"Mike Engelhardt has parted ways with Analog Devices"

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 04:14:07 -0700 (PDT), bulegoge@columbus.rr.com
wrote:

>Przemek Klosowski.... thank you for pointing to that interview on YouTube. I really liked the guys view on what the ltspice program is for which is so that the engineer can get better intuition as to how his circuits work. It is a piece of verification but should not be used is the sole purpose of verifying. I guess I like it because it resonated with my viewpoints about use of such a program

Being an IC guy, he did miss that a little as regards PC boards. I
often use LT Spice as the only process before I go to a PC board, but
then PC boards can be modified a lot easier than linear ICs, and parts
are mostly temperature stable as purchased.

And I design using LT Spice. Once one has some intuition, one can just
throw parts around in the sim and see what happens. That works
surprisingly well. I have several circuits in production that I don't
really understand.

I do much less math than I used to do. I guess rough values and tweak
in LT Spice. Voltage dividers, filters, oscillators this week. So it's
a calculator, too.

It also draws presentable diagrams to include in emails and manuals.
It's a drawing program.

I've had his same thought before: Romans built waterworks, people
built bridges and cathedrals and cannons and sailing ships, before
Newton invented calculus. Most science explained what people had
already built.







--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Rick C]

On Monday, March 9, 2020 at 10:56:08 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 04:14:07 -0700 (PDT), bulegoge@columbus.rr.com
wrote:

Przemek Klosowski.... thank you for pointing to that interview on YouTube. I really liked the guys view on what the ltspice program is for which is so that the engineer can get better intuition as to how his circuits work. It is a piece of verification but should not be used is the sole purpose of verifying. I guess I like it because it resonated with my viewpoints about use of such a program

Being an IC guy, he did miss that a little as regards PC boards. I
often use LT Spice as the only process before I go to a PC board, but
then PC boards can be modified a lot easier than linear ICs, and parts
are mostly temperature stable as purchased.

And I design using LT Spice. Once one has some intuition, one can just
throw parts around in the sim and see what happens. That works
surprisingly well. I have several circuits in production that I don't
really understand.

I do much less math than I used to do. I guess rough values and tweak
in LT Spice. Voltage dividers, filters, oscillators this week. So it's
a calculator, too.

It also draws presentable diagrams to include in emails and manuals.
It's a drawing program.

I've had his same thought before: Romans built waterworks, people
built bridges and cathedrals and cannons and sailing ships, before
Newton invented calculus. Most science explained what people had
already built.

Before math was used rigorously in construction, it was not at all uncommon to either build exactly what was built before or to risk it falling down. How many of the Medieval churches fell down killing people before they got them figured out... mostly.

Even today we have failures when we do something new and fail to properly analyze it mathematically. The disaster was prevented by an undergraduate student who was doing a math study of the building and found anomalous results. The rest is history and midtown Manhattan was saved.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609257/The-New-York-disaster-never-happened-How-one-phone-call-architecture-student-saved-915ft-Citigroup-skyscraper-crashing-Manhattan-hurricane.html

Engineering without math is just kids playing in the mud.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John S]

On 3/9/2020 10:27 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 10:17:56 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org> wrote:

On 3/9/2020 9:55 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 04:14:07 -0700 (PDT), bulegoge@columbus.rr.com
wrote:

Przemek Klosowski.... thank you for pointing to that interview on YouTube. I really liked the guys view on what the ltspice program is for which is so that the engineer can get better intuition as to how his circuits work. It is a piece of verification but should not be used is the sole purpose of verifying. I guess I like it because it resonated with my viewpoints about use of such a program

Being an IC guy, he did miss that a little as regards PC boards. I
often use LT Spice as the only process before I go to a PC board, but
then PC boards can be modified a lot easier than linear ICs, and parts
are mostly temperature stable as purchased.

And I design using LT Spice. Once one has some intuition, one can just
throw parts around in the sim and see what happens. That works
surprisingly well. I have several circuits in production that I don't
really understand.

I don't throw parts around. I design first and then see if my design in
LTSpice shows something I overlooked. If it doesn't result in what I
expected, I try to learn why and correct it.

My 1200 volt 5 MHz Pockels Cell pulser resulted from throwing parts
around. My current LC oscillator is almost as bad. I didn't understand
it until the simulation, and a breadboard, were working. Intuition
guides throwing. You can't design circuits by truly random fiddling
because the solution space is too big.

Good! I'm happy that worked out for you. I, on the other hand, don't
randomly fiddle. Maybe I'm missing out on something.


> "Something I overlooked" could be an entirely new concept.

In what way? What does that mean? What concept?

I do much less math than I used to do. I guess rough values and tweak
in LT Spice. Voltage dividers, filters, oscillators this week. So it's
a calculator, too.

Indeed. I do the same. Sometimes it is faster than using a calculator.

