Re: want help learning practical circuit design



Phil Hobbs wrote:
Fred Bloggs wrote:



Phil Hobbs wrote:

Rich Webb wrote:

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:47:23 -0500, Fred Bloggs <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Rohit kumar Chandel wrote:

I am an electronics hobbyist and a software engineer.
I have an experience of 3.5+ yrs of working on 8051 assembly language,C. I
know very well interfacing microcontroller to real world, using
sensors,ADC,DAC,motors etc.

But my problem is that I can do programming but for circuit design I have to
look for somebody else. I want to learn this last area to give me
satisfaction of building something from scratch.

Could anybody suggest me some real good book on practical circuit design. I
do not want too much of theory , for that I can go back to my college
textbooks.

I hope I am able to convey my thoughts properly.



This one is pretty good:
http://books.google.com/books?id=YE4GtvnxkToC&dq=op+amps+for+everyone+mancini&pg=PP1&ots=RHPdwU6dIj&sig=yEhxkKrYM2Fwu_fTlEVRRGW7XIo&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=op+amps+for+everyone+mancini&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail




It's also available as a free download directly from TI
<http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/slod006b/slod006b.pdf>


Good for you. Get in there and destroy a few op amps, then figure out why they died...good education and great fun.

BTW: About half the circuit problems that new hobbyists face are caused by poor soldering technique. Get a decent soldering iron with automatic temperature control and a few medium-sized conical tips (~1 mm radius), not the long skinny ones. Use 63:37 or 60:40 _lead-tin_, rosin core solder in a fine gauge--0.032 inches preferably. Set the iron at 750 F (400 C) and leave it there. Keep the tip nice and clean by rubbing it on a moist sponge every 2 minutes or so, and make sure that the tip stays tinned. Good tips have iron-plated points that make this easier.

Your solder joints should be shiny and uniform-looking. Dull spots are caused by oxide or too low a temperature. Either one will cause open circuits or intermittent connections.

Lead-free solder is okay for some purposes, but for hand work it's much harder to use. Also, even good lead-free joints aren't as shiny as lead-tin ones, so it's harder to recognize the bad ones. Lead-free parts work fine with lead-tin solder, so you don't have to worry about that.

If you're serious about learning electronic design, get a copy of "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill. (Win is a frequent contributor here, and is very much worth listening too if you can ignore his Massachusetts prejudices. Don't take his horse racing advice either. ;)

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs


Does AoE have any material on construction and layout techniques at all or whatsoever? It just lacks the emphasis and practical focus on the kind of linear electronics most pertinent to embedded systems design. You probably don't even have a copy of Op Amps for Everyone or even know Ron Mancini. After digesting Mancini, the OP can attempt Walt Jung's Op Amp Applications Handbook which far surpasses everyone in its level of detail and coverage.


I learned the way the OP seems to be proposing to learn: by building stuff. In my case it was taking apart old tube-type TVs and building mostly not-working tube circuits from scratch and mostly working transistor circuits out of books. I was very motivated because not being able to design working hardware made me nuts.

The actual design part I learned from reading National Semiconductor and Motorola data sheets and applications books. I had a subscription to the old Motorola Update program, where they'd send you a huge box full of manuals twice a year. For a kid, that was pretty cool...getting the same treatment as the pros. It made me take hobby electronics much more seriously, just seeing half a bookcase full of manuals in my work room in the attic. Stuff I'd never thought about, like PMOS memory chips and 6805 MCUs.

If the OP is interested mainly in embedded system design, that's much easier in some ways but (to me) much less satisfying..."Just connect it together and figure it out in software" isn't nearly as artistic as designing analog stuff that really works.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Sounds good. Marc Thompson of WPI just published Intuitive Analog Circuit Design under Newnes, which is a good consolidated reference of old school style circuit design for newbies. I like it for the switching performance coverage.

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