Do You Need to Be a Genius in Electronics?

Absolutely; I think the bulk of those guys who want to do sustaining engineering are typically the one who got their EE degrees because "it's a good field to be in" -- not because they loved designing things. The same goes for software, and I think it's one of the reasons software today tends to be so buggy -- too many guys working on it think of it as "just a job" and were never particularly passionate their CS studies in school.

Risk should be a consideration if you're volunteering to do something you've never done before, although my experience there is that often times if you manager could really understand how much schedule/technical risk you've just undertaken by committing to designing the warp drive part of the Enterprise, he'd probably just be designing it himself anyway. :-)

Then again, today many companies begin a contract with the assumption that if the specs can't be met, they can always be re-negotiated; I'd be willing to bet that the companies that the likes of Joerg and Jim T. here presided over didn't operate with that business model.

---Joel

I've never met a design engineer who didn't want to design, at least at some point. Like I said earlier, I have no idea why I'm getting the nice assignments and the more "senior" guy takes all the crap jobs.

I'm at a point now that I really don't care that much if they fire me or not (SWMBO will disagree). There was such a time, but having made the first retirement threshold cured me of that. ;-) I took this job to do what I wanted to do and will find another, if need be.

I've done that, though I was a regular employee. I had no idea how to do the job, but I knew I could figure it out. It didn't work out so well once (ran out of time), but I just moved onto the next challenge.

That's what "they" say: "First, write the user manual!" Next time I do any asm, I'm going to write the comments first, probably in pseudocode, although I find when I'm trying to write pseudocode, it usually comes out in "C". ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Don't forget rec.crafts.metalworking, although those tinbenders can be a lot harsher. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

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Programmable Gate Array. Pin Grid Array. Professional Graphics Adapter

-- Joe

No. In kindergarten, I had a fun little session with some guy who had some blocks and a stopwatch, and various other toys and things. I didn't find out until much later into my adulthood, that it was an IQ test. I had scored 144.

It was a real SOB - for the rest of my life until I left home, my folks kept saying "You have such a great potential!" (undercurrent being, "Why are you such a disappointment?" - that's the part that stuck.)

I got into electronics when my older brother built a crystal set (ca.

1957), and I wanted to find out how those three or four components and an earphone picked up the local AM station.

I've been obsessed with electronics ever since, but I really don't blame my IQ for that, just fascination with "how things work." When I was a kid, we had a BIG pocket watch - we (my older brother, my older sister, and I) used to take it apart, spin the little gears and stuff like tops, and so on, then put it back together. It always worked. ;-)

And an astronomical IQ is no substitute for common sense.

If you love doing it, keep doing it, and don't worry about money. If money is your goal, then get a job as a bank teller, and work your way up to embezzler. >:->

Hope This Helps! Rich

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Yup. And then, when you look at it two years later and go WTF? ... the time spent commenting increases. :-(

Ed

When I learned C, I had a "mentor" behind me and K&R at my elbow. The mentor showed me how to use printfs to debug, but didn't say anything about writing it right in the first place. (I learned that much later.) One day, I was writing a for loop, and he said, "Oh, Ick! A for!" In my book, "for" beats "while" hands down. ;-)

Yes, I love to program, but I also love to deliver bugless code.

I've even written some perl, which as everyone knows, is the acronym for "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister." ;-)

Cheers1 Rich

Not to mention the health problems:

"While U.S. life expectancy is 77.6 years, recent studies suggest the average for NFL players is 55, 52 for linemen".

Most of the grumpy old f*rts on usenet would already be dead.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

wrote

a

I like to cover the code and just read the line-by-line comments. OTOH, the heading comments are likely more useful in the long run.

That's because C *is* a pseudolanguage! :^)

C++ at least... but that's a topic for another thread.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

Let's see what we got here...

- Your lab desk is from IKEA, right? I had the same one before.

- Your Mantis Elite microscope is very nice. I've used similar monocular before. It's very comfortable to my eyes using these monocular scopes than my inspection binocular scopes. $2,000 Unless you need real high-power magnification I like this type better. Binocular type is good, but after our technitian went home when I use her microscope I have to adjust the eye piece distance because most women generally have shorter distance than me. Next morning, they would tell me "did you use my scope last night?" With monocular type, you don't have to worry about that.

