for me’, and there are examples to back up all of these contentions. Look at the super-cluttered yet highly productive bench of the late, brilliant analog electronics engineer Jim Williams of Linear Technology Corp., now part of Analog Devices (Figure 2). After his untimely passing in 2011, his legendary workbench was displayed – exactly as he left it – in a special 2012 exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA1. He consistently developed innovative circuits and systems at what looked like a hoarder’s stash of random components and instrumentation. The justification for this, at which Jim only winked slyly when I visited him a few months before he passed away, was that the mess was the way he liked to work, and it also discouraged ‘temporary’ borrowing of test equipment by his co- workers. Still, Jim’s bench may be the exception: for most engineers and projects, a neat work area – though not necessarily obsessively ultra- neat – is increasingly a necessity rather than a preference. With the ever-higher frequencies of even modest circuits such as 2 megahertz (MHz) DC/DC switching converters and multi-gigahertz RF circuits, having wires and connectors in suspension in mid-air is begging for trouble at all phases of the prototype and breadboard stage.
Figure 2: The legendary analog circuit design genius Jim Williams looking up from his famous, hyper-cluttered workbench at Linear Technology Corp. Image source: Mercury News
to management that ‘we’re almost finished’; or having a nearby rack requires stringing numerous cables between the rack and the prototype under evaluation, which is often inconvenient. But racks come in a variety of types and configurations that can overcome these concerns. There’s the heavy-duty, double- frame 86 inch (in.) high rack such as the Hammond Manufacturing C2F197823LG1 full-height rack (Figure 3).
There’s an easy solution
Figure 1: Some engineering workbenches are relatively clear and clean with only a few pc boards, meters, other instruments, and test leads. Image source: Wikipedia
It’s nice when there is a straightforward, hassle-free, low- tech solution to a problem. In the case of benchtop clutter, there is one: the 19 inch rack. There’s nothing new about the use of racks in engineering, of course. They are often used for large automated test equipment (ATE) set-ups, for example. Nearly all instruments such as oscilloscopes, waveform generators, and spectrum analyzers are directly rack mountable, or can be racked with a modest add-on kit. Nonetheless, I have rarely seen these instruments in a rack at the engineer’s bench. There could be any one of several reasons for this absence: perhaps it’s due to the incremental nature of the clutter growth; or having one might send a subliminal but premature message
The benefits of using a rack to keep your workbench tidy Written by Bill Schweber
One common stereotypical image in the mind of the non-engineering public is that the work area of the typical design engineer is chaotic. Circuit boards and boxes are scattered semi-randomly around the bench along with a rat’s nest of cables connecting everything. Though many prototype test benches are reasonably neat and organized, there is an element of truth to this cliché – especially as the development cycle progresses. So why should benches be such a mess? As with almost all
engineering questions, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer. I say this as a former hands-on engineer who has also visited dozens of EEs at their benches while they were working on advanced projects. Sooner or later, the prototype bench often ends up a mess, even though the design team starts out with the best of clutter-free intentions (Figure 1). This happens as more instruments and test leads are needed; temporary and improvised fixtures are used to simulate inputs and
operating conditions; larger battery packs are added for longer-running tests; and documentation – datasheets, user manuals, hand- written notes and reminders, and ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ admonitions – pile up.
Figure 3: This double-frame,
full-height 19 in. rack can take a large amount of test equipment off the designer’s bench. Image source: Hammond Manufacturing
Is clutter detrimental to product development?
Does this clutter lead to inefficient product development, debug, and assessment? The answers range from ‘it sure is’ to ‘it’s not a problem
we get technical
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