Something like a 5-resistor voltage divider or opamp circuit, made
from parts in stock, is way too hard to design on paper.

Really? You think a resistor divider is too hard to design on paper? So
you make a 5 resistor divider in SPICE and then tweak the values until
you get what you want? That sounds like it will take more time than
doing the paper work. Maybe I don't understand your stated problem.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-03-09 10:55, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 04:14:07 -0700 (PDT), bulegoge@columbus.rr.com
wrote:

Przemek Klosowski.... thank you for pointing to that interview on YouTube. I really liked the guys view on what the ltspice program is for which is so that the engineer can get better intuition as to how his circuits work. It is a piece of verification but should not be used is the sole purpose of verifying. I guess I like it because it resonated with my viewpoints about use of such a program

Being an IC guy, he did miss that a little as regards PC boards. I
often use LT Spice as the only process before I go to a PC board, but
then PC boards can be modified a lot easier than linear ICs, and parts
are mostly temperature stable as purchased.

And I design using LT Spice. Once one has some intuition, one can just
throw parts around in the sim and see what happens. That works
surprisingly well. I have several circuits in production that I don't
really understand.

I do much less math than I used to do. I guess rough values and tweak
in LT Spice. Voltage dividers, filters, oscillators this week. So it's
a calculator, too.

It also draws presentable diagrams to include in emails and manuals.
It's a drawing program.

I've had his same thought before: Romans built waterworks, people
built bridges and cathedrals and cannons and sailing ships, before
Newton invented calculus. Most science explained what people had
already built.

His account of siege warfare is a laugh. Besieged cities were almost
always conquered by hunger, not siege machines.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

.....His account of siege warfare is a laugh. Besieged cities were almost
always conquered by hunger, not siege machines......


You missed the point.

 

[Uwe Bonnes]

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
....
> My 1200 volt 5 MHz Pockels Cell pulser resulted from throwing parts

Any reference for that as commercial product?

Thanks
--
Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 1623569 ------- Fax. 06151 1623305 ---------

 

Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in news:a9a7d4a4-9d21-
4cc2-92b5-55e7c2fd0553@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, March 6, 2020 at 1:45:13 PM UTC-5, Winfield Hill wrote:
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote...

I wonder if ADI will adjust the premium LTC pricing any.

I hope not. It's a specific strategy to make enough profit
on low volumes to create specialized parts that are super-
helpful to engineers working on unique problems. They make
enough $$ to well document their designs. This might all
go away if AD makes big changes.

Change is inevitable, progress is not.

Micro Cap 12 is now free.

<https://www.spectrum-soft.com/download/download.shtm>

 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:f293c74a-ccb1-46ac-9d1c-ab1ace1f520c@googlegroups.com:

LTSpice is a whole lot better than the other free Spice clones,
and Mike Engelhardt seems to have been a key figure in keeping it
that way.

Micro Cap is no clone and is free. Did not used to be.

<https://www.spectrum-soft.com/download/download.shtm>

 

On 9 Mar 2020 21:07:10 GMT, Uwe Bonnes
<bon@hertz.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
...
My 1200 volt 5 MHz Pockels Cell pulser resulted from throwing parts

Any reference for that as commercial product?

Thanks

My launch customer is not moving his laser project along very well, so
we decided to go public with it.

http://www.highlandtechnology.com/DSS/T850DS.shtml

It was a lot of work, but I learned a lot too.

Really, this was designed by instinct and simulation. It was really a
surprise. (So were some of the SiC fet models!)



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 12:56:05 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org> wrote:

Really? You think a resistor divider is too hard to design on paper? So
you make a 5 resistor divider in SPICE and then tweak the values until
you get what you want? That sounds like it will take more time than
doing the paper work. Maybe I don't understand your stated problem.

I often do that. I want to use resistor values that we have in stock,
better yet ones already on the BOM, so the final divider may require a
dozen or two iterations. Each case has to be evaluated to see how
close things are. After you fiddle with it a bit, you begin to intuit
about what affects what, so the process moves right along.

I have a program, RUGRAT, that finds 2-resistor dividers based on
parts in stock. But it can't do more complex networks.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Phil Allison]

Bill Sloman is Totally Weird wrote:

---------------------------------

"Intuition is the most important part of engineering."

That's great.

It's actually insane,

** What an absurd claim.

Makes it very clear that Bill has none so has no clue what it is - apart from reading a dictionary.

Good engineers have "insight" = a deep understanding of how stuff works.

This leaves all the software guys gasping.

Insight informs one's "intuition" - so your assessment of what might be possible with what is currently available is very good.

but if intuition is all you've got, you might agree.

** And if you have none you are stuffed.


...... Phil

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 14:20:43 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
<pallison49@gmail.com> wrote:

Bill Sloman is Totally Weird wrote:

---------------------------------


"Intuition is the most important part of engineering."

