Learning about real components

An opportunity was taken, as part of a third year module on design for manufacture, to expose students to the need to take account of the tolerances associated with the “real” components they would have to use in circuits. This paper outlines the task set and the support found to be necessary for the use of PSPICE as a means of performing tolerance analysis on a realistic circuit. It also incorporates some student and lecturer experiences relating to that work. It concludes that the approach increases awareness among students of the effect of component tolerances on circuit yield with circuits of some complexity, but that the exercise requires improvements to the support given in the early stages of using the PSPICE tools if learning time is to be reduced