Templetronics


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Expertise

Company

Expertise backed by proven experience.

We offer a comprehensive design service targeted to electronics systems and circuit design.

We bring with us over 20 years of extensive, cross-disciplined design and development from leading edge technology projects across a wide range of industry sectors.

To effectively communicate technical ideas to forward a project to a successful conclusion requires personnel with a broad range of knowledge, expertise and experience. That is where we come in: Templetronics brings this to your technology project.

We offer comprehensive, multi-disciplined design and also specialist expertise to your project to help you to a successful conclusion. Above all we want a technical solution that is fit for purpose and meets your requirements.

We offer the following to assist our Clients:



Electronics Expertise List

Multi-Disciplined Expertise

Analogue, ASIC, Soc, FPGA, control systems, digital, DSP, embedded systems, EMC and signal integrity, PCB and high speed digital, mixed signal: these are the skills and expertise we have consistently and successfully delivered across a wide range of technically challenging engineering projects.

Check out the various Design Services in the main menu or alternatively, the Projects we have successfully contributed to.

Click on the links below, browse the website or Contact us for further information.

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Specialist Design Experience and Expertise

As well as the skills advertised in our Design Services pages, we can offer specialist input to projects as follows, providing greater added value service to your projects:



Design for Environmental Considerations

We have extensive, proven experience in designing for rugged, harsh environmental electronics (electrically, thermally and mechanically). We have extensive experience in both industrial and extended temperature ranges, and to guarantee the design performance across the operational range.

We can perform tolerance and worst case circuit analysis (WCCA) to ensure the design performs without issue over all operational aspects, or design the system to minimise their effects.

From high performance precision analogue measurements to high power densely populated digital processing boards, and precision control systems, requiring repeatable performance across extreme temperature ranges, our design and development experience is contributory to your success in hi-rel applications.

Contact us for further information.

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Design for Manufacturing

From standard COTS to hermetically packaged designs, we have experience across a broad manufacturing spectrum, designing for minimum cost, high reliability design for manufacture (DFM), and also design for test (DFT), also encompassing design for reliability (DFR), particularly for hi-rel/safety critical, and even commercial markets. We have direct experience in producing designs for IPC-A-610 Class 3 for safety critical industries as well as Class 1 and 2 for less stringent equipment, and working with manufacturers with both lead (pb) and lead free (pb free) processes.

In terms of DFT we have wide experience in JTAG Boundary Scan design to
IEEE Standard 1149.1, for both SoC and board level, as well as extensions such as IEEE 1149.4 (analogue) and reduced pin count JTAG (IEEE 1149.7), as well as the design of in built test features (PBIT, CBIT, BIST) and dormant testability features enhancing product testability, as well as standard manufacturers automated tests.

We have experience in small, medium and large manufacturing projects, from prototyping to mass production runs, and can design accordingly.

We offer a closed loop design service where we work with downstream partners, either as part of a Clients organisation or with external suppliers to ensure a design is both manufacturable and testable, with additional experience in design assurance and production assurance test development and execution. With have extensive supply chain, supplier and component management experience to call upon, and close working relationships with manufacturing process experts.

Contact us for further information.

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Design for Quality

Proven design routes, backed up with full design cycle documentation, means you can rely on our design input to meet your quality control requirements. This is particularly necessary in safety critical applications such as avionics and medical applications.

We have extensive experience in design and compliance to industry wide QA standards such as IS09001 and to specialist avionics standards such as RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED 80 and other high reliability standards that require defined and controlled design and development cycles, for example ISO 13485:2016, (Medical Devices), and configuration management.

We are conversant with IT software tools for design traceability and version control that now form part of the quality design cycle for modern project design.

Examples of this include:

  • IBM (formerly TeleLogic) DOORS
  • Rational Clearcase
  • Borland StarTeam
  • (P)VCS
  • SubVersion


Other quality control processes and tools pose no difficulty for us.


Contact us for further information.

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Design for Reliability

Our extensive experience in high reliability (hi-rel) and safety critical industries leads enables us to provide a comprehensive design service for designing products for reliability. Reliability is also now extremely prevalent in today's consumer and industrial markets, where consumers are demanding more reliable products in an ever increasing competitive market, as well as in the industrial sector where plant downtime can have serious cost implications in lost yield.

