A coworker at my previous job had a sign in his office that read: “There comes a time on every project when you just have to shoot the engineer and start production.” Why? Because engineers will continue to tweak a design ad infinitum, even if it’s already suitable for production.
Such was the case of a recent post on Hackaday, which detailed one person’s creation of a USB-powered LiPo battery charger. One commenter suggested ditching the USB plug in favor of using the PCB itself for the USB connection. So I did it. But, being an engineer, I found that insufficient. So I also managed to shrink the footprint. And did it all on a single-layer PCB. For fun.
