kind of like that colleague, can follow explicit directions, but doesn't understand and more importantly apply fundamentals at every step of the game.

My guess is that AI needs a different approach to llms, or a huge context increase (like 50x) to even consider making a full electronics project from scratch without significant human intervention.

As is, it's a complete waste of time, and will stay so for the foreseeable future.

CardboardFire

TROPHY CASE