In emerging markets such as wearable electronics, unreliable products can have serious implications on data presentation to wearers, and in both driver and driverless vehicles, life threatening implications to passengers and road users. Medical devices used either as wearable's, or in clinical environments are crucial to patient care.

With extensive design experience gained from traditional high reliability markets such as avionics, we can assist you in the design of robust, reliable electronic systems.

Our hi-rel design experience in ensuring a reliable system and design, complementing our other experience in associated areas such as: Design for Quality ; Design for Environmental Considerations ; EMC ; Low Power Design ; Safety Critical and Robust Design ; and extensive RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED 80 experience, we offer a comprehensive reliable design package.

We have direct experience in designing systems to MIL-HBK-338B for design and MIL-HBK-217F for reliability prediction, working with Reliability Specialists.
We have direct experience to designing to EN 50129, Railway Electronic Systems Safety, to SIL 3 in addition to RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED 80 , for aircraft systems for DAL A - D and exposure to IEC 61511-1, Functional Safety - Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector and IEC/EN 61508 (Functional Safety for Electrical and Electronic Systems). Direct experience in ISO 13485:2016 ensures we can assist med-tech companies in reaching certification with qualified medical certification bodies such as TUV, and others. Migrating to other hi-reliability process standards such as ISO 26262 for road vehicles poses no issues for us, and producing designs to IEC/EN60601-1, (Medical Electrical Equipment), despite it's perceived complexity and general wariness in industry, contains design considerations paralled in other genres such as power electronics (e.g. voltage creep, clearance, isolation), already encountered.

With experience in FMEA and FMECA development for electronics, and associated design considerations such as component de-rating and correct thermal design to increase MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), selection and design in, of appropriately rated electronic components, implementation of electronics component management plans (ECMP) and quality control processes , we can assist you in designing reliable electronic systems development.

With extensive production experience and continued partnership with production engineering colleagues, we also bring process experience and manufacturing DFR awareness and knowledge.

Experience in RTCA DO-160F/G, the controlling environmental standard for design proving for airborne electronics hardware, as well as systems test for industrial, telecoms and consumer markets allows us to assist in your qualification plans.

Contact us for further information.

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EMC

We offer a complete design service to ensure your product is EMC compliant. We do this from the start of the project where
EMC must be thought of, not at the end. We understand the standards and implement the design techniques to ensure your projects success.

We can design with successful EMC practices for both system and module, allowing you to achieve certification for your products, selecting appropriate design strategies, and constituent parts of the design.

For radiated and conducted considerations, we have direct experience in successful mitigation of adverse EMI effects, whether aggressor or victim paths. High power, fast transient environmental phenomena such as lightning, EMP (electro-magnetic pulse)/HEMP (high altitude electromagnetic pulse): we have direct experience in limitation and mitigation of these effects and can aid your products integrity.

We are fully conversant with EMI reduction and mitigation for both analogue and digital systems, low and high power.

We are familiar with industry standard specifications such as IEC / EN 61000-4-2 (ESD), to IEC / EN 61000-4-5 (surge), general emissions standards such as IEC / EN 5500XX, as well as commercial telecommunications product standards such as BellCore/TeleCordia G1089, ITU K.20/.21/.40/.45/.47/.67 and CISPR 22. We can also help you with FCC part 15 (Class A and B) compliance, having direct experience in successful electronics systems designs that have passed these standards, as well as RTCA DO-160F/G for avionics. Other standards outside of current exposure present no problem.

We can analyse the requirements for the design to meet or alternatively liaise with your own EMC specialists to ensure a compliant design.

We also specialize in transient and ESD protection, for power, telecommunications and data interfaces, low and high frequency, as well as emissions control for power electronics systems, applicable to power supply/conversion and motor drive systems. We have experience with various power switching topologies, AC and DC, including harmonic reduction, PFC and EMI reduction for switching circuits.

See our EMC page for more details.

Contact us for further information.

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High Power & High Voltage Design

Offering extensive design experience in power electronic systems, encompassing AC-DC and DC-DC conversion, with both AC and DC sources,Templetronics can assist your project in successful high voltage/high power electronic systems developments or combinations thereof.

High voltage and high current power systems development provides significant challenges in systems development, from electrical issues such as EMC to thermal issues, particularly with low power systems operating in close proximity to high current flows, which posses significant challenges in systems development. Ensuring adequate transient immunity from surge and common mode noise is critical to the control of power electronics systems. Galvanic isolation is mandatory for safety and in achieving sufficient immunity, and we have extensive experience in full galvanically isolated high power systems design, which is ultimately useful in achieving
safety approvals and EMC.

We have extensive experience in EMI and noise reduction for high power systems, as well as meeting the Low Voltage Directive (LVD) for safety and electrical operation. High current systems, with rapid changing edges provides significant challenges in mitigating interference effects, both radiated and conducted, whilst high voltage systems require consideration of electro-potential effects.

We have developed DC-DC conversion systems in the 1kVA-1.5kVA range, with various high voltage/low current and high current low voltage combinations; engineered motor drives systems, operating from 115VAC generators via power factor correction supplies to 275VDC DC link, and direct DC-DC conversion systems with battery fed voltages of 300V, as well as DC link voltages of 600V with delivery power levels up to 7.5kW using semiconductor technologies such MOSFETS, both Si and SiC types, and IGBTs. For many years, selection of these two device types, was determined by electrical parameters, but recent advents in semiconductor technology have now made the choice less straightforward. Vast improvements in wild heat reduction, seen in high power supplies, has been possible by technology improvements.

In addition, we have extensive heavy industry electro-mechanical plant drive experience for prime movers in the region of 25kW with AC induction machines, and DC drives, as well as safe working procedures on medium voltage (415V) and high voltage plant equipment (11kV).

With advances in renewable power technology, electric vehicles, and continued improvements in power conversion efficiency, in areas such as the more electric aircraft, data centres, consumer device power, and industrial plant, our extensive power conversion experience will be instrumental in your systems development. Coupled with our low voltage electronics experience, this will be invaluable to your power electronics and control developments.

See also EMC ; Low Power Design ; Safety Critical and Robust Design ; also, and our Analogue Services, EMC services and associated analogue projects and EMC projects pages for more details.


Contact us for further information.

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Low Power Design


With the proliferation of battery powered devices and equipment, we offer low power design techniques as part of our portfolio or electronics skills. Low power design techniques, coupled with improvements in battery technology mean that portable computing and device usage such as that enjoyed by modern smart phones, tablets, laptops and other battery powered equipment can yield higher per charge usage, off mains. Poor power management can eat into the advantages of per extended charge usage brought by battery technology improvements.

Low power design is a essentially a complete system consideration, encompassing all areas of a system from strategy through to software, and technology process as well as hardware design techniques.

Originally dynamic power was the demon of low power design. More recently, static power has overtaken consumption in electronics as the key element of power consumption in battery powered systems.

Whether low voltage analogue signal conditioning, or low power digital at board and SoC, using methods like the UPM, or a low power mixed signal and system strategy, we can assist your design in achieving low power operation.

Whatever your system, whether portable (battery), renewable (solar powered and fuel cell) or mains power based, the industry trend is now to reduce power. Lower power means longer life in portable equipment, and lower running costs in standard grid powered systems. Server and communications products are now called to be green, and low power to reduce data centre running costs (and cooling) with some semiconductor vendors now addressing the problem at component level (for example, Samsungs "Green Memory" program). Hand in hand reduction of operating voltages, balanced against rising clock frequencies and denser silicon function yielding high current draw provides a real challenge to the design of low power systems.

Lower power dissipation also means higher reliability : a serious consideration for safety-critical and other hi-rel applications, and even demanded now in consumer equipment.
Our analogue design experience in efficient power tree design will help mitigate wasted energy in power conversion, assisting in better low power whilst our digital IC and embedded systems experience will ultimately aid your system low power performance, yielding better charge usage, and lower wasted energy.

We can assist you with the techniques to implement in your design to help this.

Contact us for further information.

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RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED 80

We have been designing to the guidelines of RTCA DO-254 (in the United States)/EUROCAE ED 80 (in Europe) since before it became mandatory in 2005, having an accumulated more than 15 years experience in meeting this standard since 2000.

We offer comprehensive experience in all DAL levels up to and including DAL A.

