Before the printed
circuit boards came into existence components in a circuit were manually
soldered to wires and fixed on the circuit board. This makes the process of
completing a circuit board very time-consuming. Each component had to be
soldered manually. With the printed circuit board, the copper tracks are
already embedded on the circuit board. Only the components need to be soldered
to the board to complete the circuit. The fixing and soldering of the
components are also done by machines. But the performance of the circuit boards
must be tested and this is where the Medalist i1000
comes in as the best test equipment available.
Understanding In-Circuit Testing
In-circuit testing is
performed on PCBs to know whether all the components on the board are
functioning properly. Sometimes there can be connection failure between the
components. Some components may not be connected properly. There may even be
wrong components that are attached to the printed circuit board. All these will
result in the failure of the appliance or device in which the PCB is attached.
This was testing of each component becomes important.
The in-circuit test
equipment has a bed of nails which can connect to different points on the
printed circuit board. This will help to measure the performance of each of the
component fixed to the board. Various parameters like resistance, capacitance,
etc. are measured by the in-circuit testing equipment. The test helps to find
all the faults that are on a PCB be like short circuits, open circuits, and
faulty components.
The Main Elements Of In-Circuit Testing
The in-circuit testing
process includes three entities mainly. They are equipment, fixture, and
software. The equipment or the tester consists of thousands of drivers and
sensors which are used for performing the testing. They are connected to a
large connector in the equipment. The fixture is the bed of nails that connect
to various points on the PCB. As different circuit boards have different
components and patterns, these fixtures need to be configured for each board.
The configuration of the
fixture is a service offered by many companies in Singapore. They will
configure the fixture as per the requirement of the PCB manufacture depending
on what boards need to be tested. The PCB manufacturer will be making different
circuits at different times and the fixture should be configured for each of
these. The software is written differently for each circuit to guide the tester
to perform the required tests.
The Advantages Of In-Circuit Testing
The main advantage of
ICT is the testing of PCBs which is its prime function. It can test various
parameters on a printed circuit board and reject those that are wrong. This is
very much needed so that the appliances or gadgets using the circuit boards perform
correctly. Another advantage is that the programming of the test is very easy.
All you need to do is to take the board details from the board manufacturer and
use it for programming.
This type of testing
avoids the need for highly skilled workers. As the test will identify the
correct node which is defective it is easy to identify and rectify the fault.
The testing method is very quick and helps to test the boards and send them to
the customers very quickly. The test has helped the PCB industry to improve
their productivity.
There are different
types of in-circuit
test machines available in the market. The performance of these
machines will also depend greatly on the configuration of the fixtures and the
programming of the software.
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