Perfect Sound Forever: Teenage Engineering's Synthesizers and Altium's CoDesigner
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
- Sensors - Encoders
Applicable Industries
- Cement
- Equipment & Machinery
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Services
- Hardware Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Teenage Engineering is a Swedish company that specializes in creating lightweight, compact, and powerful synthesizers. Their innovations include a series of small, battery-powered synthesizers known as pocket operators. These devices, which are roughly the size of a pocket calculator and barely thicker than a printed circuit board, can be connected together to produce and record a variety of music genres. The company's mission is to grow the synthesizer population, making them accessible to anyone. They handle everything in-house, from electrical and mechanical engineering to industrial design and software development. The company's co-founder, David Eriksson, explains that they aim to create products that are accessible to anyone and can be used right out of the box.
The Challenge
Teenage Engineering, a Swedish company, specializes in creating compact, powerful synthesizers, including a series of small, battery-powered synthesizers known as pocket operators. These devices, which are roughly the size of a pocket calculator, can be connected together to produce and record a variety of music genres. The company's mission is to make synthesizers accessible to everyone, with a simple interface, animated LCD displays, and affordable price points. However, the design process of these devices presented a challenge. The company handles everything in-house, from electrical and mechanical engineering to industrial design and software development. The main challenge was getting the balance right between ECAD and MCAD software tools. The company's designs usually start on the MCAD side, building up the overall electromechanical look and feel. An ultra-tight tolerance chain was key when bouncing designs back and forth between Altium and MCAD.
The Solution
Teenage Engineering used Altium Designer for the development of the pocket operators series. Altium’s CoDesigner capability, built into Altium Designer, bridges the gap between ECAD and MCAD software tools, allowing for effortless collaboration while addressing pervasive file transfer and conversion issues that hamper the design process. The CoDesigner capability can help make Teenage Engineering’s MCAD/ECAD designs flow even easier between disparate software tools using just a simple plug-in that can be installed in their MCAD software. This effectively eliminates the need for importing, exporting, or converting file formats between disparate MCAD and ECAD systems. Everything is built into Altium Designer and effortlessly accessible via Altium 365, the world’s only cloud platform for printed circuit board design and realization. The MCAD CoDesigner extension is included in the standard Altium Designer installation, so the CoDesigner panel is always in the PCB editor, automatically converting files so designers can focus on projects without downloads or data loss.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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