That's great.

It's actually insane,


** What an absurd claim.

Makes it very clear that Bill has none so has no clue what it is - apart from reading a dictionary.

One of Jim Williams' books has a great chapter by Barrie Gilbert,
"Where do little circuits come from?"

I've known lots of engineers who just tweaked circuits they found on
data sheets or on eval boards. One guy I know has a nice little
business basically repackaging eval boards.

Good engineers have "insight" = a deep understanding of how stuff works.

This leaves all the software guys gasping.

Insight informs one's "intuition" - so your assessment of what might be possible with what is currently available is very good.



but if intuition is all you've got, you might agree.


** And if you have none you are stuffed.

Most people get along fine without ever having original ideas. Society
only needs a small minority of creative lunatics.

Spice hugely improves creating and testing wild ideas.

I'm just now iterating a complex design using a soldering iron. It's a
huge pain. The parts I'm battling don't Spice well.

..... Phil
--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[George Herold]

On Monday, March 9, 2020 at 10:56:08 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 04:14:07 -0700 (PDT), bulegoge@columbus.rr.com
wrote:

Przemek Klosowski.... thank you for pointing to that interview on YouTube. I really liked the guys view on what the ltspice program is for which is so that the engineer can get better intuition as to how his circuits work. It is a piece of verification but should not be used is the sole purpose of verifying. I guess I like it because it resonated with my viewpoints about use of such a program

Being an IC guy, he did miss that a little as regards PC boards. I
often use LT Spice as the only process before I go to a PC board, but
then PC boards can be modified a lot easier than linear ICs, and parts
are mostly temperature stable as purchased.

And I design using LT Spice. Once one has some intuition, one can just
throw parts around in the sim and see what happens. That works
surprisingly well. I have several circuits in production that I don't
really understand.

I do much less math than I used to do. I guess rough values and tweak
in LT Spice. Voltage dividers, filters, oscillators this week. So it's
a calculator, too.

It also draws presentable diagrams to include in emails and manuals.
It's a drawing program.

I've had his same thought before: Romans built waterworks, people
built bridges and cathedrals and cannons and sailing ships, before
Newton invented calculus. Most science explained what people had
already built.

Sure, You'll also agree that generations of wisdom went into
mixing the right mortars, smelting iron/steel
and breaking masts with sails*.

I totally agree about intelligent fiddling. (intuition)
which you only get by fiddling with stuff.

I should do more ltspice. I mostly fiddle with solder.

George H.
Oh Przemek, thanks for the video.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Phil Allison]

John Larkin wrote:

---------------------

Bill Sloman is Totally Weird wrote:

---------------------------------


"Intuition is the most important part of engineering."

That's great.

It's actually insane,


** What an absurd claim.

Makes it very clear that Bill has none so has no clue what it is - apart from reading a dictionary.


One of Jim Williams' books has a great chapter by Barrie Gilbert,
"Where do little circuits come from?"

I've known lots of engineers who just tweaked circuits they found on
data sheets or on eval boards. One guy I know has a nice little
business basically repackaging eval boards.


Good engineers have "insight" = a deep understanding of how stuff works.

This leaves all the software guys gasping.

Insight informs one's "intuition" - so your assessment of what might be possible with what is currently available is very good.



but if intuition is all you've got, you might agree.


** And if you have none you are stuffed.

Most people get along fine without ever having original ideas. Society
only needs a small minority of creative lunatics.

Spice hugely improves creating and testing wild ideas.

I'm just now iterating a complex design using a soldering iron. It's a
huge pain. The parts I'm battling don't Spice well.

** JL leaves you wondering if he is in agreement - or not.

Guess he just likes to "have an edge" as Mr Eastwood remarked.



..... Phil

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 9:42:20 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 14:20:43 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
pallison49@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

Most people get along fine without ever having original ideas. Society
only needs a small minority of creative lunatics.

There's no association between creativity and lunacy.

Alan Dower Blumlein was a remarkably creative engineer, with 128 patents to his name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blumlein

He was about as far from being a lunatic as one can imagine. I've known two people who have chalked up 25 patents each - my father and a friend from EMI Central Research (where Blumlein wa working when he died). Both were perfectly sane

> Spice hugely improves creating and testing wild ideas.

It makes it cheaper and quicker, but Spice models are never entirely prefect.

I'm just now iterating a complex design using a soldering iron. It's a
huge pain. The parts I'm battling don't Spice well.

There are other ways of predicting what a circuit will do, and you can - in principle - create you own Spice models of parts which better reflect what they do in the circumstances in which you wish to use them.

Commercial Spice is optimised for the sorts of circuits that most people test. If you want to do something unconventional, you are likely to need unconventional device models.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 8:20:49 AM UTC+11, Phil Allison wrote:

Bill Sloman is Totally Weird wrote:

---------------------------------


"Intuition is the most important part of engineering."

