I am sad to report the passing of Foster Gray, the brilliant Texas Instruments engineer who over his 41 years earned eight patents, 27 technical publications, and four published papers.
I worked with him at IPC, where he participated or led dozens of standards and round robin studies, and he was always prepared and always a gentleman.
His obituary can be seen here.
The name stands for extra small outline no-lead. It’s a newish package from Texas Instruments. In my experience, TI is one of the better companies insofar as testing and documenting manufacturability is concerned. The datasheet for this device is no exception.
The TI part is the five-lead thing above the grain of Jasmine rice, surrounded by a few 01005 ceramic capacitors. I’m selling the capacitors for $500 each. (Just kidding.)
The part is 0.8 x 0.8mm, with the five leads. TI suggests either a 4 mil (0.102mm) trace coming out of the center pad, or a 4 mil via in the pad (the via must be filled and plated at the fabricator ) to escape the center pad. They also do a nice job of detailing out the solder paste stencil layer, as in the following image:
You’ll most likely need a custom CAD footprint for one of these. Either very carefully do it yourself, or go to a solid source like SnapEDA. If they don’t already have it in their library, they’ll make it for you.
These small packages aren’t going away. We’re only going to see more of them. They may seem intimidating, but with a good footprint and a competent manufacturer, they aren’t so bad.
Duane Benson
“A ruler of follows”? That makes no sense.
How about ” a rule of followers”?
http://blog.screamingcircuits.com
Everyone else seems to be weighing in on the Texas Instruments-National Semiconductor acquisition, so I thought I’d better do the same.
Depending on whom you speak with, the ramifications could be quite large or not terribly noticeable. Myself, I’m going for pretty much not noticeable. First, we’ve never met a National Semiconductor part that we didn’t like. Second, we’ve never met a Texas Instruments part that we didn’t like. I’m guessing that we’ll never meet a Texas National Semiconductor Instruments part that we don’t like either.
I feel better about the fact that it’s one old-guard company buying up another old-guard than if it were a upstart doing so. That makes this look to be more of a “Boeing buying McDonnell Douglas” than an “AOL buying Time Warner.”
Duane Benson
I have met a blog post that I didn’t like