End-to-end electronics design
Whether supporting and augmenting your capabilities, or taking the lead in working with manufacturers to bring the product to volume production, our in-house team of electronics engineers is capable of delivering the complete hardware design lifecycle.
We can undertake all the necessary development activities from initial requirements capture and architecture design through to pre-production prototypes and preparation for manufacturing handover, including schematic design, PCB layout, prototyping and testing in our electronics lab.
Integrated hardware design
From complex safety-critical medical devices, through rugged industrial products to connected consumer solutions, increasing numbers of products now include some form of electronics.
To incorporate electronic functionality into your new products successfully, we need to thoroughly understand the context of your application and the needs of your target users. We can then work alongside the rest of the DCA project team to develop an integrated solution that prioritises and appropriately balances the disparate, and often conflicting, product requirements.
Architecture
Spending some time at the start of the project to establish the hardware architecture sets the right development framework and avoids locking in unnecessary cost and complexity.
The work required to define the right architecture may include power budget analysis; considering intrinsic safety; generating preliminary cost estimates; partitioning product functionality between mechanical, electronic and software sub-systems; early selection of major components; test planning or even performing practical feasibility studies and tests using development hardware rigs.
User interfaces
Selecting and implementing the right supporting hardware is a key part of achieving a good interaction experience for your user.
By working closely with our User Experience (UX) and software teams we can tailor the overall user interface system to deliver functionality, usability and desirability on the most cost effective and reliable hardware.
Motor drive and control
Our motor drive and control experience ranges from precision control of miniature motors at relatively low torque in medical drug delivery devices through to the higher torque requirements for industrial equipment and even personal mobility systems. We use our expertise in mathematical analysis to select the motor in conjunction with the overall electromechanical design, balancing thermal, power consumption, cost, acoustic and performance requirements.
Many of our motor drive solutions are battery powered, which can require careful design to mitigate load transients on the battery and ensure performance is maintained across the whole battery charge cycle.
Circuit design
This is where we finalise the selection of all the individual components for the electronic circuit design, populating the building blocks previously identified in the architectural design.
We principally use Altium Designer tools for our electronic circuit design work and PCB layout activities. In addition to the inherent efficiency this integration offers, our rigorous ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 approved checking and review procedures minimise the risk of circuit design iterations, which could be lengthy and expensive.
Attention to detail in selecting the most appropriate components can also reduce bill of materials costs and generate ongoing savings in volume production and testing.
PCB layout
In-house PCB layout means that the engineer who designed the circuit can be intimately involved in seeing it through to realisation. Having the same engineers in charge of the circuit design and its realisation as a PCB assembly leads to better products. This is especially true when these engineers are working closely with their mechanical colleagues to create a truly integrated product design that takes account not only of a circuit’s functionality, but also how it will be produced, tested and packaged into caseworks.
As a result of this continuity, original design intent is preserved, sensitive analogue signals are protected, signal integrity is managed on high-speed digital lines and potential EMC failures can be addressed at the source.
Analysis and simulation
If analysis and simulation tools are applied to the right elements of a circuit, they can save development time and accelerate the identification and avoidance of potential issues.
We identify appropriate targets and then use a combination of SPICE simulation and other mathematical modelling before proceeding to prototypes. Whether we are gauging anticipated battery life or fine-tuning the response of a filter, this theoretical modelling and simulation of circuit performance contributes to the early reduction of risk and a leaner development programme.
Reducing development risks and timescales
Product layout
It’s rare that a PCB can be designed with no consideration for the overall product layout.
Interactions with the casework, fixing methods and the positioning of electromechanical components, cables and interconnections all affect the electronic design. Considering these factors before and during the PCB layout avoids physical component clashes, reduces EMC problems, addresses thermal issues, optimises product form and size and shortens development timescales. DCA’s integrated product development team naturally adopts this holistic approach, with design data shared across our electronics and mechanical CAD systems.
Obsolescence management
All electronic systems use parts which will at some point become obsolete. This can cause a major problem, particularly where there was a sizeable time and financial investment in certification – for instance in medical, military or aerospace applications.
We can review systems that have been impacted by obsolescence jointly from a hardware and software point of view and agree with you and the relevant approvals bodies a substitution strategy. Our aim will be to minimise the code changes within the core functional elements of the system, clearly documenting these in a way that avoids or at least minimises the need for regulatory re-submission.
Managing a substitution strategy to minimise the need for regulatory re-submission
Manufacturing transfer
We have worked with clients who have in-house manufacturing capability as well as with third-party manufacturing partners worldwide, and at varying scales of production volume. It’s important to involve the manufacturing team during the design process, consulting them early to avoid costly Design for Manufacture (DfM) rework at a late stage if PCB design rules need to be changed to suit volume production preferences. However, to keep the development programme agile, we will continue to take advantage of rapid prototyping channels for rapid, small-scale prototype builds until the appropriate moment in the project to transfer to the target manufacturing facility.
We work with the manufacturing engineers to establish an appropriate set of tests to be carried out during production and continue to offer support as manufacturing and testing are set up in the latter stages of the design process.
