A Design Procedure for Subminiature Electronic Assemblies

This report has presented a design procedure and its application to a particular type of subassembly which has been developed by the Electro-Mechanical Department of North American Aviation. The miniature subassemblies that have been described were designed to affect a compromise between extremes of miniaturization and convenience of application to airborne electronic systems which utilize large numbers of subminiature tubes. The advent of the scaled mock-ups, described in this report, has resulted in shifting the responsibility of circuit layouts from design drafting personnel to the circuit designer. This shift expedites packaging of prototype units and gives the engineer design control when circuit performance is critical to the geometry of the assembly. These procedures are not claimed to be new or startling, however, it is hoped that their presentation in this report will promote further use of etched conductor circuits and stimulate further exchange of ideas along these lines. North American Aviation has found that the adoption of these design procedures has affected a large overall saving in development manhours and has reduced design training time requirements without sacrificing quality or uniformity of the product design.