⚡ The Analog #111: Mapping Automotive Supply Chains & Pressure History of Injection Molded Parts

December 17th, 2024

Hardware FYI

Dec 17, 2024

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Interesting Links 🏭

Two truths: a great supply chain is one of the strongest accelerants to an engineering team, and teardowns/reverse engineering are underrated—you should study competitors' designs to learn faster. In the automotive sector, A2Mac1 is a benchmarking platform that tears down and catalogs every part of a car from the drivetrain, seating, electrical architecture, and more. Quite literally, take the Toyota Prius from 2023 for example: the high voltage battery pack PCB uses a common automotive MCU from Renesas (RH850/F1), and ground-sense comparators/high-speed digital isolators from ROHM Semiconductor. It’s popular with OEMs and suppliers, though its high subscription fees limit access. For a free alternative, Munro Live also has a large library of automotive teardowns online.

PCB with labeled sections for the MCU, battery measurement,and communication modules on the high-voltage battery pack.

China's new "flash ironmaking" technology achieves a 3,600x increase in productivity compared to traditional blast furnaces. A blast furnace is a large industrial reactor that transforms iron ore into molten iron, or pig iron, through a complex series of chemical reactions. Traditional blast furnaces take 5-6 hours, where China’s new ‘flash’ method takes just 3-6 seconds (with the added bonus of eliminating the need for coal entirely – a huge environmental win). They do this by injecting finely ground iron ore powder into an extremely hot furnace to trigger an "explosive chemical reaction" that produces a stream of high-purity iron, ready for casting. This new method works exceptionally well for low and medium-yield ores that are abundant in China. Existing iron production methods depend heavily on high-yield ores, which China spends a huge amount of money importing these ores from Australia, Brazil and Africa.
- Update: The concept was actually first proposed in 2003 by H.Y. Sohn, a professor at the University of Utah.

A set of fantastic MIT course notes on polymer processing (injection molding). Everything from DFM, suggested melt temps, mold cooling, warpage, and more. In injection molding, a "pressure history" refers to the changing pressure profile throughout the molding cycle. This starts with a high initial injection pressure to fill the mold cavity, followed by a holding pressure to pack the material, and then gradually decreasing as the part cools and solidifies, ultimately reaching atmospheric pressure once the molded part is ejected.

This Linear Tech application note on high speed monolithic amplifiers represents the largest LTC commitment to an application note to date. “No other application note absorbed as much effort, took so long or cost so much”. The word “monolithic" is used because they are fabricated on a single piece of semiconductor material, typically silicxon. In the 1960’s, monolithic operational amplifiers revolutionized analog electronics by integrating complex circuitry into a single chip – engineers could now focus on system-level design rather than intricate transistor-level circuits.

Grounds 2, 3, 4 and 6 should be as close to single point as possible. Fast, large currents must flow through R1, R2, D1 and D2 during the DAC settle time. Therefore, D1, D2, R1 and R2 should be mounted close to the ground plane to minimize their inductance. R3 and C1 don’t carry any current, so their inductance is less important.

Anode startup Echion, and a custom auto-project company Switch Technologies are developing a hybrid diesel Land Cruiser which runs using Echion’s niobium anode technology (XNO) in lithium ion batteries. Niobium was first identified in the 1980s as a potential anode material for lithium-ion batteries, and has found its way into commercial use. It’s added to cathodes as a dopant—a small chemical tweak that boosts performance and stability—and is now being explored as a primary material for anodes. Its two-electron redox process (Nb5+ to Nb3+) offers high capacities at moderate voltages (~1.6 V), safety, longevity, abundance, non-toxicity, environmental sustainability, and price stability. If you're interested in battery design, the playlist is a must-watch — it takes you from designing at the cell level, to assembling a pack, and final design challenges for different applications.

Some fun links for the week:
- If you've been ejected from an aircraft using a seat manufactured by Martin-Baker, you’re eligible for lifetime membership in the Ejection Tie Club.
- Throwback to 2010, a tour of SpaceX’s production floor used for manufacturing the Merlin engines.

