Suppose your job involves rapidly iterating designs or creating a wide variety of products for clients. In that case, there are some essential tools available that can save you a tremendous amount of time, bringing high engineering risk devices to completion successfully. Whether you&#;re working on internal projects or developing high mix devices for clients as a consulting or freelance firm, these indispensable tools will help you ship a higher quality product in less time.
GD-HUB contains other products and information you need, so please check it out.
The tools on this list target those who are not afraid to get their hands dirty and populate a PCB themselves. When you&#;re rapidly prototyping devices to get the design finalized, it can be tough to wait for a contract manufacturer to fit you into their schedule. Even if you use a contract manufacturer to assemble your board initially, you are still likely to swap components on the circuit board to optimize a design. So, these tools are always great to have, even if you have someone else doing the initial assembly.
I regularly use every product on this list for rapidly prototyping designs for my project articles on this blog. These are the essential items I use in every job, and the list is trimmed down to specific brands and products after trying multiple options until I settle on the ones that just work for me without hassle or frustration.
One of the most versatile tools in my rapid prototyping arsenal is the Voltera V-One. The V-One is a deposition system, which can print conductive circuits using a silver ink paste or print solder paste directly on a board. It can do with a reasonably high resolution allowing down to 0.5 mm pitch components to be prototyped directly.
You can also build double-sided boards with the drilling attachment using rivets for vias. I don&#;t see this so much as a tool for building whole circuit boards. Instead, for me, it&#;s always been a way to make a prototype of a high-risk section of schematic rapidly or to evaluate a range of devices that don&#;t have development kits available or where the development kits are highly priced or hard to source.
With the paste deposition, you can quickly prototype boards that fill in the printing area without the need of a stencil &#; you just load your paste layer into the control software, and a minute or so later, you have a board ready for the components. With its built-in heat bed, you can reflow the board directly using the V-One without needing to worry about an oven or any other reflow system. This can allow you to utilize local following-day board services so you can prototype with multi-layer boards that have impedance control and all the other bells and whistles you need for high-speed interconnects or other complex requirements.
For me, the V-One quickly pays for itself when compared to the time wasted etching simple breakout boards myself, the exorbitant prices charged for following day board services, or the project delays waiting for low-cost boards to come in from overseas.
For many years now, I&#;ve been a big fan of Weller stations. The WD1 series of stations were fantastic - however, for the past few years, I&#;ve been using the WT series ever since the WD stations were discontinued. The WT series has not had the same quality of life experience for me as the WD1 did - the station regularly goes to sleep when I&#;m in the middle of using it, and it just doesn&#;t seem to be able to smash heat into a big ground plane as I would expect it to.
After my Altium community got sick of me complaining about it every time I used it, many people highly recommended that I try the JBC soldering stations. So, I contacted them and found my local distributor. The pricing is almost the same as the Weller WT series; however, my experience of using it is vastly different. I&#;ve been highly impressed with the stations on each board I&#;ve used it with.
I&#;ve mentioned before in articles that I&#;m not a fan of thermal reliefs on any component pad. There was a discussion recently about thermal relief in my community. Many people said they are still living in thermal reliefs to making the hand assembly work for a technician easier. With the JBC station, I do not notice any differences between significant ground pours with many thermal vias and pads connected to a 0.2mm track. Soldering through-hole, grounded mounting tabs on a USB Type-A connector into a large multi-layer ground plane tool takes under a second per tab without having to preheat the board.
The Weller WT series continuously goes to sleep in the middle of soldering something; the JBC stations are far more intelligent. The station always puts the handpiece to a standby temperature when you place it in the cradle. With its rapid heat-up times, it recovers to maximum soldering temperature by the time you retrieve it from the cradle and get it to the workpiece. If you leave it for too long, it goes into a hibernation mode, ready to come back to life if you remove it from the cradle but sitting at room temperature, which only adds another 1.5 seconds or so to the heat up time. This is spectacular for conserving the tip life and saves me from going insane as the station does not shut down just as I&#;m about to finish soldering a component onto the board.
As a final set of satisfying bonuses when using the JBC, you can pull the soldering tip out of the pen without touching it, as the base has a point for grabbing a hot tip to allow rapid switching. If you&#;re clearing excess solder off your tip or getting rid of tarnished solder/crusty flux residue, then the station offers several methods. The traditional wet sponge has a home in the station, plus it has a high-temperature-resistant rubber lip for tapping excess solder off. Also, a brass wool sponge artfully hiding behind a rubber flap saves you from having specs of molten solder flying all over your bench.
When it comes to reworking boards or reflowing solder paste, nothing beats hot air for versatility. It can melt the solder itself or just add a bit of extra heat if you need it. I&#;ve used the 858D type hot air station for a decade or so now, sourced from several different brands. They are incredibly cheap and highly effective. You can reflow entire boards, no matter the size, with just this hot air station without any need for a preheater. It&#;s also perfect for using with heat shrink and clearing away hot glue cobwebs.
The hot air unit automatically cools down and goes to sleep when mounted on its rest (which I have attached to extrusion on my test equipment rack). This means you can leave the station permanently switched on without the risk of setting fire to your wall while you&#;re not using the unit.
You can buy kits with a vast range of ESD tweezers in all sorts of shapes and sizes from online marketplaces very cheaply, but unfortunately, the metals used in their construction are magnetic and not much stiffer than butter. They don&#;t spring well, their sharp tips bend with very little force, and are just not finished very well.
The Swanstrom 7-SAH has none of these shortcomings; they are not particularly expensive and offer good value for money. You won&#;t bend the tips just by jamming them into cut tape when you attempt to pull the cover tape off. They are also non-magnetic, so you won&#;t have to worry about components attaching themselves at the most inconvenient moment. Finally, all the metal is ground down to a smooth finish making them comfy to use and aesthetically pleasing.
As someone who can spend hours hand assembling boards, the large soft handle is a dream to use. The handles are also slightly textured, making them much more comfortable to grip than your typical epoxy-coated metal tweezers.
If you&#;re working with electronics and don&#;t have an ESD workstation, then you will want an ESD mat on your desk or work area. An ESD mat will help equalize potentials between you, objects on your desk, and the circuit you&#;re working on. So, as you generate a static charge, it will be grounded away from you. My desks feature relatively low-cost &#;house brand&#; vinyl mats from local electronics distributors, but I&#;m not typically working with high-cost, highly sensitive devices. As with all things, ESD mats and other ESD treatments for a lab come in a range of performance categories and price points depending on what level of ESD protection you require.
This is a tool I do not own, but it comes highly recommended from several reliable sources. I had discussed the possibility of adding a Vision Mantis scope to this list, but it&#;s an expensive piece of equipment that is not as versatile as other expensive items on this list. Several people suggested an autofocusing microscope from Aliexpress; there are quite a few on offer. However, one from Eakins Micscope Store was explicitly recommended by someone who has owned one. They said that it&#;s fantastic when mounted to a large screen for doing board assembly and rework, allowing you to work with small components much more efficiently without suffering eye fatigue.
I find these devices that have the autofocus unit in the camera body, moving the sensor rather than the lens up and down, really interesting. It allows many different lens options to be used - with an industry-standard C mount, the possibilities for using different lenses are endless.
With the basic tools out of the way, let&#;s dive into what, for me, is the meat of rapid prototyping: building prototypes. With the Voltera V-One, soldering station, and hot air rework station, we have ways to get things hot, but nothing yet to get hot.
I hear all too often of people hand soldering every single //QFN onto bare boards with a soldering station. If you have time to wait for a stencil to arrive or can make them in-house with your laser cutter, then using a stencil to print paste onto a board is by far the cheapest way to get production quality results by hand.
If your board fits in the Voltera V-One&#;s print area, you can use Voltera&#;s paste deposition feature. I can generally deposit paste with a V-One faster than set up a frameless stencil to print paste onto my board by hand. Still, the stencil can print more refined pitch components than the V-One can, so it all depends on the board and components I choose to use.
There are several things I love about GC10; firstly, it&#;s a room temperature paste. At past employers, having solder paste in the office fridge was considered a health and safety no-no (not very adventurous!). There usually wasn&#;t room to put a bar fridge or similar somewhere in the lab to store solder paste, which created a problem. GC10 can be stored at room temperature for up to a year, which is longer than many other pastes can be stored in a fridge. The second fantastic thing about GC10 is its very long open time; from the point when you apply the paste to your board to the time when you reflow, GC10 offers you a comfortable 8 hrs. &#; more than enough time to hand populate all but the highest component count boards.
