PCB design for construction safety equipment

Australian technology design company Lockie Safety Systems usually designs PCB layouts in-house but when the company started a new project that required radically different architecture, it decided to engage external experts.

Lockie Innovations was developing a new product on a tight deadline. The Lockie group of companies designs and manufactures functionally safe technology for a broad range of equipment including telehandlers, excavators and boom lifts. The challenge was to design the new PCB to fit within existing mechanical restraints of the former product. With additional features like a large FPGA, quad video interface and dual multi GB DDR 3 memories which run at 667 MHz, it was going to be an ambitious and involved design.

Lockie Safety Systems was referred to Australian-owned PCB design company Fine-Mark Design by its PCB supplier. Following Fine-Mark Design’s thorough assessment of the job, Lockie’s management was confident that the project was in good hands.

Fine-Mark Design reviewed the schematic and provided Lockie a comprehensive analysis of the work required to meet design objectives. Fine-Mark’s attention to detail and track record with innovative PCB designs ensured success of the project for the client.

“Our new product contained our normal safety systems, along with a quad video interface, the largest FPGA available, dual multi Gb DDR3 memories and a host of other devices. As we could not expand the size of our product we had to choose a PCB technology node that could not only support the high speed requirements, but also the thermal and mechanical constraints,” said Lachlan Grogan, CEO and product architect, Lockie Safety Systems.

Fine-Mark Design worked closely with Lockie to ensure that the PCB would fit within the existing mechanical architecture and the result was a layout with a 12-layer stack, double-sided high-density loading and high-speed digital requirements.

“Our PCB worked first spin, the memory interfaces (which were most complex and challenging) worked without fault and our entire project came together. In this instance it was far more economically beneficial to get Fine-Mark to layout the PCB, rather than going down the traditional route of doing the job in-house,” Grogan adds.

Fine-Mark Design assessed the job at the beginning of June and the final design was ready for manufacture by early August.

“The Lockie project was an ambitious high-speed digital design project. Even though the time frame was tight we needed to research and investigate high-speed requirements before embarking on the design. The results speak for themselves as the PCB worked first spin enabling the client to go straight into production avoiding multiple prototypes which saved a great deal of time and expense,” says Chris Krulic, technical manager, Fine Mark Design. Krulic is a PCB design expert with over 25 years’ experience.

Fine-Mark Design has worked on diverse jobs across a range of sectors and is currently focused on becoming the ‘go to’ development partner for innovative product developers who need an expert PCB design service for their projects.