#80🚀 Beyond Corporations

SuperPowers for Electrical Engineers 🦸🏻‍♂️🦸🏼‍♀️

👋 Hello, friends! Dr. Molina here 👨‍🔧

Welcome to Dr.Molina Newsletter, where I break down Magnetic design for you every week, in 4 minutes the time needed.

From time to time, I try to think about the Power Electronics Industry,

Are we moving forward?

If you review the history, you can find infinite examples of scientific and industries with zero evolution for several decades. I hope we can avoid that problem in our industry, being critical of our work.

I don´t need to explain to you the basics of this industry. We are here to make electric energy consumption more efficient and reduce global warming, replacing systems that produce CO2 emissions with electric systems that produce heat dissipation instead.

In the last decade, we have seen the rise of new semiconductor technologies, GaN and SiC. In theory, they will serve us to increase the frequency without penalizing semiconductor losses and decrease the size of the magnetics, reducing the total volume.

I’m not sure if the industry is moving toward increasing the frequency (taking 100 kHz as the classic switching frequency), but you will think, what industry are you talking about? Good question.

The people attending technical conferences, academics, or engineers working in big corporations tend to think this is the industry.

1. You go to APEC and attend a lecture from CPES about LLC with a matrix transformer.

2. You speak with the author with curiosity about some technical aspects.

3. During lunch, you speak with an engineer working in the automotive sector about new topologies and techniques.

4. After the conference, you return to your place with new ideas and a good feeling about the industry.

I’m afraid to tell you the 5,000 people who attend APEC don´t represent the whole industry, and the matrix transformer isn´t a common discussion in most companies.

I want to bring to the conversation those small and medium companies that sell between 1000 and 10,000 units of their products, which include some power supply systems.

More than 50,000 companies between the USA, UK, and Europe with less than 250 employees need a power supply. Most of these companies don´t attend any conferences. I’m talking about companies doing lighting, domestic appliance, audio amplifiers, speakers, toys, startups…everything you can imagine.

How do these 50,000 companies solve their power electronics work?

1. Using off-the-shelf power supplies if possible.

2. Consultants. In the early days of Apple, they hired a consultant to design a power supply for their computer.

3. Using App Note with referral designs from semiconductor companies. Why do semiconductors companies invest hundreds of millions in App Notes?

Most of the cases, it’s a combination of the previous points. They try to use an OTS power supply for the auxiliary part and realize they must customize the main one. For these companies, it’s not common to have an SMPS specialist, it’s expensive, and it’s not the main differentiator of their product.

Is THIS industry moving forward?

These power supplies are functional, the time to market is extremely important, and the production is key. Honestly, working with these companies is much more fun and interesting to me because you can see a design assembled in a product in less than a year.

Do you know how the feelings of satisfaction of seeing the product with your magnetics going to the market are? It’s incredible. I know, working at Tesla, it’s incredible, you are contributing to building an electric car, among other 20,000 people.

The taste of a distributed success is different.

I think everyone agrees that Magnetic components are the key component in a custom power supply.

The production of inductors and transformers is a market of $16b. The majority are standard components.

The question for the SME companies producing less than 10,000 units is:

If these companies want to use a referral design from a semiconductor company, how can they get the custom magnetics included in the App Note?

This is a typical problem we receive at Frenetic. A company, looking for a production of 100 units now, and 2000 in 3 months, are looking for a transformer of an App Note, where the manufacturer is not interested in such a small business.

Some of the cases can be solved with an OTS component. However, you have another question here. How do you find an OTS transformer for your specs? Distributor finders are not valid in this case. Considering your specific electrical needs, we have created a Library with parts OTS and a finder.

Magnetic Solutions

After starting working with these companies, we understood the different needs of the industry. A small company with only 1-2 magnetics doesn´t need all the power of a Product such as Frenetic, and we have created different plans for them.

1. Frenetic ONE - For companies that aren´t interested in the design, just in the samples and hardware.

2. Frenetic University - For teaching and research purposes at the Academia.

3. Frenetic Light - For teams of one electrical engineer and just a couple of designs per year.

4. Frenetic Pro - For teams of 3-4 engineers with more continuous work.

5. Frenetic Premium - For teams with very intensive magnetic design.

6. Frenetic Enterprise - Ask for it to know more.

I would love to review personally your case to find the best option for you 🤗; write me an email at chema@frenetic.ai.

If you missed….some of the most widely read articles in the Dr.Molina Magnetics Newsletter:

#58🚀 How to design an Inductor

#54 🚀 How do engineers learn Power Electronics?

#51 🚀 Full Bridge TX PQ40/40 Leakage Inductance Game

#34 🚀 Dual Active Bridge 3,3kW 380/54V

#8 🚀 How to design a 600W Power Supply Full Bridge Transformer, Product Design and Community