If you are regularly hand assembling boards stretching the limits of GC10, it&#;s most likely going to be cheaper for your company to lease a pick and place machine like the Essemtec Fox. This is fast to set up, offers paste jetting capabilities, and is, most importantly, easy for infrequent or untrained users to operate successfully. The cost of labor when assembling boards by hand can be substantial.
If buying GC10 for the first time, aim for the higher mesh numbers (i.e., T4 or T5). This will allow pasting of smaller stencil apertures and is generally an easier product to work with, despite costing near enough the same amount of money. The half-kilogram tubs of GC10 are not cheap, but most labs will struggle to use all of that within a year!
While solder paste is perfect for getting the board populated the first time, it&#;s generally simpler to use wire solder to rework and swap out passive components to evaluate different component values. I have a range of solder wire diameters from 0.8mm down to 0.38mm - and I would likely go with a smaller wire diameter as well if I could remember to buy it!
Larger diameter wire is fantastic for soldering cables, through-hole parts, and other tasks that just need many solders to be applied quickly. If you use small diameter wire for these tasks, you find yourself spending more time feeding wire to your soldering iron tip than soldering.
Smaller diameter wire is fantastic for metering out small amounts of solder. If you&#;re soldering an or component onto the board, using wire larger than the component can drown the whole area in one giant ball of molten solder before you know it. Small diameters of solder are also great for laying across the joint you are about to make. Then, pressing the soldering tip onto it gives you instant molten metal and flux right where you need it, allowing you to make a high-quality joint extremely fast.
When I asked for suggestions on revisions to my Lab Equipment article, many people on the Altium Forum suggested adding Gel Flux to the list. I admit, I had not tried gel flux and was quite happy with my flux pen, but I ordered a tube of MG Chemicals &#;no-clean&#; gel flux and Chip Quick&#;s equivalent to try out. I&#;m now a convert to gel flux. It&#;s very thick stuff; it sticks to everything and doesn&#;t tend to just vanish on the first sign of any warmth like a flux pen does. The gel flux is fantastic for just bathing an area in flux and then heating it, giving you beautiful solder joints made under a layer of flux, preventing any chance of oxidation. It&#;s also fantastic for creating a perimeter around a leadless part if you need to reheat it to fix a bad joint or a shorted joint beneath the IC. It gives you time to poke and prod at the IC while it&#;s floating on molten solder (or even take it off and put it back on again without getting an oxidized joint.
Despite its ease of use and significant improvements compared to using liquid flux on a board, it does have a considerable downside. &#;No clean&#; only means the solder is low activity, pure rosin flux. It has very little or no activators in it, so it won&#;t rust your board if it&#;s left on. If you use flux gel, you end up with a sticky mess wherever you use it, so you want to clean it off. An ultrasonic cleaner does a fantastic job if the components on your board are washable. Otherwise, use a paper towel soaked in isopropanol and applied locally to remove the worst of it.
Despite how tremendous gel flux can be, I still like to use my flux pen for wiping a quick bit of flux over a joint to finish it off and make it all nice and shiny. I want to add a bit extra flux to some small pads that I&#;ve taken a component off and where I&#;m just about to drop on a new component. It&#;s also great for high strand count wires as it wicks into the strands and allows you to tin them rapidly.
I&#;m currently using the MG Chemicals &#;no-clean&#; flux pens as my flux pen of choice.
If you&#;re going to be using hot air to rework a board or to solder it for the first time, you&#;ll need some protection for your smart ESD mat. I found some exciting silicone baking mats that are manufactured as an array of pyramids that I think are intended to cook meats in an oven and allow the fats to drain away. For me, they are perfect for supporting a board as I blast it with heat. The shape of the mat provides a fantastic way to isolate the board from my underlying work surface. It protects the surface from the heat gun and stops the surface from pulling heat away from the board.
I bought mine from Amazon; there are many sting shapes, patterns, and colors to try out!
