Replication of testing environments is a known challenge in the Functional Circuit Test world. Wiring an FCT fixture using wire wrap can take hours, and the validation of a tester itself, to ensure simple continuity and function, can take days. Anyone setting up a fixture-based test bench or rack-mounted solution knows this pain, felt in terms of time and frustration (or worse, unreliable results).
Trusted, calibrated equipment is a big deal for our customers.
Test engineers face many challenges today. Implementing a functional test plan involves integration of several different measurement and interface tools, software packages and licenses. Acroname's MTM instrumentation takes the frustration out of this process as one of the simplest and easiest instrumentation tools available to engineers today.
One of the benefits of using Acroname's BrainStem/MTM series modules in functional circuit test is being able to create and deploy "wireless" test fixtures - a fixture with no wire-wraps or cables.
In this week's video, we show an example of testing LEDs in a board-level functional test system. We used a simple circuit board we created for testing a new light pipe design as an example. The video shows just how easily MTM can be used as an engineering tool and manufacturing test system just by adding of a few test cases.
We've recently been getting questions regarding the use of the Acroname USBHub2x4 from within National Instruments TestStand test management software. So we put together two example projects which wraps the BrainStem2 library and provides the critical interfaces you need to do basic things like enabling and disabling a downstream port.
Acroname, Inc. has been bringing robotics and automation systems into the hands of engineers for more than 20 years.
Not only do we make Manufacturing Test Modules (MTM), we also use them to test our own products. Using BrainStem® MTM modules to make a functional board level test system is incredibly simple. For the USBHub2x4, MTM allows us to make a test system that requires no external test equipment without compromising on test coverage!
Simple task automation for repetitive actions can be powerful aids in product development. Automatically connecting and disconnect devices from a USB bus is commonly done in manufacturing test and software regression test systems. The MTM platform can quickly create a programmatically controlled USB hub to simulate downstream device connections.
Setting up product manufacturing involves many complicated systems and processes. In order to produce millions of devices a month, companies need to massively scale these systems. Yet this scale is in direct conflict with fast product changes and time-to-market for "the next big thing".