dullard
Elite Member
I have one quick question. I don't know if anyone here can answer it or not.
The company I work for is developing a machine and it needs to be smaller/cheaper/faster to produce. A PCB with our electronics instead of hand wiring appeared to be the solution.
We hired a local company to make the schematic and produce a handful of boards for us to test. We clearly stated the reasons: smaller, cheaper, and faster. We were assured that they can meet those goals. I gave them a hand drawn schematic and even a fully functioning hand-wired machine to use.
After an overly long process with many errors on their part in getting the wires to the right places, they finally sent us a final schematic in OrCAD format (.max extension on the filename). I downloaded a free OrCAD demo to view it.
The thing is massive. It is nearly 50% larger than the size of our smallest hand wired machine. I wrote an email back again stressing that PCB size is one of our 3 main goals (the met the other two). They wrote back stating that it is impossible to get a smaller PCB.
My question: is anyone here with PCB experience willing to take 5 minutes to say if it is/isn't possible to make it smaller? If so, thanks, and I'll email you the schematic. It's mostly connecting terminals together, a few resistors, a few fuses, and eight I/O modules.
The company I work for is developing a machine and it needs to be smaller/cheaper/faster to produce. A PCB with our electronics instead of hand wiring appeared to be the solution.
We hired a local company to make the schematic and produce a handful of boards for us to test. We clearly stated the reasons: smaller, cheaper, and faster. We were assured that they can meet those goals. I gave them a hand drawn schematic and even a fully functioning hand-wired machine to use.
After an overly long process with many errors on their part in getting the wires to the right places, they finally sent us a final schematic in OrCAD format (.max extension on the filename). I downloaded a free OrCAD demo to view it.
The thing is massive. It is nearly 50% larger than the size of our smallest hand wired machine. I wrote an email back again stressing that PCB size is one of our 3 main goals (the met the other two). They wrote back stating that it is impossible to get a smaller PCB.
My question: is anyone here with PCB experience willing to take 5 minutes to say if it is/isn't possible to make it smaller? If so, thanks, and I'll email you the schematic. It's mostly connecting terminals together, a few resistors, a few fuses, and eight I/O modules.