We have expertise in meeting and passing DO-254 at the both the component and system level. We can offer consultation on how to achieve the right level of compliance with the necessary documentation, and prepare you for an audit with the relevant authorities such as the CAA and FAA, having had direct relevant experience for the design of American, Asian and European avionics and oversight by the appropriate regulatory bodies (Certification Authorities (CA's) such as EASA, FAA and CAAC.

The application of DO-254 is also now being pushed down from aircraft companies to tier suppliers and equipment level makers down to component manufacturers, with many companies now selling into avionics markets having to meet these guidelines.

In addition to DO-254/ED 80, EASA have published CM-SWCEH-001 covering Development Assurance for airborne electronics hardware, which enhances the application of DO-254 to complex hardware such as ASIC, FPGAs and SoCs; applicability of DO-254/ED 80 to LRU's (Line Replaceable Units) and airborne electronics circuit board assemblies (CBA's); COTS devices (components and graphics processors); and provides overseeing guidance for suppliers and open problem reports.

DO-254 requires you to plan what to do, define and control how you do it, maintaning evidence (Artifacts).

We have extensive experience in both process development and implementation of designs to DO 254/ED 80.

We can assist you with the achieving a compliant design, minimising problems at certification and audit time.

We can assist in all aspects of the DO-254 process:

  • Planning (e.g. PHAC, HDP, HVP, ECMP)
  • Design requirements generation (SysAS, HDS, HVS)
  • Conceptual Design (CDD)
  • Design (e.g. HRD)
  • Implementation
  • Product Transition
  • Support activities: V&V, PA, Artifact Configuration Management (CM) & Cert liaison assistance


Incorporating:

  • System specifications drafting, including customer specification interpretation
  • Sub-system specification & requirements drafting
  • Compliance with complex and simple component analysis and category definition
  • Design requirements generation
  • Detailed Design
  • Documentation traceability from design specifications through test
  • Traceability to higher level systems specification(s)
  • Requirements proving and test (validation and verification)
  • Tool chain selection and qualification
  • Installation of a full board and FPGA/ASIC flow to meet DO-254 and CERT-MEMO SWCEH-001.
  • ECMP installation
  • Production Transition
  • Document drafting, full lifecycle
  • Audit trail, Certification and representation


All the above covers DAL (Design Assurance Level) A to E.

Adoption of DO 254/ED80 is costly and painful for first time companies. Our experience in both DO-254 process development and AEH (Airborne Electronic Hardware) development can help you mitigate those costs.
With experience and continuing process improvements, project cost reductions should be encountered over time. A well defined process, continually followed and monitored as defined by quality assurance, helps avoid certification failure re-application and application of GAP analysis, and thus reduces costs in the total development lifecycle.


Contact us for further information.

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Safety Critical and Robust Design

We offer a complete design service to ensure your products integrity through our experience with industry standards and
design and quality audit (for avionics and airborne electronic hardware, see RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED 80 and Quality sections above). With direct exposure to designing to EN 50129, Railway Electronic Systems Safety (SIL 3), the more general IEC/EN 61508 (Functional Safety for Electrical and Electronic Systems) and IEC 61511-1, functional safety - Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector for industrial equipment, and to parallel design experience to medical standards such EN60601-1, safety critical design is an extensive part of our services.

Our technical experience provides a wide range of knowledge on methods and techniques for robust and high-reliability design in safety critical industries. We have extensive experience in designs requiring IPC-A-610 Class 3 manufacture and to IEC/EN61010 to meet the Low Voltage Directive (LVD), 2014/35/EU.

As safety critical and design for reliability methodologies consider similar aspects, our experience can easily be migrated to other hi-reliability process standards and ISO 26262 for road vehicles, to assist you in your development activities for automotive systems. Safety critical systems are required to hold a high degree of documented evidence for certification and thus our extensive experience in mature safety critical markets in meeting quality control will be invaluable to your design cycle.

Contact us for further information.

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SEU and Radiation Hardness

Our extensive design experience includes very specialist knowledge such as avoiding SEE (Single Event Effects) such as SEU (Single Event Upsets) in designs, and MEU (Multiple Event Upsets) and latch-up effects (clearable and catastrophic, for example SEB (Single Event Burn-Out)), both at component and system level.