Polyimide tape is genuinely adaptable for use in the prototype lab. The tape can work at high temperatures, even handle temperatures above the melting point of the solder. It&#;s great for sticking over any pads that you don&#;t want to connect electrically, so you can use some wire to make an alternate connection. You can use it as a thermal barrier when reworking components to protect other nearby components from the hot air - especially useful with through-hole connectors or switches that can&#;t handle having heat close by. If you&#;re hand assembling double-sided boards with large inductors that are too heavy to stay positioned on the bottom side with surface tension alone when going through the second reflow, you can strap them to the board with this tape. It&#;s also pretty good at just being sticky tape! You&#;ll find dozens of uses for Polyimide tape. I have several rolls handy as it&#;s cheaply available from online marketplaces in a variety of widths.
I&#;m confident that you&#;ve had a time when you simulated everything perfectly and built your board only to find a slightly different value of resistor or capacitor that works better in the real world. It&#;s all well and good to plan the perfect board and order just those components you specified, but when you need to try other values, nothing beats having a nice box of components handy so that you can try out different values.
I have part assortments for connectors, screws, standoffs, inductors, and all sorts of capacitors - but the ones I turn to the most and therefore see as most valuable are my SMT capacitor and resistor kits. If I&#;m building a prototyping board, I try to stick with using and passives as these are the sizes that I have the best range of component kits for.
I find the Wurth Elektronik kits offer the best value for money for capacitors, despite not being particularly cheap. However, you do get free refills for life if you buy your kits from Wurth directly, which is a huge bonus.
MLCC - Wurth offers the broadest range of values
MLCC - Wurth is perfect for most uses.
Wurth has capacitor kits going up to sizes and packs with // sizes all in one box. I don&#;t often find myself using through-hole, or surface mount electrolytic, or polymer capacitors, particularly as these tend to be used in a bulk capacitance role and are less likely to be critical to a design that needs to be swapped out. Wurth does have great kits for these, as well.
For resistors, I have to admit I just buy packs from the online marketplaces. Huge resistor assortments with 20-50 of each value seem to be readily available, though unfortunately, you can&#;t say the same for capacitors. Despite their low cost, 1% resistor kits measure within 1% of their advertised values on my benchtop multimeter using 4 wire measurements. Most component distributors will have assortment kits of specific name brand resistors if you must have high quality, reputable brand components.
When it comes to inductors, these are a component you will want to try different in-circuit values. However, I don&#;t find general assortment kits to recommend you buy for this purpose. Suppose you&#;re working on a specific product that you will be rapidly prototyping, and you need to switch out the inductors. In that case, you should buy an inductor kit for that series from the manufacturer, or your component distributor may have an assortment for that series. There are so many inductor series available with so many different land patterns; it is not practical to just buy all of them. It is also probably not very practical to just buy a random assortment that looks nice.
Have more questions? Call an expert at Altium and discover how we can help you with your next PCB design.
Ultimate Guide: How to Develop and Prototype a New Electronic Hardware Product in
This guide is written specifically for entrepreneurs, startups, inventors, and small businesses innovating new electronic hardware products.
Although hardware is known for being hard, it&#;s easier than ever for entrepreneurs, startups, makers, inventors and small businesses to develop and prototype amazing new electronic products.
Although I present each step in a linear fashion, product development is never a smooth linear progression and at times you will find yourself taking two steps back for every step forward.
Don&#;t get too frustrated though when this happens because it&#;s just part of the process.
NOTE: This is a long, very detailed article so here's a free PDF version of it for easy reading and future reference.
Step 1 &#; Simplify Your Product
You must embrace simplification in order to have a realistic shot at getting your product to market in a timely fashion and without going bankrupt.
Product complexity can be a death trap for new entrepreneurs and startups!
Most entrepreneurs, and even most engineers, don&#;t understand all the consequences of various product features.
The addition of what seems like a minor feature can often drastically increase your development cost and the time it takes to get to market.
For example, something as simple as the position of a button could waste thousands of dollars, if it creates the need for more expensive injection molds.
Product simplification is a process of determining the exact core features your market wants, and working with experts to understand the implications of the various features.
Step 2 &#; Build Proof-of-Concept (POC) Prototype
Once you&#;ve simplified the product concept as much as possible, now the question you must answer is whether your concept really solves the intended problem as expected.
This is the goal of a Proof-of-Concept (POC) prototype which is an early prototype created using off-the-shelf components.
A POC prototype doesn&#;t have any custom electronics design, and is typically built using development kits such as an Arduino, ESP32, or Raspberry Pi.
Unfortunately, a POC prototype is rarely something that can be brought to market.
