Nov 18 2009
Bourns Version of Acclaimed WEBENCH Designer is a Powerful Design and Prototyping Tool
Bourns, Inc., a leading manufacturer and supplier of electronic components, today announced that the company has introduced the availability of WEBENCH Designer customized specifically for Bourns and its inductor customers. In cooperation with National Semiconductor Corp., the Bourns version of WEBENCH Designer is available now on the Bourns website, http://www.bourns.com. It is a powerful design and prototyping tool designed to help create power supplies, DC-DC converters and LED driver solutions that meet design requirements for simulation, optimization and quick prototypes. WEBENCH tools enable designers to easily fine-tune switching power supply and LED driver designs and solve problems before a prototype is built, alleviating the time and extra costs associated with traditional design methods. The new toolset can also be used for device selection allowing customers to locate the optimal switching regulator and Inductor products for their power supply and LED applications.
"One of the great challenges of power supply design is finding the time to perform labor-intensive tasks to define the circuits and calculate component values," said Andy Chow, Field Application Engineer for Bourns, Inc. "Bourns now offers an easy-to-use, advanced toolset to automatically create the best possible power supply to meet both designer and customer requirements in just a few keystrokes and every solution is optimized around the ideal Bourns Inductor."
To use the new Bourns version of WEBENCH Designer, simply log onto the Bourns website and click on the "LED and Power Design Tool" caption on the home page. Visitors are then asked to enter their input voltage, the desired output voltage and current for their power supply. WEBENCH Designer displays several circuit solutions for power IC and Bourns Inductor options, including recommendations for the surrounding components.
The optimization tool allows designers to fine-tune their design by making tradeoffs between efficiency and footprint. After the schematic is finalized, the bill of materials (BOM) presents the ideal Bourns Inductor and all of the other power components in the system. Adding to the inductor selection flexibility, "Select Alternate Part" allow designers to choose another Bourns Inductor for a different footprint or performance. A final printout featuring a full report including schematic, BOM, operating values, and performance charts is also available. Over 1900 Bourns Inductors are included in the tool, providing solutions to a large variety of applications. The parametric values cover a wide range including: Inductance from .1 uH to 15000 uH, DCR's from 2 mOhms to 168 Ohms and Current rating from 20mA up to 46A.