Electrical Engineering & Electronics Design

I think the future of electronic test equipment should be more advanced with its own way of technology that it does not need to have to inter-faze or come in to contact with what it is design to test within its respected field of testing.

That is a really good idea and is worth some thought. I wonder if there is a way we have not discovered yet to actually detect or image scan voltage and current with precision within circuit traces without any physical contact. For example a similar method to thermal imaging or magnetic field scanning but to detect electricity. There is the AIM-TTi I-Prober 520 Current Probe that is a non contact device but I dont know of a non contact voltage probe.

That is an interesting approach to measuring and validating designs considering the very act of interfering with the circuit changes the operation, field density, etc. Kind of a Schrödinger's cat phenomenon.

Depending what school of thought you follow, voltage and current are essentially artifacts of the wavefront passing through the dielectric and conductors so thermal imaging would be what I would consider a starting point for a non-contact approach. The translation between heat and current would have to be incredibly well defined. A much needed upgrade to infrared mapping would be a great side benefit to developing the technology.

When you say design, I think that you really mean the Industrial Design (ID) not the mechanical design. Styling and ergonomics are very important to make the end customer (user) 'feel' the value of the product.

Unfortunately many designs start at the mechanical engineering and packaging level but never graduate from there to the ID level. Usually because of poor planning and bad insight into the final product deliverables to marketing and sales.

Cost and timelines can also be a problem where companies run out of time and/or money and decide to push it out anyway to generate revenue and will upgrade on the next revision when sales increase. But this hampers the sale from the beginning and sales must 'push' the product rather than get pull from customer interest.

Materials and process can also be an issue when styling can be hampered by low volume production quantities where tooling costs are prohibitive to be included into the final price and will eat away too much margin.

Overall product designs for high end scopes and analyzers from major manufacturers are generally good ID, but new comers will have learning and growing pains.

Finally there are just BAD industrial designs that are just very amateurish and awful that may simply be what the 'customer' wants. Just look at some of the really bad car designs and you will see what I mean (e.g. Nissan Juke (AKA 'Puke') and Nissan Leaf).

My experiences.

Hello Steven,

When I say design I mean electronics test equipment enclosure design. The actual design engineering looks including plastic mouldings structure design, front display interface choice and lets not forget actual build materials choice like plastics etc... These are really important factors to the modern consumer. I am not referring to internal circuitry and electronics which are pretty good in most cases.

For example I will randomly pick one company from many electronics test equipment manufacturers https://www.aimtti.com/

On an electronics and hardware level I think this company have some seriously good engineers in fact I think they are excellent. I actually have multiple aimtti cpx power supplies. However now take a look at their enclosure design choices of their LCR measurement, multi meters, frequency counters equipment etc...

Many of these company's have brilliant electrical engineers however when it comes to there design engineers they need to have a rethink.

I completely agree with you regarding really bad car designs. This is something I often point out.