The production cost will usually be too high, the physical size too large, and the appearance far from ideal.
Step 3 &#; Create Preliminary Production Design
When developing a new electronic hardware product you should begin the custom electronics design process with a preliminary production design.
This is not to be confused with your early Proof-of-Concept (POC) prototype which in most cases can never be mass produced.
A preliminary production design focuses on your product&#;s production components, cost, profit margin, performance, features, development feasibility and manufacturability.
Get your FREE guide now: From Arduino Prototype to Mass Production
You can use a preliminary production design to estimate the costs to develop, prototype, program, certify, scale, and most importantly, manufacture the product.
Some of the questions a preliminary production design will answer include:
Is my product feasible to develop?
How much will it cost me to develop and prototype it?
How long will it take to develop it?
How much will it cost me to manufacture it, and can I sell the product at a reasonable profit?
&#;Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of skipping the preliminary production design step, and instead jump right into designing the custom schematic circuit diagram.
By doing so, you might find that you&#;ve spent lots of time and hard-earned money making a product that can&#;t be affordably developed, manufactured, or most importantly, sold at a profit.
When creating the preliminary production design you should start by defining the system-level block diagram.
This diagram specifies each electronic function and how all of the functional components interconnect.
Most products require a microcontroller or a microprocessor with various components (displays, sensors, memory, etc.) interfacing with the microcontroller via various serial interfaces.
By creating a system block diagram you can easily identify the type and number of serial ports that will be required. This is an essential step for selecting the correct microcontroller for your product.
Hardware Academy members, here&#;s a great course for you to learn how to build a POC prototype and then turn it into a custom design. Not a member yet? You can join here.
Step 4 &#; Select Critical Production Components
Next, you must select the various production components: microchips, sensors, displays, and connectors based upon the desired functions and target retail price of your product.
This will allow you to then create a preliminary Bill of Materials (BOM).
Some of the most popular suppliers of electronic components in the U.S. include: Newark, Digikey, Arrow, Mouser, and Future.
You can purchase most electronic components in ones (for prototyping and initial testing) or up to thousands (for low-volume manufacturing).
Once you reach higher production volumes you will save money by purchasing some components directly from the manufacturer.
Step 5 &#; Estimate Production Cost
You should now estimate the production cost (or Cost of Goods Sold &#; COGS) for your product. It&#;s critical to know as soon as possible how much it will cost to manufacture your product.
You need to know your product&#;s manufacturing unit cost in order to determine the best sales price, the cost of inventory, and most importantly your potential profit.
Estimating the manufacturing cost starts with a preliminary Bill of Materials listing and pricing all of these production components.
But to get an accurate manufacturing cost estimate you also must include the cost of the PCB assembly, final product assembly, product testing, retail packaging, scrap rate, returns, logistics, duties, and warehousing.
See this article for more help estimating all of these various costs.
Step 6 &#; Design Schematic Circuit Diagram
Now it&#;s time to design the schematic circuit diagram based upon the system block diagram you created in step 3.
The schematic diagram shows how every component, from microchips to resistors, connects together.
Whereas a system block diagram is mostly focused on the higher level product functionality, a schematic diagram is all about the little details.
Something as simple as a mis-numbered pin on a component in a schematic can cause a complete lack of functionality.
In most cases you&#;ll need a separate sub-circuit for each block of your system block diagram. These various sub-circuits will be connected together to form the full schematic circuit diagram.
Special electronics design software is used to create the schematic diagram and to help ensure it is free of mistakes.
For most projects, I recommend the free, open-source PCB design tool called KiCad.
This software is very powerful and can be used for both simple and complex designs with many advanced features.
Other popular PCB software packages include Altium Designer and Eagle. But be warned these are quite expensive and are best for those designing multiple products.
DipTrace is another more reasonably priced tool, and the easiest to learn in my opinion.
What about AI circuit design tools in ? Although there are AI circuit design tools available so far they are too expensive and too limited to be a good option for those focused on developing their first product, or just a single product.
Hardware Academy members, here&#;s an introductory course for you to learn to design a PCB using KiCad, and here&#;s a 5-day boot camp to design your first PCB (DipTrace). Not a member yet? You can join here.
Step 7 &#; Design Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Once the schematic is done you will now design the Printed Circuit Board (PCB). The PCB is the physical board that holds and connects all of the electronic components.
