I was doing my Sunday morning (2 a.m.) radio call-in show about electronics cooling (Hot Air on the Air with Tony K), when I heard a familiar voice on the line. "Herbie in Hereford," I greeted the caller, "You're on the air with Hot Air." "First time caller, long time listener . . .," the caller said. "Wow. There must be an insomnia epidemic," I interrupted. Johnny, the … [Read more...]
Thermal I/O
Don't do a spit-take with your coffee - there is no double-sided BGA. It would never see the light of day, simply because no one would ever buy it. Sure the density is unbeatable, but there is no practical method of soldering all the leads on such a package to a printed circuit board. No electrical hardware design engineer would accept such a ridiculous package. Then why do … [Read more...]
CFD: One measly letter away from CAD
"The stuff you engineers design is too good," the guy from Marketing said, "I need shoddier! Can you make them less efficient and cheaper?" I was working for a small company that made electric power conditioning equipment. Our devices protected against spikes, sags and brownouts in the AC power for mission-critical equipment like air traffic control radar and the computer … [Read more...]
Ten stupid things engineers do to mess up their cooling
Editor's Note: On the eve of the new millenium, the editors of ElectronicsCooling have decided to depart from our normal serious tone just this once, unless, of course, we can convince Tony to contribute another story or two for us sometime [soon!] in the next thousand years. Herewith, for your amusement and edification is a humorous, yet insightful, retrospective of famous - … [Read more...]
