Seriously, what sadist saw a flat PCB surface, flat pick and place machine heads, and said “lets create a round component”?
Joking aside I am genuinely curious what advantage the MELF design actually offers. I know they’re a pain to get a machine to place properly, they have more solder flow issues than components with flat leads, and they seem like they would be harder to manufacture too. So why a round component? Anyone here have any insight on why they even exist?
I saw that earlier and at first I was thinking that must be outdated BS because none of our class 3 products use them. But, thinking about it now, almost all of our class 3 products are medical products. Meaning they are only ever going to be used in relatively clean and climate controlled environments.
The products we run that most frequently use MELFs are the class 2 products that are going to be used in more rugged environments (like ag products). So if they are more rugged environmentally speaking then that does make sense. It won’t stop me from complaining about them though.