While developing the system block diagram and schematic circuit was mostly conceptual, a PCB design is very real world.
The PCB is designed in the same software that created the schematic diagram.
The software has various verification tools to ensure the PCB layout meets the design rules for the PCB process being used, and that the PCB matches the schematic.
In general, the smaller the product, and the tighter the components are packed together, the longer it takes to create the PCB layout.
If your product routes large amounts of power, has high-speed digital signals (crystal clocks, address/data lines, etc.), or offers wireless connectivity, then PCB layout is even more complex and time consuming.
Step 8 &#; Generate Final Bill of Materials (BOM)
Although you should have already created a preliminary BOM as part of the manufacturing cost estimation process discussed in step 5, it&#;s now time for the full production BOM.
The main difference between the two is the numerous low-cost components like resistors and capacitors.
These components usually only cost a penny or two, so I don&#;t list them out separately in the preliminary BOM.
Get your FREE Ultimate Guide - How to Develop and Prototype a New Electronic Hardware Product in
But to actually manufacture the PCB you need a complete BOM with every component listed.
This BOM is usually created automatically by the schematic design software. The BOM lists the part numbers, quantities, and all component specifications.
Step 8 &#; Order PCB Prototypes
Creating electronic prototypes is a two-step process. The first step produces the bare, printed circuit boards.
Your circuit design software will allow you to output the PCB layout in a format called Gerber with one file for each PCB layer.
These Gerber files can be sent to a PCB shop for producing a few prototypes, but the same files can also be provided to a larger manufacturer for high volume production.
The second production step is having all of the electronic components soldered onto the empty board.
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Recommended article:PEEK Polymer (Polyether Ether Ketone) Guide
From your design software you&#;ll be able to output a file that shows the exact coordinates of every component placed on the board, which is commonly called a pick-and-place file.
This file allows the assembly shop to fully automate the soldering of every component on your PCB.
To place an order for custom PCB boards, whether prototypes or production, there are quite a few technical concepts and terms you need to understand first.
Any PCB manufacturer will have a lot of technical options you need to select to order any boards.
Unless you&#;ve ordered boards before this can be somewhat overwhelming for many the first time, even if you&#;ve mastered PCB design itself.
Hardware Academy members, here&#;s a course where I walk you through ordering custom boards from two different popular vendors. It also includes PDF guides where I define the technical terms along with my suggestions on which options to select. Not a member yet? You can join here.
Your cheapest option will be to produce your PCB prototypes in China, whether it be for your early prototypes, or for larger production runs.
Although, it can be a bit faster if you can do your prototyping closer to home, to reduce shipping delays.
But in most cases, I encourage you to prioritize minimizing your financial risk instead of paying extra to try to expedite it.
For producing your boards in China I highly recommend PCBWay, Bittele Electronics, Seeed Studio, or Gold Phoenix PCB.
All of these suppliers can produce both a few prototype boards or larger runs of thousands of boards.
In the U.S. I recommend Sunstone Circuits, Screaming Circuits, and San Francisco Circuits which I&#;ve used extensively to prototype my own designs.
Just keep in mind that a US supplier will usually be several times the cost of getting them from China.
It usually takes 1-2 weeks to get assembled boards, unless you pay for rush service which once again I rarely recommend.
Step 9 &#; Evaluate, Program, Debug, and Repeat
Now it&#;s time to evaluate the prototype of the electronics.
Keep in mind that your first prototype will rarely work perfectly, and the first version is never ready for mass production.
You will most likely go through several iterations before you finalize the design. This is when you will identify, debug and fix any issues with your prototype.
You are only fooling yourself if you don&#;t allocate enough time and budget for the iterative prototyping process.
This can be a difficult stage to forecast in both terms of cost and time.
Any bugs you find are of course unexpected, so it takes time to figure out the source of the bug and how best to fix it.
Evaluation and testing are usually done in parallel with programming the microcontroller.
Before you begin programming though you&#;ll want to at least do some basic testing to ensure the board doesn&#;t have major issues.
Nearly all modern electronic products include a microchip called a Microcontroller Unit (MCU) that acts as the &#;brains&#; for the product.
A microcontroller is very similar to a microprocessor found in a computer or smartphone.