Startup News 🚀

General Motors is shutting down Cruise, their autonomous vehicle subsidiary after investing ~$10B since first acquiring the startup in 2016. Kyle Vogt, former Founder & CEO, didn’t mince words post-shutdown by publicly stating “GM are a bunch of dummies.” After a widely publicized accident and mounting regulatory scrutiny, Cruise's shutdown leaves two major players: Waymo and Tesla’s much-hyped Robotaxi service.

Anybotics has raised $60M in a Series B Extension to scale their autonomous industrial robots deployment in the US. Founded in 2016 as a spinout from ETH Zürich, the company develops a four-legged inspection robot equipped with sensors and cameras for industrial monitoring-some example applications include tracking thermal anomalies and detecting combustible gases. Industrial robots are notoriously hard to deploy, but Anybotics has sold 200+ units that are deployed across oil and gas, power, utilities, and more. The extension brings their total funding to $130M with the extension led by Qualcomm Ventures and Supernova Invest.

The EU has finalized a deal to build IRIS, a constellation of ~300 internet satellites by 2030. The $11.1B project aims to create a sovereign alternative to Starlink, but they’re starting far behind—Starlink currently comprises around ~6k satellites, passed 4 million customers in September, and generated $6.6B in revenue over 2024.
Deterrence, a defense startup automating the production of energetics used in ammunition and weapon systems, just dropped their funding news in a video set to heavy metal. Details are sparse, but it appears the company is developing automated systems to scale energetics production—either as a direct supplier or by providing production cells to manufacturers. The $10.1M Seed Round was led by Riot Ventures.
Cofactr, one of our longest-running sponsors, just raised a $17.2 Series A round to scale go-to-market efforts and build their suite of supply chain tools centered around procurement and logistics. The round was led by Bain Capital.

Open Jobs 💼

A list of 300+ hardware internships hiring now. You can also find new-grad roles here.

New Grad:

Mach Industries is looking for an Electrical Engineer & Mechanical Engineer (New Grad) in Huntington Beach, CA
Symbotic is looking for a Mechanical Engineer (New Grad) in Wilmington, MA

Mid-Level:

Etched is looking for an Electrical Systems Engineer in Cupertino, CA
Nudge is looking for an Electrical Engineer & Mechanical Engineer in San Francisco, CA
Amazon is looking for a Robotics Electrical Engineer (Vulcan Stow) in Seattle, WA
Nintendo is looking for a Manufacturing Engineer in Redmond, WA

Senior to Staff:

Oura is looking for a Staff Mechanical Design Engineer & Staff Electrical Engineer in San Francisco/San Diego, CA
Toyota Research is looking for a Senior Robotics Engineer in Cambridge, MA

Internships:

Wisk is looking for an Aircraft Test & Integration Intern in Fremont, CA
Zoox is looking for a Brake Engineer Intern in Foster City, CA
Autodesk is looking for a Robot Learning Intern in San Francisco, CA
Anduril is looking for a Mechanical Engineering Co-op (Maritime) in Quincy, MA

Want to share an exciting role at your company? Reach out here.

Meet our Sponsors:

Sygma is building the AI assistant for hardware teams - track issues smarter, stay on schedule and on budget, and ship faster.

Doss simplifies your operations by tracking inventory from PO to POS.

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FlashPCB provides super-fast PCB assembly by running design rule checks on your board, automatically generating a BOM, and final quotes within minutes.

POP Manufacturing offers rapid prototyping and quick-turn services for FDM, PolyJet, full-color 3D printing, and CNC machining.

Summit Interconnect is a manufacturer of advanced technology printed circuit boards focused on complex rigid, flex and rigid-flex PCBs.

Cofactr is an automated electronic component procurement and inventory management platform.

AllSpice.io is the Git for hardware collaboration platform, connecting native engineering design tools to provide revision control, automation and more.

Partsbox controls your electronic components inventory management software. Keeps track of where your parts are stored, manages BOMs and production.

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