- That multimeter looks like an Agilent, but must actually be the BNC 1201. $800 I'm still stack with HP3478A.

- The big Tektronix must be 11802. I don't even know the price. But wait, that sticker might indicate this is a rental one. Or is that cal date sticker? In any case, a nice quipment.

- The small Tek is your TDS2012, I guess.

- You have the same Techspray freezer 1672. $10 These people must be making tons of money out of this product.

- That Stanford Research thing must be the CG635 clock generator. Very sweet one. $2,500

- You have to have a Metcal solder station on your desk. Even there are Metcal power supplies in your lab, I have often find that many people who own the supply tend to hide the solder tips locked in their desk before they go home. So I had to have my own tips even though I don't own the power supply myself. Some people leave a large solder ball on the tip and remember the shape of it before they go home. I was once tempted to making a similar solder ball after I used someone's soldering station, but then I felt pathetic to do that.

- You have the same vise and C-clump that I use at work.

- Mmmm... I don't see anti static mat on your bench, nor do I see a wrist strap!

Atsunori

Sometimes(often times?) experienced tech people know better from some aspect about our circuits, and they try to adjust certain things so that prototyped circuit actually works. Like shielding or power cable wire gauge selection, etc... If I don't do it myself I might not be paying attention to that sort of things until production starts.

Besides, I was never confortable with interactions like following.

"Can you install a 11K ohm resistor to R13 for me?" "It's ready, Asunori" "Thanks" .... "Can you change R13 to 12K, please?" "It's ready, Atsunori" "Thanks" .... "Could you install a 13K, instead?" ....

I just want to do it myself.

When I started, I though engineering is the center of everything. But it didn't take too many years that my employer wasn't thinking that way.

Atsunori

Sure

Is

Well, I'm 74 and still do a bit of design and make my own prototypes (thats the fun part) I use CAD and SPICE, but when I start scratching around the bald patch, I find pencil and paper very useful. I am not ashamed to use old application notes, because they often highlight snags I might not see from cold. I don't have much patience with collar and tie engineers passing on holy writ to the technicians, nor with union demarcation issues. These practices destroyed the British automotive, motor cycle and electronic industries, to name three.

The ideal is a symbiosis of skills with mutual respect. You will find this at a success story near you!

All the best Ian Macmillan

Yes. Every engineer has this same one. I think Ikea discontinued it. Pity, as it's very sturdy.

I think it's a Mantis "compact." I love this thing. My eyesight is terrible, so I work under it all the time.

I've used similar

Keithley 2000, which is the same as the BNC and a lot of others, all the same Chinese import. It was such a piece-o-crap that I sent it back to Keithley and got a made-in-USA Fluke.

Yes, 11802 from ebay. These are going for less than $1000, and you can get a sampling head for under 1K too.

On top the scope is one of our pulse/delay generators. Very handy hadget.

Right.

Great for zapping warts, too.

Right. Nice box, with their usual goofy human interface and a few electrical quirks. That's a 1 GHz square wave on the scope.

Metcals are great. We have lots of them. We don't skimp on equipment: people are the big expense, so it pays to use them efficiently.

Production does all that. I just touch the right things in the right sequence, second nature by now.

Maybe the best things about this setup are the parts cabinet to the left and the whiteboard to the right. I can draw and edit a schematic as I breadboard, scribble measurements and notes, and photograph everything - circuit, schematic, scope shots, tabular data, everything.

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BB_fast.JPG

John

I make it a point to let manufacturing build the first unit. That checks all the parts lists and assembly documentation and makes sure that I'm not assuming anything that could be misinterpreted. And it lets them pick up any manufacturibility issues.

And besides, there's no way I'm going to hand-assemble a board with

1100 surface-mount parts on both sides, including a few BGAs and leadless things. I even let them do all but the most trivial rework, since they are a lot better at that sort of thing than I am.

John

There's a ham fair in Oregon here each year where there's a guy who provides Metcals (and other soldering equipment) to contract manufacturers. He'll have literally hundreds of lightly-used tips for all of $3 each. One can stock up for life pretty cheaply...

Yabbut, it's more like heiroglyphics than any "real" language! ;-)

Cheers! Rich

If you Dremeled those rectangular outlines around the copper islands by hand, I'd say you've got a very steady hand there!