A microprocessor excels at moving large amounts of data quickly, while a microcontroller excels at interfacing and controlling devices like switches, sensors, displays, motors, etc.
A microcontroller is pretty much a simplified microprocessor.
The microcontroller needs to be programmed to perform the desired functionality. Microcontrollers are almost always programmed in the commonly used computer language called &#;C&#;.
The program, called firmware, is stored in permanent but reprogrammable memory usually internal to the microcontroller chip.
For the firmware programming process you will use special development tools called an Integrated Development Environment, or just IDE for short.
One of the easiest to use, and most common IDE&#;s available is the Arduino IDE.
Contrary to common belief, you can also use the ArduinoIDE with a wide variety of microcontrollers. You aren&#;t limited to only using it with Arduino boards.
There are more powerful IDE&#;s available, many of which are specific to a single microcontroller family, but none are as easy to learn as the Arduino IDE.
Step 10 &#; Develop Custom Enclosure 3D Model
Now we&#;ll cover the development and prototyping of any custom plastic pieces.
For most products this includes at least the enclosure that holds everything together.
Development of custom shaped plastic or metal pieces will require a mechanical engineer with experience in 3D design for injection molding.
If appearance and ergonomics are super critical for your product, then you may want to hire an industrial designer.
For example, industrial designers are the engineers who make portable devices like an iPhone look so cool and sleek.
The first step in developing your product&#;s enclosure is the creation of a 3D computer model.
The three big software packages used to create 3D models are Solidworks, PTC Creo (formerly called Pro/Engineer), and Autodesk&#;s Fusion 360.
If you want to do your own 3D modeling, and you&#;re not tied to either Solidworks or PTC Creo, then definitely consider Fusion 360 which is much more affordable.
Once your industrial or 3D modeling designer has completed the 3D model, you can turn it into physical prototypes using 3D printing technology most likely.
Other prototyping technologies include CNC machining and urethane casting.
You can also use the 3D model for marketing purposes, which is especially helpful when you are waiting to have functional prototypes available.
If you plan to use your 3D model for marketing purposes you&#;ll want to create a photo realistic version of it.
You can also produce a photo realistic, 3D animation of your product.
Keep in mind you may need to hire a separate designer that specializes in animation and making 3D models look realistic.
The biggest risk when it comes to developing the 3D model for your enclosure is that you end up with a design that can be prototyped but not manufactured in volume.
Ultimately, your enclosure will be produced by a method called high-pressure injection molding (see step 14 below for more details).
Developing a part for production using injection molding can be quite complex with many rules to follow. On the other hand, just about anything can be prototyped using 3D printing.
So be sure to only hire someone that fully understands all of the complexities and design requirements for injection molding.
Step 11 &#; Produce Prototypes of the Enclosure
Plastic prototypes are built using either an additive process (most common) or a subtractive process. An additive process, like 3D printing, creates the prototype by stacking up thin lines or layers of plastic to create the final product.
Additive processes are by far the most common because of their ability to create just about anything you can imagine.
A subtractive process, like CNC machining, instead takes a block of solid production plastic and carves out the final product.
The advantage of subtractive processes is that you get to use a plastic resin that exactly matches the final production plastic you&#;ll use.
This is important for some products, such as those with lots of mechanical snaps or clips, however for most products this isn&#;t essential.
With additive processes, a special prototyping resin is used, and it may have a different feel than the production plastic.
Resins used in additive processes have improved significantly but they still don&#;t match the production plastics used in injection molding.
I mentioned this already, but it&#;s so important it deserves to be highlighted again.
Prototyping processes (additive and subtractive) are completely different from the technology used in mass manufacturing (injection molding).
You must avoid creating prototypes (especially with additive prototyping) that are impossible to manufacture.
In the beginning, you don&#;t necessarily need your prototype to follow all of the rules for injection molding, but you need to keep them in mind so your design can be easily transitioned to injection molding.
Numerous companies can take your 3D model and turn it into a physical prototype. Proto Labs is the U.S. company I personally recommend.
They offer both additive and subtractive prototyping, as well as low-volume injection molding.
You may also consider purchasing your own 3D printer, especially if you think you will need several iterations to get your product right.
3D printers can be purchased now for only a few hundred dollars allowing you to create as many prototype versions as desired.
The real advantage of having your own 3D printer is it allows you to iterate your prototype almost immediately, thus reducing your time to market.
