Btw, am I the only one that would love to see FW-91W?
I can see one right now, on my wrist :-)
Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#12Almost 40 years old technology and we are still unable to "print" these dies at home. Can you imagine how much fun that would bring if you could design your own IC and just hit print, then load the die into the carrier and solder the pins? There isn't even a service like JLCPCB where you could get your custom ICs made and shipped to you.
To be fair, it's not like the semiconductor industry has been standing still.
Lithography requires a lot of space and clean rooms.
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#13> I was expecting a gem-like quartz crystal inside, but found that oscillators use a very thin disk of quartz. Interesting - watches usually use a tuning fork shape. I wonder why they use a disc here? > Wristwatches were revolutionized in the 1970s by the use of highly-accurate quartz oscillators. If you're into highly accurate timepieces you can pick up some amazing quartz pieces from brands like Rolex (the OysterQu…
It's a function of size. Tuning fork crystals generally have frequencies in the range of a few tens of kilohertz (generally 32768 Hz). Quartz discs vibrate at many megahertz. A tuning-fork like structure that oscillated at 100 MHz would be far to small to easily manufacture. ------ One fun note: crystals like this are used for measuring deposited material in vacuum processes like PVD [1] or similar [2]. The crystal i…
A PVD sensor is a very clever use case! Thanks for highlighting.
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#14Almost 40 years old technology and we are still unable to "print" these dies at home. Can you imagine how much fun that would bring if you could design your own IC and just hit print, then load the die into the carrier and solder the pins? There isn't even a service like JLCPCB where you could get your custom ICs made and shipped to you.
I think there might be in a few years but it's super hard.
The technology is insane, the design skills are non-trivial, and the software is terrible
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#15Two common frequencies used at the introduction of the PC were 3.579545 MHz. & 4.43361875 MHz
Chosen because of the existing supply of cheap xtals manufactured for NTSC & PAL color television sets.
NTSC : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC
PAL : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL
Edits to fix typos :( And add;
Crystal Oscillator Frequencies : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator_frequenci...
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#16Almost 40 years old technology and we are still unable to "print" these dies at home. Can you imagine how much fun that would bring if you could design your own IC and just hit print, then load the die into the carrier and solder the pins? There isn't even a service like JLCPCB where you could get your custom ICs made and shipped to you.
There are a few channels on YouTube about DIY lithography, it's not as far away as you might think.
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a function of size. Tuning fork crystals generally have frequencies in the range of a few tens of kilohertz (generally 32768 Hz). Quartz discs vibrate at many megahertz. A tuning-fork like structure that oscillated at 100 MHz would be far to small to easily manufacture. ------ One fun note: crystals like this are used for measuring deposited material in vacuum processes like PVD [1] or similar [2]. The crystal i…
Note 32768 Hz is chosen because it is a power of 2 (the 15th power).
And therefore you can get a 1 Hz clock from a series of binary frequency dividers (flip-flops). That is, having the crystal oscillate at a power-of-2 frequency simplifies the circuitry a great deal.
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#18Two common frequencies used at the introduction of the PC were 3.579545 MHz. & 4.43361875 MHz Chosen because of the existing supply of cheap xtals manufactured for NTSC & PAL color television sets. NTSC : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC PAL : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL Edits to fix typos :( And add; Crystal Oscillator Frequencies : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator_frequenci...
For that reason: cheap available quartz crystals, since the 1970s, the shortwave radio frequency 3.579Mhz has been a spot on the dial where radio hams use low power home made morse code transmitters. At night, a range of a couple of hundred files is usually possible.
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#19Almost 40 years old technology and we are still unable to "print" these dies at home. Can you imagine how much fun that would bring if you could design your own IC and just hit print, then load the die into the carrier and solder the pins? There isn't even a service like JLCPCB where you could get your custom ICs made and shipped to you.
Yes there are services where you can get custom ICs made - they’re called ‘multi project wafer’ services. They start around $10K (e.g. efabless does one about that much with the SkyWater 130 nm proces) which is pretty good given how much it costs to do the lithography, not to mention actually making the ICs!
But in general it’s a very difficult process. The cleanliness required, the scale at which all this happens, etc. are just orders of magnitude harder than a regular PCB. That’s not even considering the nasty chemicals needed to etch silicon which are way worse than PCB etching chemicals!
Re: Teardown of a quartz crystal oscillator and the tiny IC inside
#20> I was expecting a gem-like quartz crystal inside, but found that oscillators use a very thin disk of quartz. Interesting - watches usually use a tuning fork shape. I wonder why they use a disc here? > Wristwatches were revolutionized in the 1970s by the use of highly-accurate quartz oscillators. If you're into highly accurate timepieces you can pick up some amazing quartz pieces from brands like Rolex (the OysterQu…
Also the Seiko Spring Drive.
. . . the Tri-synchro regulator uses three types of energy to regulate the moving parts and establish synchronicity:
* Mechanical power, from the mainspring
* Electrical power, creating a reference signaling via an IC/quartz oscillator
* Electromagnetic power, to apply a brake via a rotor/stator.
https://www.grand-seiko.com/sg-en/collections/movement/sprin...