Manufacturing

Würth Elektronik is supplying the PCBs needed for the rapid manufacture of intensive care and mobile ventilators from its three production sites in Germany. In order to ensure the supply of medical ventilators for coronavirus patients in Germany, the German government has placed several orders with different manufacturers at short notice.     At the plants in Niedernhall, Rot am See and ...

Panasonic has adopted Renesas’ R9A06G037 PLC IC for its railway platform lighting control system. Panasonic and East Japan Railway Company jointly developed the system using G3-PLC, a narrowband standard (10-450kHz) for outdoor use.  PLC makes it possible to transmit control signals over power lines, allowing operators to adjust the brightness and colour of lighting fixtures on platforms without requiring dedicated ...

ST has agreed to cut production at its French plants by up to 50% according to the French unions. The unions involved are the CFE-CGC and the CFDT. The head of the CFDT union, Eric Potard, said that workers will stay at home on a rotating basis and keep all their pay whether they work or not. All the company’s ...

X-Fab Silicon Foundries SE is offering SiC foundry services at the scale of silicon, running both processes on the same manufacturing line. The pure-play foundry has added internal SiC epitaxy capabilities to its offering, meaning more of the process chain is accessed through a single source.  The firm says growing demand has necessitated it expand SiC capacity, which has now ...

Renesas has announced its RE family controller is the main controller of the Casio G-Shock watch GBD-H1000 with heart rate monitor and GPS functionality. The watch is equipped with an optical sensor that measures heart rate by detecting changes in the blood flow under the skin; a triple sensor that measures compass bearing, barometric pressure/altitude, and temperature; and an acceleration ...

Ceva and Bragi have announced a collaboration to drive hearable devices where the user experience is customizable. Target devices include headsets, hearing aids, true wireless stereo earbuds and other smart audio devices. The partnership utilises Ceva’s BX DSP low-power architecture, with its LLVM compiler and Eclipse-based development tool chain, and Bragi 4, an OS specialized for hearables. In conjunction with ...

Mobile High Power Charger, is a large battery on wheels. There are two of them, built in into lorry trailers, together capable of delivering a total of 3.2MW – 320kW to each of 10 electric vehicles simultaneously. “Considering the availability of grid connections, which are often only limited, it is a unique opportunity to provide high charging capacities for a ...

As part of Wales Week London, compound semiconductor cluster CSconnected held an event at the IET in London, promoting its strategy to build a collaborative supply chain from chip design to end products in a single geographic region. Hosted by Maggie Philbin OBE, the event saw three representatives from CSconnected discuss the cluster’s aims and achievements before an extensive Q&A ...

Anglia has announced a battery pack service, offering design-in support on standard, customised and bespoke packs based on primary or rechargeable cells in a choice of output voltages and capacities. The service caters for chemistries including lithium-ion, lithium polymer, lithium iron phosphate, NiMH, lithium thionyl chloride as well as other non-rechargeable options. Anglia can also offer comprehensive safety approvals. Where ...

Torq Sense transducers from Sensor Technology have been used by Gloucestershire-based animal shearing and clipping equipment supplier, Lister Shearing. The sensors, based on surface acoustic wave (saw) technology, are being used by the company as an aid to evaluating the performance of miniature electric motors. “An issue commonly encountered with powered hand tools, which form a significant part of the ...