Some time back in my career, we were working on a critical board, which had a switching diode on the board. Anode and Cathode of the diode could be identified only by the cut of the pad. First of all, this is different from the diodes which have top marking. As this was low cost and good $ saver, we preferred it. While designing the board, we downloaded the datasheet from a popular component distributor and went ahead with the design considering all the design specifications. But when the board prototype arrived, diode was blocking everything. Identifying that diode is blocking is a easy task but to know why it was blocking was a hectic exercise. A smart test engineer shall reverse the diode and ensure everything was working but why? Why isn't it working as intended. The reason was the datasheet uploaded to the component distributor website. It had a older version of the datasheet which had a wrong indication of the pad on the diode. It was corrected in their next version of the datasheet and that never appeared in the component distributor website. Finding it was super fun amid handling all the escalations. We were checking the datasheet and following specifications but not the right one!
Lesson Learnt: Use the datasheet from the actual manufacturer website not from the third party websites.
]]>
0 Comments