WEB EXCLUSIVE: Can you afford to cut the cost of PCB electrical safety testing?
All manufacturers and designers of electrically operated products have an obligation to ensure that their equipment functions in a correct and safe fashion, meeting quality and performance standards and, ultimately, living up to the expectations of customers. This applies to PCBs, where the need for testing by manufacturers who use populated boards in their products is clearly paramount.
In many cases these test and measurement obligations may be enforced by legal requirements, technical and quality standards. However, in today's climate, where the global economy is challenging and the future uncertain, electrical testing can provide a range of benefits for PCB manufacturers.
This of course includes overall cost efficiencies but can also increase productivity, reduce production time, increase reliability and avoid costly and damaging product recalls, which can be potentially devastating to any company, even when finances are not under severe pressure as they are currently.
Even the best designed and produced PCBs can have their performance or safety compromised during the production, service and repair process. Carrying out electrical testing is an ideal way of making sure that the original design parameters are maintained and the product delivers what it was originally intended to do.
In the manufacturing environment, however, time is money and the justification for the incorporation of automated instrumentation is rarely made on technical grounds alone. Improving productivity, efficiency and quality are the driving force behind new smarter testing solutions - with these factors also providing a very quick payback period on any capital investment made on process improvement.
In this respect the time taken for completion of the test cycle is critical. Enforcing just in time manufacturing with unit production times of 5 minutes is clearly of little value if the end of line test station takes 10 minutes to complete all tests. Another significant productivity improvement is that by automating the test process, test operator time and cost can be removed from the process.
In response, new test control and instrumentation systems are available which enable the quick and easy flash testing of PCBs in timescales as fast as 2-3 seconds per product. In addition, as a means of streamlining test stations and matching productivity rates, specially designed holders or jigs allow for the testing of multiple products at the same time.
In this way fully programmable electrical safety and functional test instruments can be adapted and integrated for use in bespoke test systems using proprietary control and instrumentation software, running on low cost rugged industrial touch screen PCs.
Another efficiency benefit is that most of the test process can be de-skilled and operator safety maximised. Although testing should always be undertaken by competent staff, in many cases the use of pre-set test parameters, protected by password and/or failsafe devices, means that the use of highly skilled or experienced test staff may not always be a pre-requisite, allowing greater flexibility in the use of production or assembly line personnel.
Furthermore, the latest test instruments, like those produced by Clare, are not only simple-to-use but can store the results for audit purposes and quality control analysis.
Although the current economic climate may encourage many involved in the PCB industry to rein back or defer investment in their testing regimes, this could be false economy as it can be seen that the implementation of a more rigorous testing campaign can bring significant financial benefit. Electrical safety testing represents a small investment both in terms of capital equipment and time and yet the potential benefits can be enormous.
Clare, part of the Seaward Group, has a long track record of providing a wide range of electrical test equipment and its purpose-built electrical testing production facilities allow a large degree of customising to clients' particular requirements.
More at sales@clareinstruments.com or http://www.clareinstruments.com/ Tel: 0191 587 8741.
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