This Week’s Highlights
- Neuralink’s Compression Challenge 🧠
- Inspection Metrology for Micro Fasteners 🔩
- Bambu 3-D Printer Teardown 🖨️
Interesting Links 🏭
Last week’s most clicked link was a PCB fabricator’s perspective on thermal management. Thermal Management: A Fabricator's Perspective covers how design considerations for thermal requirements can affect manufacturability.
- Neuralink has issued a compression challenge. Their implant records data at 200Mbps but can only transmit wirelessly at 1Mbps, requiring over 200x compression. With 1024 electrodes recording at 10-bit resolution and 20kHz to capture neural spikes, a novel solution is needed. A good analogy would be the dark art of video codecs which can achieve excellent compression for specific images such as trees, etc. While the neuromodulation IC in the implant device can perform localized spike detection to circumvent this data issue, it may miss nuances in an individual spike signal, making full transmission an advantage.
- Micro fasteners are a type of specialist fastener that is significantly smaller and lighter than the average precision screw. The diameter of these screws can range from 0.3mm to 2mm, and have particular considerations for manufacturability (slotted drive for M0.5 to M1 screws) and inspection during mass production. Use cases of micro fasteners are ideal for precision applications, like in watch manufacturing, electronics, and surgical instruments. This paper explores advanced inspection metrology for defect detection on micro fasteners used in battery manufacturing.
- The team at Vector3D took apart the Bambu A1 Mini 3-D printer to see the sensors and components the printer is composed of. Bambu Labs, a Chinese-based 3-D printing desktop manufacturing company, has gained a lot of traction since launching their first 3-D printer on Kickstarter in 2022 (not without a litany of controversies related to data logging, network traffic concerns, etc.). Their printers feature multi-color filament printing capabilities, analog force & LIDAR-assisted bed leveling, flow calibration, and more.Subscribe now
- An average CPU undergoes 80 visits to a photolithography machine during its production. This video details the thousands of steps involved in making a modern CPU with FinFet technology, including lithography, etching, ion-implanting, annealing, and cleaning. The highlight comes at 18:18, where the fabrication process of a single interconnect layer is thoroughly explained, along with a breakdown of the fab layout.
- Researchers have compiled the most comprehensive dataset of US power outages from 2014-2022. Covering 92% of US customers in all 50 states including Puerto Rico, this study recorded outages 15 mins or greater from 456 individual utilities. Although as a data descriptor no conclusions are drawn, the raw data could be a huge boon for data scientists and engineers alike. One striking example is the 2021 Texas blackout, which shows massive clusters of customer outages throughout the state.
- A complete breakdown of a non-isolated bidirectional buck-boost AC/DC converter system from ETH Zurich. This design eliminates the need for an isolation transformer, reducing both cost and form factor. Typically, an EV charger converts mains voltage to the appropriate DC voltage, which can reach up to 800-1000V at 10kW for large battery packs. Grounding is crucial at such power levels. This prototype addresses the issue by creating a controllable virtual ground at its midpoint, allowing connection to protective Earth and the vehicle chassis. The full paper can be found here.
Startup News 🚀
- Orange Charger raised a $6.5M Seed round to develop 120/240V EV chargers which can be manufactured and installed at about a third the cost of commercial alternatives. Targeting residential and multi-residential users who often cannot install high voltage level III chargers, the chargers allow for usage based pricing so that other EV users can charge off of a private device.
- Potential Motors has secured a $2M Seed extension to develop self-driving software for off- road vehicles used in recreational, military, and commercial applications. Unlike road-based systems, this software must handle uneven terrain and reduced traction control. The company is now integrating its technology with Minnesota-based CFMOTO powersports.
- AtmosZero, which raised a $21M Series A back in February, has leased a 100,000 sqft pilot production facility in Colorado. They are developing an electric industrial boiler that generates steam energy from electrical sources like wind, hydro, solar, and tidal power, where electricity is the only way to produce heat.
- Colab has raised a $21M Series B round led by Insight Partners to further develop their design collaboration software. Their core offerings focus on asynchronous CAD design review and automated issue tracking.
