Our Services: Design,
Manufacture,
Refurbish
Full Project Design
Full design entails working from a customer's specification and creating from this a complete design of a project. This design would incorporate aspects of mechanical construction, front panel layout, design of the electronic circuitry, selection of appropriate components, design of PCBs and sub-assemblies, design of firmware and/or software.
Firmware design
Almost all digital designs incorporate PLDs or micro-controllers. To minimise inventory, we standardise on a few product types, typically Atmel AT series microcontrollers.
Circuit design
The art of turning a specification into a schematic that describes the electronic components required and how to interconnect them. The actual design method used varies according to whether the project is a one-off or a proof of concept, or a production prototype. Typically a block diagram is drawn up to breakdown the design into manageable blocks. This is a good time to review the design with the customer to ensure the designer has captured the required functionality. It is then required to convert each of the block diagrams into a schematic circuit. Generally, there are several ways of achieving the desired function, by using a combination of standard components (resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, op-amps) or by using a few special-purpose components. Factors that influence the choice of components are availability, cost, and ease of integration. Often the designer has a "cookbook" of tried and proven circuit functions. For one-off designs, it is generally more cost-effective to use existing modules and re-programming or rewire the modules to achieve the desired effect.
Mechanical design
Generally, a project consists of more than just a printed circuit board loaded with components. Typically the project will need to be mounted in some form of enclosure, complete with power supply, panel connectors, keyboards, displays, heatsinks, etc. Whereas electronic components are all of the standard sizes with bendable leads and have only to be fitted to a dimensional PC board, mechanical components, on the other hand, are rarely in standard sizes and need to be fitted in three dimensions. Manufacture of mechanical components is labour intensive and expensive, and for one-off projects, standard-size boxes are almost exclusively used.
For robotics applications, motors and/or hydraulic cylinders need to be specified, and the mechanical details are drawn up.
Prototyping
We can have prototype PCBs manufactured to suit OEM's products in various industries, where they have a need to add some automation to an existing product line or enable a new product line, or replace an existing obsolete or difficult to source module. Once the prototypes have been verified to work and necessary changes made, the modules can be sent to manufacturers.
Manufacture
We can have prototype PCBs manufactured locally for rapid prototyping purposes and can source PCBs internationally for production runs.
Full assembly, programming, and testing of PCBA's will be completed in the Newcastle area. Our designs typically use standard components that are likely to be available for decades and provide flexibility for future component availability.
Overhaul, Refurbish, Remanufacture
Locomotives, haul trucks and some industrial equipment have operating lives of 50years or more, the electronic components used to wear out and become obsolete, and the PCB's suffer mechanical degradation, we can repair, replace, remanufacture many of these products and incorporate modifications to accommodate obsolescence and design defects.