The exposure to SEE, SEU, MEU and SEB is everywhere. Examples include: for airborne, high altitude, space and even ground based equipment (the latter depending on your latitude) due to the effects of cosmic and terrestrial radiation, both having the ability to cause potentially damaging operation to microelectronic circuits through ionizing radiation from alpha particles. Even on Earth, in medical environments where gamma emitting equipment CAT scanners, X-ray machines are prevalent, systems maybe vulnerable to upset. In industrial systems, where microelectronics are exposed to radiation in X-ray machines and of course, systems that monitor and control nuclear reactors, and in processing and sterilization operations, electronics can be irradiated and accumulate dose.

We have extensive systems and design expertise on avoiding on both SEU/MEU and latch-up/SEB, and therefore experience on enhancing your products reliability.

Part of our experience also covers process and device evaluation, as called for by several airborne standards, as well as mandatory analysis in space-borne applications due to the reliability required by the economics and distances involved in effecting repairs, and whether critical life support, uninterrupted control, or other functions such as reliable telecommunications and data gathering and telemetry operations are required.

Many Consultants can tell you to triplicate your logic for redundancy, but we can tell you why you need to do it and where, evaluating your system components, and providing you with real value, with experience in a multitude of technologies and packaging for reliable systems design. In high radiation environments, as with electromagnetic radiation, shielding may be an effective protection mechanism

We have extensive experience in detailed and system design for reliability against the effects of radiation, and mitigation of these effects on the performance on electronic circuits both analogue and digital, including degradation and performance analysis, ensuring design and operational performance in extreme and harsh conditions.

Contact us for further information.

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Thermal Design


The ability to remove dissipated heat rapidly in electronics products is now a complex factor of many designs, from small form factor densely populated PCB's, to multiple cards sitting in racks in close proximity to other modules in network equipment, and co-existing low power electronics in proximity to high power devices dissipating Watts. The functional environment of high performance electronics is an important factor of successful heat management.

With digital electronic devices such as multi core embedded processors consuming in excess of 30A of current, and modern FPGAs, with 28nm silicon operating at hundreds of MHz with reduced core voltages dissipating several Watts, heat removal in electronics is a critical aspect of the system design, requiring careful electrical and electro-mechanical systems design to remove unwanted and damaging heat.

Our analogue design experience in power tree, POL, and power electronics design will help mitigate waste heat, assisting in better low power performance, whilst our embedded and digital design experience will help you mitigate dissipation in digital systems. Design predictions, correct design techniques and appropriate excess thermal mitigation allow for more reliable designs. With lower operating voltages available across modern silicon products, device parasitics and frequency of operation (for digital products), are now constituent factors in device power dissipation.

In power electronics, improvements in solid state semiconductor switching device technology are now yielding better thermal performance with device improvements leading to lower power dissipation, yielding size and cost reductions at systems level due to lower dissipation and better reliability. In embedded digital devices, the operational trade off of processing power and performance versus keeping below maximum junction temperatures is a balance, reliant on desired operational frequency and silicon characteristics. Rapid heat removal is therefore critical to avoid catastrophic failure.

We have direct experience in a wide range of conduction and convection cooled systems, from direct heat sink, to water cooling, heat piping and forced air cooling, at local device and unit level. Traditional case cooling solutions with mechanical aspects such as ventilation and slots bring their own issues to the design in other ways. We have extensive experience in thermal management for single cards designs, rack systems, densely packed small enclosure systems and low power and high power co-existing designs. We work with Thermal and Mechanical Experts to achieve a wholly fit for purpose design.

We have wide analysis experience at device level, utilising data and heat flow path predication, as well as EDA, and also and thermo-graphic test equipment and thermal measurement, in-situ proving and correlation of actual hardware performance against analysis and simulation. Our system level experience of thermal mitigation techniques for robust electronic designs in extreme extreme environments will aid your design process.

From integrated circuits and embedded systems to high power electronics, we have direct exposure to successful methods of heat removal, together with system level and electronic monitoring, thus prolonging operational life and improving MTBF, thus yielding greater reliability

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For more information on what services we provide, please refer to our Design Services pages, accessible from the main menu, or alternatively, please feel free to contact us either by telephone or email, at the details given below, or fill out a request for information form.

Our frequently asked questions page may also answer some of your queries.

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