Hi Graham-

This is post-assembly? No experience with that. With bare boards, I wouldn't
live without it. 

IF post-assembly, I suppose the equipment is testing resistance,
capacitance, and static protection diode drops? I suspect that could take
quite a while to "fingerprint" properly, and expect lots of calibration
issues. We use resistance, capacitance, and diode drop measurements (by
hand, or sometimes with an automated harness tester or sometimes with a
LabView setup) as fallbacks in detecting differences between assembled
products for extremely low production rates with extremely high dollar
value. For more than dozens, if you need this kind of test, you should be
able to fix your production line more cheaply than implementing the test, or
at least find more detailed, targeted tests which will give you more "warm
fuzzies" per dollar than the probing.

Wayne Thayer

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Graham Collins
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2014 8:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] flying probe testing - benefits and drawbacks?

Good day TechNet
We have a customer asking us to look at implement flying probe testing on
their products.  We currently do AOI on all, and x-ray and functional test
on some of their products, we do not have a flying probe machine.

I've got some notions of the benefits and drawbacks of these machines but as
I have no first hand experience I figure I should ask here for opinions.

Assume an entry level machine for the sake of discussion, and without
significant add-ons.  Top side probes only, probably 4 probes.
Assume a double sided board with 500 components, only passives on the bottom
side, and fair accessibility.

My questions:
- Claims are that the current crop of machines can be programmed in "a few
hours", is this realistic?

- Do I need anything from the designer on top of the usual gerber and BOM
(e.g. a netlist, or other format of data?)

- What kind of run time am I looking at?  I understand with a single side
machine I will have to run the board twice to get the best coverage
possible.

Thanks!  Any opinions are appreciated.

--
regards,

Graham Collins
Senior Process Engineer
Sunsel Systems
(902) 444-7867 ext 2211



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