工程师故事：终于露了一手

我曾经是科罗拉多州Louisville一家航空设计公司的“新手”电子工程师，在那儿我学到了有关飞行的硬件设计技巧、测试程序以及一些与故障问题排除有关的规则。通常会有很多大量的文件报告，而一些高度专业的技术人员总是以严格的重新设计或故障排除步骤来进行审查，因而让我觉得…算了，反正我是个新手。

过去14年来的职业生涯中，我曾经在美国海军陆战队担任通讯维修技术人员，在我光荣退役后，我到了另一家小公司担任资深技术人员，以期施展我在海军陆战队所学到的专业技术。期间，我一方面兼职工作，同时把我的复员费花在攻读电子学位，取得了内华达雷诺大学(University of Nevada,Reno)的电子工程文凭。此外，我也花了很多时间修了一些航空领域方面的课程(电子工程专辑版权所有，谢绝转载)。

卖弄本事

后来我和现在的老板一起跳槽到一家航空电子公司，那时我已经是小型卫星传感器方面的半个专家了。我很自豪能找到自己的专长学以致用，总觉得自己应该能够展现更多专业知识，而不至于在同事面前陷于尴尬处境或被取笑。但一直到不久前，我才第一次终于有了那种“让他们看看我的厉害”的机会(电子工程专辑版权所有，谢绝转载)。

当时我们正致力于解决电路板上的一个故障问题，管理阶层打算进行一项破坏性分析，以确定导致飞机电路板故障的根源所在。不过，这么做的话势必浪费太多时间和成本，远高于部门的预算。那时，电路板和元件故障的问题就变成我们团队项目中最重要的议题，并且高于一切。

我悄悄地问我的老板，“我们为什么不用Huntron来追踪问题所在？”Huntron Tracker是一款电路测试设备的产品名称，它是我在海军陆战队电子修复第四中队时每天都要提到好多次的玩意儿。当然，我的老板并不知道这是什么，所以对他来说，我说的话听起来大概很蠢吧！(电子工程专辑版权所有，谢绝转载)

而且，我的'悄悄话'可能比自己想像中还大声一点，使得会议桌上的每个人都抬起头来一脸困惑地看着我。我很快地说，“你们都知道我在说什么，对吧？用一个曲线追踪器来比较一款元件和另一个确定没问题的元件，看看二者有何不同(此时桌边大家都在窃窃私语)。”

但他们看来仍一脸狐疑，所以我便开始详细叙述以前我如何使用这个测试设备，以及它能为我们在寻找故障根源时节省多少时间。等到他们都达成共识后，他们便派我去执行这项测试，并准备测试程序，因为他们知道没人真的了解我到底在说什么，第一次的测试当然只能由我去执行。

霎时间，我才突然意识到过去多年来的经验与训练并没白费，而且我现在真的可以尽情使出自己的看家本领，再也不必感到自己在航空领域白混了。

下一页：发现问题

{pagination}

发现问题

在为此电路排除故障问题时，我发现一个电感的比较保持芯片引脚错接，与5V参考电压短接了。事实上，是两个引脚损坏或短路了－再仔细看，我发现在进行品管检测时就已经忽略掉这个真正的问题了。在采用金属罐封装的芯片上，一旦电路板与IC在较热的环境下作业，焊接部份即开始冒泡并导致半电感短路。这个问题很难被发现，因而必须在显微镜下把电路板倾斜来仔细检查，但我得让他们看到导致故障发生的这颗元件焊接品质如何。在进行详细的电路板检查以及电路分析后，显示出这种间歇性发生的问题得追溯回元件本身(电子工程专辑版权所有，谢绝转载)。

短路的引脚

在为这个电路故障问题提出完整的报告和我的发现后，我感觉自己真正的属于这一个团队。有几位同事拍拍我的背，让我一直不断地说出自己以往的经验，而且显示出──虽然我是这家公司的新员工，但也拥有一些专业领域是团队中其它人所缺乏的…而且，更让我骄傲的是自己协助解决了一个被认为必须最优先处理的重要问题。

