Manufacturing Test Stations

Many of our clients require test fixtures for use in the manufacturing environment. We design both printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) level testers and unit/box level testers for many of the products we design.

Typically these fixtures are used for:

  • Outgoing Quality Control at the Contract Manufacturer (CMs)
    • Units are not invoiced unless the test criteria is met
    • Test statistics are collected to assure outgoing quality and to see trends
  • Incoming Quality Inspection at our client’s facility
    • Incoming test results can be compared to out going test reports
  • Warranty/Refurbishment

There is typically more than one tester installed at a manufacturing site and sometimes more than one test location as when two CMs are building product. We have developed a unique architecture for allowing for multiple test stations at multiple locations that can all be linked to one centralized database…. even when individual test stations are not continuously connected to the internet.

The general architecture is depicted….

Tester Hardware/Firmware/Mechanical

  • Tester typically contains a custom PCB used to perform dedicated functional tests on the Device Under Test or DUT (SPI, ADC, Power, etc)
  • In most instances the tester contains a microcontroller which performs low level IO and interface functions to both the DUT and the Host Computer
  • Tester interconnects to the DUT via a Pogo-Pin fixture or dedicated mechanical hardware allowing for quick PCB or assembly interconnections

Tester Software

  • Most of the testers have the main application written in National Instrument Labview
  • Low level USB or IO functionality is abstracted from the Labview Application via a Tester DLL

Database

  • Each Tester has a local MySQL database
  • The local MySQL database uploads new records collected, when the internet is available, to an aggregated and centralized database (SQL compatible) either at the client location or at Microprocessor Designs
  • Reports can be generated from both the local Tester databases OR the centralized database