Surgeon – My Fallback Career

So I was knuckle deep in a crazy board rework today at work trying to fit a 1206 cap where it didn’t belong because it was left off the schematic and consequently the layout. About halfway through I realized that the rework I was performing required a pretty steady hand, like I imagined a surgeon would need. I chuckled to myself and tweeted that if being an EE didn’t work out I was going to become a surgeon as all the reworks I’ve done over the years count as practice.

Satisfied with my wittiness I pocketed my phone and continued on modifying the board. That would be the end of the story if my brain would ever let anything go. Instead I kept thinking about surgery the rest of the day and realized that actually, EEs are quite a bit like surgeons when you think about it.

• Operating Room & Table = Lab & Bench
• Scalpel = X-acto Knife
•  Heart Rate Monitor, O2 Monitor, etc. = Oscilloscopes, Multi-meters, etc.
• Cauterization Tool = Soldering Iron
• Nurses = Techs
• Tweezers, Hemostats, Cotton Swabs = Tweezers, Hemostats, Cotton Swaps
• Isopropyl Alcohol, Antiseptics = Isopropyl Alcohol, Board Cleaners
• Anesthesia = Flux (Just makes the whole process a lot smoother)
• Microscopic Surgery = Soldering & Scrapping under a microscope
• Defibrillator = ESD Gun
• Too much caffeine makes operating harder = ditto
• Sinus Rhythm = Steady State Response

So I guess all that’s separating me from becoming a surgeon is jargon am I right?

Expanding the Analog Geek’s Toolkit

So I spent the other weekend in Washington, D.C. visiting a friend for his birthday. While I was waiting for my plane to take off in RDU Alan over at Tektronix was kind enough to provide me with some pre-flight entertainment. Back in 1987, Alan assembled The Ultimate Analog Engineer’s Toolkit designed to provide solace to engineers dealing with such problems as noise, the Miller Effect, and management, among other things. My personal favorites were the box of dBs (positive and negative flavors of course) and the Parasitic Pesticide. I tried to order some samples directly from Alan himself but he said his stock has run dry. I hope he can get another shipment delivered in time for the holiday season.

Anyways, as I was sitting in the terminal after reading it and I started to come up with a few additions to the toolkit and I present them to you here.

The Low Flow Current Adapter – We’re all familiar with the low flow shower heads installed in bathrooms nationwide to reduce water consumption. The Low Flow Current Adapter works in much the same way only on current instead of H2O. Plug this bad boy in between the power source and your circuit and watch as your product’s power consumption plummets before your very eyes.

Frequency Shaper Tool – Sometimes designs run over budget and when this happens you can’t always afford the box of high quality dBs needed to make a circuit meet the required specs placing a lot of “hertz” on you the designer. This is where the patented Frequency Shaper Tool comes in handy. While not as precise as a Box of dBs its low cost and reliable performance makes it ideal for the engineer on a budget. The Shaper allows a designer to grab a hold of an amplifier or filter’s frequency response and bend it to the desired shape. Need to nudge a zero in the stop band? Squeeze just a little more rolloff out of a filter? Reach for the Frequency Shaper and bend a transfer function into submission.

DocuGel – Come across an old PCB, product, or IC and have no idea what it does or how to use it? Did someone who’s clearly not as bright as you are forget to document their work and now the burden to upgrade the device is on you? Spread some DocuGel on the offending product and leave it sit overnight on your bench. Return the next morning and find datasheets, BOMs, gerber files, and schematics laying on your bench!

Grounding Stakes- Nasty PCB layout causing you problems? Is your circuit’s performance suffering at the hands of ground refusing to sit at 0V? Pound a ground stake into an open portion of your board and watch your problems disappear. Let your circuit know you only accept 0V, no more, no less.

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