点击参考原文：'Newbie' engineer and the attack of the solder blobs

《电子工程专辑》网站版权所有，谢绝转载

{pagination}

'Newbie' engineer and the attack of the solder blobs

William Davison

As a “newbie” electrical engineer at an aerospace design company in Louisville, Colo., I have been learning the flight hardware design techniques, testing procedures and the rules that go along with troubleshooting a problem. It usually involves some extreme amount of paperwork, three signatures and highly skilled technicians trying to read through a rework or troubleshoot steps that somehow always come under scrutiny, thus making me feel like … well…. a newbie.

In the past 14 years of my career, I served as a communications repair technician in the U.S. Marine Corps, and, after I was honorably discharged, I worked at other small companies as an experienced technician using the skills I had gained in the Marine Corps. During this time, I worked part-time and used my GI bill to obtain my EE degree from the University of Nevada, Reno. While earning my degree, I spent many hours working in the aerospace field of study.

Teaching old dogs old tricks

When I moved on to the avionics group with my current employer, I was a semi-expert on sensors for micro satellites. I was proud to find my niche and felt like I could show a bit more of my knowledge without getting myself in a bind or be made fun of by my peers. And, until a few weeks ago, I never really had the right moment to “show them what I got!”

While we were working a failure on a circuit board, management wanted to conduct a destructive analysis to determine a root cause for the failure in the flight board…doing this would take time and cost a bit more than our group wanted to spend. And, at the time, the board and component failure had become the “long pole” (the biggest issue of concern) in our program and was given the highest priority.

I quietly said to my boss, “Why don’t we ‘Huntron track it?’” Based on a name-brand piece of test equipment called a Huntron Tracker, this was a term we had used a lot in my days at a fourth-echelon electronic repair facility in the Marines. Of course, my boss didn’t know about any of this, so to him I must have sounded like a “goof.”

And, my “whisper” was a little louder than I had planned and resulted in everyone at the table looking up at me in total confusion. I said quickly, “You guys know what I am talking about right? Using a curve tracer to compare a component to a known good component to look for a difference in the ‘signature’..“ (Insert sound of crickets here).

Still nothing was changing their looks, so I started over with a detailed account of how I used this test equipment while a tech and how it saved us many hours trying to troubleshoot down to the root cause of the failure. Once they all were on the same page, they pointed to me to conduct the test and prepare the procedure, and since they knew no one person would have a clue what I was describing, it would be up to me to conduct the test first-hand.

For a split seconded I realized that all my years of training and experience hadn’t been for not, and that I would now be able to call on my “bag o’ tricks” without having to feel like I was talking nonsense in the aerospace world.

Solder issues

I troubleshot the circuit to a compare-and-hold IC that had inductive shorts to the 5 volt reference on the wrong pins - in fact it was TWO pins that had been damaged or shorted - looking closer, I realized that, during the QA inspection, the true problem was missed. On a metal can-integrated circuit, the soldering had bubbled up to the can and thus created a semi-inductive short once the board and IC were operating in a hot environment. It was so hard to see and required that the board be tilted and reviewed under a microscope, but I was able to show that the quality of the solder on this component had caused the failure. A review and circuit analysis was also conducted, and it showed that the type of intermittent problem could be traced back to this component. (Figure 1, below, the IC with shorted pins).

Figure 1: Solder Blobs! Yikes!

After I gave my full report and provided my findings, I felt like I had really come through for my team. I had several people give me a pat on the back, which motivated me to continue speaking from my experiences and show that, just because I was new to the company, I still had some area of expertise that no one else on the team had… and I felt proud to help on a problem that was given the highest priority to solve.

(William Davison recently moved from Northern Nevada to the Denver area to work in the aerospace industry after obtaining his electrical engineering degree from University of Nevada, Reno. He keeps busy with his hobbies (old BMW car restorations, LEGO Robotics and Halloween effects/costumes) and continuing his education. He is currently going to Colorado State University with a focus on obtaining his Systems Engineering Masters.