What Is Samstag Circuits?

Growing up in Pittsburgh with a father in Computer Science while the city had yet to really transition its focus to technology afforded me an interesting mix of opportunities. I was able to spend years educationally, and as personal hobby, on software development and programming in general prior to having to pick what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My experience with software and a desire to get more into hardware pushed me into the Computer Engineering program at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). My first three years outside of the city I grew up in were spent with RIT’s amazing teachers learning electronic design, physics, software engineering, and the many other aspects that play into the foundational knowledge needed to be successful in industry. While my time at RIT was fantastic and incredibly fruitful I couldn’t help but miss Pittsburgh, and so I transferred to University of Pittsburgh, my Father’s Alma Mater, to finish out my degree in Computer Engineering. It was there, at Pitt, that I would meet the people that would set me on the course for the rest of my life.

During an undergraduate/graduate mixed design project course I would meet several people who worked at Westinghouse Nuclear in Cranberry, a scant 30 minute drive north on 279/79. When I graduated from Pitt it was with these interactions in mind that I first applied to Westinghouse Nuclear. I started as a systems engineering contractor for the Safety Systems Group, and my first task was learning their FPGA based safety system well enough to provide product line support during fault and isolation barrier testing. Due to the small team size I was instantly immersed in more learning opportunities than most. Most days I drove to New Stanton to the testing facility to help run the equipment during tests, learning from the many talented and experienced engineers and technicians who had gone through countless other test programs. On days I wasn’t in New Stanton I had the opportunity to work closely with the Principal Engineer of the small team assigned to the FPGA based safety system. I transitioned to a full time hardware engineer position , ran product line support for EMI/EMC for a new installation configuration of the safety system, grasped many new opportunities to further my product design experience and learned as much as anyone was willing to teach me. Ultimately the company was too large and the pace to slow to stay forever so after a couple years, and after I felt my growth was slowing, I transitioned to a much smaller company.

I started at eV Products in Saxonburg in winter. Commuting from the north hills was exciting to say the least given the snow. The team was small, the pace was fast, and the products required use of complex technologies and processes. Due to the small team size it we often would handle the design and bring up for a project by ourselves, and have the other EE for review and help with debugging or troubleshooting. This afforded me experience in the full product design process and allowed me to build a foundation for how to successfully run an electronics design project. Not only did I get many opportunities in electronics design, including use of complex stack ups, use of advanced PCB materials, design of Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic (LTCC) boards, designing for wire-bonding chips directly onto PCB’s without packaging, but I also had many opportunities to learn the physics and manufacturing processes behind the products being designed. I would work on many FPGA based designs doing the full electronics design process, as well as writing the HDL, bring-up, integration, and testing. After 2.5 years of rapid growth I was offered the opportunity to transition to a company just starting on their journey into aerospace actuation and in need of someone who could not only work on their first actuation project that was about to kick off, but also to help guide the electronics design portion of their business.

I started at Acutronic in June of 2018 working on their first aerospace servo actuator project. The company had targeted aerospace components as a strategic growth path, hoping to leverage their familiarity with the industry from selling capital test equipment to get traction. Since it was a growth initiative there wasn’t much in place when I came into the project with regards to any kind of custom electronics design. As we progressed on that project the investment into the aerospace components growth initiative also progressed, and in December of that same year it was decided that they were going to split the aerospace components work into an entire division, open a new headquarters for the division in Austin, TX, and I was offered the opportunity to move to Austin and help bring up the new division. So I moved my family to a suburb of Austin and helped set up a WeWork space for our office until a building could be leased. We worked a block away from the capitol for months, standing up all the processes required to make the aerospace components division a success. We then moved to a building in North Austin that would allow the turbines group to test their turbines in house. I was afforded the opportunity to grow the electronics design team, mentoring interns and young engineers, working with other senior engineers to enact training and work processes that would help smooth product design cycles for the future. I architected a highly migratable electronics platform that we were able to use for several servo actuator designs. Most importantly I learned as much as I was able to, growing with every proposal design, project, and mentoring session. After 2 years in Texas once again the city that has seen most of my life was calling.

I moved my family back to Pittsburgh in 2021, and after several months living with my parents purchased a house in Bethel Park. For a year I would fly to Austin for a week every month to work on projects in person, and worked remotely from the main branch’s Pittsburgh office the rest of the time. Recently I transitioned to a new position working on wireless power delivery/harvesting, and once again I’ve restarted my journey in growth and learning.

My journey, as I’ve communicated here, has been one of tremendous opportunity. One thing that has been made clear with my interactions over the years is that there are several gaps in the support structure for young engineers that end up limiting understanding. In many university curricula there is barely any applicable device physics taught, the math behind transistors and diodes may be taught but little effort is made to help the student understand when and how to use which kind of transistor or which kind of diode in a functional circuit. Many companies either separate the job duties of schematic capture and layout so young engineers don’t get the opportunity to understand the physical geometries that impact the design, why things are routed certain ways, how to design with the physical product in mind. The safety net of the IPC has made it so you can fumble your way into a functional design but have no idea of the controls required to push that same design into high volume production with consistent results independent of fabrication/assembly location.

Those gaps are why I started Samstag Circuits. My hope is to help young engineers and students grow and understand what is out there in the industry, to help them find a spark of inspiration or interest. My hope is to help small teams who are trying to accomplish something new and innovative but don’t have much experience in the design field, or maybe don’t have someone on their team to help make their idea a reality yet. That is what Samstag Circuits is, a place to find help in a massive industry that can be hard to navigate.