Step 12 &#; Evaluate the Enclosure Prototypes
Now it&#;s time to evaluate the enclosure prototypes and change the 3D model as necessary. It will almost always take several prototype iterations to get the enclosure design just right.
Although 3D computer models allow you to visualize the enclosure, nothing compares to holding a real prototype in your hand.
There will almost certainly be functional and cosmetic changes you&#;ll want to make once you have your first real prototype.
So, plan on needing multiple prototype versions to get everything right.
Developing the plastic for your new product isn&#;t necessarily easy or cheap, especially if aesthetics is critical for your product.
However, the real complications and costs arise when you transition from the prototype stage to full production.
Step 13 &#; Transition to Injection Molding
Although the electronics are probably the most complex and expensive part of your product to develop, the plastic will be the most expensive to scale up.
Most plastic products sold today are made using a really old manufacturing technique called injection molding. So it&#;s very important for you to have an understanding of this manufacturing process.
First, you start with a steel mold, which is two pieces of steel held together using high pressure. The mold has a carved cavity in the shape of the desired product.
Then, hot molten plastic is injected into the mold to form a part in the shape of the mold cavity.
The part is allowed to cool and solidify, then it&#;s removed from the mold using ejector pins.
Injection molding Image supplied courtesy of Rutland Plastics
Injection molding technology has one big advantage &#; it&#;s an extremely cheap way to make millions of the same plastic pieces over and over again.
But the downside is the high setup costs due to the cost of the molds, which are shockingly expensive.
For example, a mold designed for producing millions of units can cost over $100,000, fortunately most molds are nowhere near that expensive.
The high cost is mostly because the plastic is injected at such high pressure, which is extremely tough on a mold.
To withstand these conditions molds are made using hard metals.
The more injections required, the harder the metal required, and the higher the mold cost since harder metals are more difficult to machine into the required shape.
For example, you can use aluminum molds to make several thousand units (up to about 10,000 units) because it&#;s a soft metal that degrades very quickly.
However, because it&#;s softer it&#;s also easier to machine into a mold, so the cost is lower. For instance, a simple aluminum mold may only cost a couple thousand dollars.
As the intended volume for the mold increases so does the required metal hardness and thus the mold cost.
The lead time to produce a mold also increases with harder metals like steel. This is just because it takes the mold maker much longer to machine a steel mold, than a softer aluminum one.
You can also eventually increase your production speed by using multiple cavity molds, which also lowers the cost per unit, but drastically increases the mold cost.
Multiple cavity molds allow you to produce multiple copies of your part with a single injection of plastic.
But don&#;t jump into multiple cavity molds until you have worked through any modifications to your initial molds.
It&#;s wise to run at least several thousand units before upgrading to multiple cavity molds.
See this article for more details on designing for injection molding.
Step 14 &#; Certify the Product
All electronic products that are sold must have various types of certification. The certifications required vary depending on what country the product will be sold in.
I&#;m going to mainly discuss the certifications required in the USA, Canada, and the European Union.
Even though these are mostly electrical certifications, you need to get the finished product certified with the enclosure, and not just the bare electronics.
This is why you need to design your product from day one with certifications in mind, but in general the actual certifications are done as late as possible, while setting up manufacturing.
If you certify too early, then any design changes will require you to recertify the product. So, it&#;s better to wait until the product is finalized with no more changes expected.
Certifications are a complex topic so I suggest that you consult with an expert in certifications before you go too deep into developing your product.
There are many tricks and tips that can drastically reduce your certification costs if they are implemented from the start.
Also, keep in mind that for many products, these certifications will not be necessary for doing small sales tests.
This allows you to prove the product in the market before investing in the additional cost of these certifications.
See this article for more details on all of the various certifications required for new electronic products.
Conclusion
This article has given you a basic overview of the process of developing and prototyping a new electronic hardware product.
My goal is to help you fully understand how to develop your product in a more predictable fashion with less risk.
This article was written by John Teel.
Check out our library of in-depth articles on both product development and hardware entrepreneurship.
If you prefer video, then check out my YouTube channel where I teach both hardware entrepreneurship and product development. Also see my podcast and courses.
Finally, if you want my personal help with your project, along with help from lots of other experts, then the way to get it is inside my Hardware Academy platform.
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