Vendors Share Power Design Know-How In Traveling Seminars

Although online instruction is becoming increasingly popular, many will agree that the ultimate interactive learning experience is the still the old-fashioned kind that takes place live and in-person. Power component and design software vendors are apparently among those who recognize the value of the classroom experience. In the coming months, companies such as Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor and Flomerics will be taking to the roads to share their power design expertise with power system designers in a series of free, one-day seminars.

Texas Instruments builds on its more than 25 years of seminar experience as it kicks off its 2006 Portable Power Seminar series and its 2006 North American Power Supply Design Seminar series. The portable power seminars promise technically rich, yet practical presentations that combine an array of advanced battery management and power conversion concepts, basic design principles and "real-world" applications examples. Presenters will cover design issues and considerations, design techniques, topologies, tools and examples.

These seminars will address topics such as “Battery Selection, Authentication and Cell Balancing;” “Charger Design and Battery Capacity Technology;” and “LDO dropout.” Other presentations will include “Evaluation and Performance of Fully Integrated DC-DC Converters;” “White LED Flash and Display Driver Technology;” and “Thermal Considerations.” The seminars, which began recently in Europe, will continue in Asia, Japan and North America. Dates and locations for the North American events are listed in the table.

TI’s power management experts will also conduct a series of one-day Power Supply Design seminars in 36 cities in the U.S. and Canada from September 13 to November 16.
Topics include “Improving Power Supply Efficiency,” “Feedback in the Fast Lane – Modeling Current-Mode Control,” and “Designing with Planar Magnetics.” There will also be presentations on “An Interleaved PFC Pre-Regulator for High-Power Converters,” “Software Design for Digital Power: Programming 101 for Analog Designers,” and “Digital Power Supplies: Comparing Analog to Digital Solutions” Lloyd Dixon and Bob Mammano headline a list of instructors well known in the analog community. For more information, see www.ti.com/training.

Fairchild Semiconductor will be leveraging the power expertise of engineers working in its global design centers when it presents its seminars on design techniques, tips and tools for optimizing system power. The instructors will cover topics such as “A Fresh Approach to Switching Regulator Topologies and Implementations,”
“Practical Power Application Issues for Switch-Mode Power Supplies,” “Understanding Modern Power MOSFETs,” and “Practical Power Application Issues for High Power Systems.” The dates and locations for these seminars in North America are listed in the table. To register for these events, see www.fairchildsemi.info/ .

Meanwhile, Flomerics will share its expertise in thermal analysis in a 10-city series of seminars and user-group meetings. These events will include a wide range of educational topics including high-heat flux applications, thermal advancements in portable devices, A/V systems for automobiles, radar cross-section, large-scale EMI, and lightning strikes.
The dates and locations for these meetings are shown in the table.

Although focused on Flomerics’ product lines, these events are intended to provide practical design instruction. “This will not be your standard ‘what’s great about us’ type of event,” said Sharon Shepard of Flomerics’ North America Marketing. “It will be engineers and users talking about how they are using Flomerics’ products to get their designs to market faster and for less money.”

Users at several high-profile accounts such as General Dynamics, Freescale, Cisco, Lockheed Martin, as well as several thermal and EM consultants have already agreed to sign on to this project. For more information, see www.flomerics.com/10cityseminar or call 508-357-2012 x127.

Table. Upcoming Power Design Seminars