That's great.

It's actually insane,

** What an absurd claim.

Engineering involves thinking about what you are doing. If you rely only on intuition you are an artist, not an engineer.

> Makes it very clear that Bill has none so has no clue what it is - apart from reading a dictionary.

Like any experience engineer, I've got loads of intuitions about what will and won't work, most of them pretty good. Electronic design is the process of systematically testing those intuitions, eventually by building and testing a real device, but it's a lot cheaper to check them out on paper and with computer simulations.

> Good engineers have "insight" = a deep understanding of how stuff works..

Useful engineers can articulate this insight, and spell out to other people what they think is going on. Intuition doesn't lend itself to that kind of communication.

> This leaves all the software guys gasping.

Why?

> Insight informs one's "intuition" - so your assessment of what might be possible with what is currently available is very good.

It can be, but it pays to test it against mathematical models - and not just the ones built into your Spice simulation engine.

but if intuition is all you've got, you might agree.

** And if you have none you are stuffed.

Probably. But nobody lacks it completely - humans are great at making sense of what they see, though sometimes their scheme for making sense of the world can be pretty wonky. John Larkin has clear intuitions about climate change, which he's got from climate change denial propaganda.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

> Engineering involves thinking about what you are doing. If you rely only on intuition you are an artist, not an engineer.

No. No good efficient engineering without intuition.

There are 37 possible solutions to my problem. I could try them one by one and finish in 2027. I could simulate for hours, do analysis and calculations, to determine where to start.

Good intuition and experience 'might' make me choose the right one at the startoff.
And then, combine that with good engineering and simulation and soldering and ....

Klaus

 

buecherk@gmail.com wrote in
news:22bc8f63-d755-4b3d-830f-6eeadee6b608@googlegroups.com:

Engineering involves thinking about what you are doing. If you
rely only on intuition you are an artist, not an engineer.

No. No good efficient engineering without intuition.

There are 37 possible solutions to my problem. I could try them
one by one and finish in 2027. I could simulate for hours, do
analysis and calculations, to determine where to start.

Good intuition and experience 'might' make me choose the right one
at the startoff. And then, combine that with good engineering and
simulation and soldering and ....

Klaus

Yes. Many inventions are not new, but are variations on previous
themes.

Everything is one step at a time, but even though we know so very
well how to walk, we still do not venture forth blinfolded.

 

[Winfield Hill]

Bill Sloman wrote...

There are other ways of predicting what a circuit will do,
and you can - in principle - create you own Spice models of
parts which better reflect what they do in the circumstances
in which you wish to use them.

I like to make small SPICE models of parts, derived from
analytical expressions of a few critical things that're
going on in the aspect of the circuit I'm evaluating.

For example, consider an op-amp driving a power MOSFET to
create a controlled current source. The FET's high gate
capacitance, along with the bootstrapped source resistor,
creates a confusing control loop. My RIS-796, a 250-amp
LED pulser project, uses this. If you want, sets of files:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcmiahzzughadfk/AABtgFDy01cuTDWDRjujP6jva?dl=1

In AoE x-Chapter 4x.26, we struggled and derived a set of
analytical equations for this circuit. See article here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o4g4mhzl70rsi9t/4x.26_MOSFET_CS_nodal-analysis_final.pdf?
dl=1

The circuit basis for the equations uses the MOSFET's gm,
equation id = gm (vg-vs), and its gate capacitance, Ciss.
The equations are hairy. But we also suggest you can make
a simple SPICE circuit with the op-amp, the FET's id and
Ciss, plus additional Rs and Cs, to evaluate the circuit.

Such a scheme may only works well over a limited range of
conditions, e.g., using the value for gm at the FET's 250A
current, means that the reduced-current startup won't be
accurately modeled. But it's still quick and useful. And
you can repeat the SPICE run, with lower values of gm, to
get an idea of what's happening during the pulse startup.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 7:10:45 PM UTC+11, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

buecherk@gmail.com wrote in
news:22bc8f63-d755-4b3d-830f-6eeadee6b608@googlegroups.com:


Engineering involves thinking about what you are doing. If you
rely only on intuition you are an artist, not an engineer.

No. No good efficient engineering without intuition.

There are 37 possible solutions to my problem. I could try them
one by one and finish in 2027. I could simulate for hours, do
analysis and calculations, to determine where to start.

Good intuition and experience 'might' make me choose the right one
at the startoff. And then, combine that with good engineering and
simulation and soldering and ....

Yes. Many inventions are not new, but are variations on previous
themes.

Less than obvious variations - "not obvious to those skilled in the art".

Everything is one step at a time, but even though we know so very
well how to walk, we still do not venture forth blindfolded.

If you don't think about what you think you know, and haven't got a clear idea of why you think that, you are working in the dark.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney