You’re designing an oscilloscope with modest storage — only 15,000 samples per channel. However, the sample rate is at 5 Gs/s, and you have to store all four channels at that speed and depth. While there is a bit of a challenge implied, this is quite doable using today’s technology. But what about in the […]
Tektronix must have been quite a place to work back in the 1980s. The company offered a bewildering selection of test equipment, and while the digital age was creeping in, much of their gear was still firmly rooted in the analog world. And some of the engineering tricks the Tek wizards pulled off are still […]
For a lot of us, soldering just seems to come naturally. But if we’re being honest, none of us was born with a soldering iron in our hand — ouch! — and if we’re good at soldering now, it’s only thanks to good habits and long practice. But what if you’re a company that lives […]
Why is it always a helium leak? It seems whenever there’s a scrubbed launch or a narrowly averted disaster, space exploration just can’t get past the problems of helium plumbing. We’ve had a bunch of helium problems lately, most famously with the leaks in Starliner’s thruster system that have prevented astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni […]