Design Books

[CoTang]

Not sure if anyone read my question regarding books on designing, but I was wondering if anyone know any good books that teaches you about how to design electronics circuits from scratch. Don't need to know about basic electronics just how to implement them together.

Thanks.

 

[stevez]

From my point of view, a fairly complete understanding of electronics is what someone would teach you as a stepping stone toward design - if you really mean you want to design something from scratch.

In many books the author's give examples of circuit design in what I'll call "cookbook" fashion. The author provides a step by step process for determining component values and operating characteristics of the resulting circuit. Usually these are very limited in scope and application specific - far from my perception of designing from scratch.

Books that I have which contain some cookbook stuff - Radio Amateur's Handbook by ARRL, several Radio Shack/Forrest Mimms publications and my most recent purchase- Practical Electronics for Inventors/Paul Scherz. I've also seen excellent tutorials on basic circuit design in Poptronics and Nuts&Volts magazines - tutorials used to teach basic electronics though one could follow along and end up with useful designs.

Hope this helps.

 

[Optikon]

From my point of view, a fairly complete understanding of electronics is what someone would teach you as a stepping stone toward design - if you really mean you want to design something from scratch.

In many books the author's give examples of circuit design in what I'll call "cookbook" fashion. The author provides a step by step process for determining component values and operating characteristics of the resulting circuit. Usually these are very limited in scope and application specific - far from my perception of designing from scratch.

Books that I have which contain some cookbook stuff - Radio Amateur's Handbook by ARRL, several Radio Shack/Forrest Mimms publications and my most recent purchase- Practical Electronics for Inventors/Paul Scherz. I've also seen excellent tutorials on basic circuit design in Poptronics and Nuts&Volts magazines - tutorials used to teach basic electronics though one could follow along and end up with useful designs.

Hope this helps.

How is that Practical Elec. for Inventors? I have seen it around but have not looked at it in too much detail.

 

[stevez]

Optikon - I like the book. While it does address the basics I would not recommend it as a beginner's book. The info serves as a refresher on the basics.

As an example - author describes how op amps work, some of the peculiarities, etc. Then he describes several current production amps how to handle inputs, hysterisis, gain, offset etc - as well as how to handle outputs.

It's far from all inclusive although I'd say that there is enough information in there to allow someone with modest skills to apply electronics any number of ways.

A 3rd yr EE student stopped by on his break a few weeks ago and showed the book to me. His professor requires everyone to have a copy.

 

[CoTang]

I got two of the electronic encyclopedia circuits and they are pretty helpful. But I'll look into the one that you meantioned. It looks interesting. Thanks.

 

[Dean Huster]

Heathkit Design Series

They're all out of print now (as are all of the decent educational materials they ever had), but the Heathkit "Design Series" of books were wonderful in that regard. They were somewhat "cookbooky" and had served several different areas of electronics. There's a set covering "Transistor Circuits", another for "Digital Circuits", another for "Analog Electronics", etc. These are not the usual yellow and blue Heathkit books but are blue print on a gray background. Maybe you can find them on ebay. Most came in two volumes. Not of the design series, but equally a good text is the "Operational Amplifiers" course that Heathkit had. It was a part of their analog series that included "Timers", "Optoelectronics", "Phase-Locked Loops" and "Active Filters". Both the Operational Amplifiers book and the Active Filters book were very good. Both are written by Howard Berlin, whom I respect very much, and both are mirrored in Howard W. Sams books. I believe the Sams titles are "Operational Amplifiers with Experiments" and "Active Filters with Experiments". I don't know if they're still in print by Sams or not. Heath killed them off long ago, replacing all those good courses with a single ring-binder of quickie courses that really sucked. Heath went so far downhill after killing off their kit line that a year or mourning should take place.

Dean

 

[bmcculla]

For more "cookbook" style stuff I'd recommend "Circuit Cellar" magazine. Its full of cool projects for hobbiests (most submitted by readers) complete with source code and schematics. The projects range from simple to quite complex but are always interesting. There are also editorials and product reviews. I look forward to reading it every month.

Brent