I have observed many pin loaders, from the first "shaker tables" in 1986 to
the latest offerings. Like anyone that has ever loaded a fixture late at
night, I have always desired the mechanical solution. Some loaders have
found good homes in shops with specific needs, most have not for many
reasons.
1) Like the 1st generation CAD routers, they can do 98% of the job with
relative ease, however cleaning up the last 2% is a manual job made 10x
worse, that can be extremely time consuming.
2) Mixed pin sizes and styles are not handled gracefully in some designs.
3) The excess working inventory required for shaker tables (1000's of pins)
always seems to be in another fixture that need to be used tomorrow. The
cost of the inventory also needs to be calculated into the loader cost.
(Test Rule #5, You Never, Ever Have Enough Test Pins")
4) The effectiveness of the load decreases with pin tilt, the biggest, high
tilt fixtures you really need help on tend to have the most miss-loads.
5) Bluntly speaking, the labor you hope to replace by purchasing the
equipment is the lowest paid, least skilled person in the shop. Since the
end result is the same, its basically a bean counters game and the payback
is a long, long time.
6) Good Fixture Design (Test Rule #1) can increase fixture load speed
without additional equipment. I have seen 5000 pins per hour loaded by hand
time after time, although I admit it was by others with some degree of
eye/hand coordination (I am somewhat of a klutz).
Doug
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Test Engineering
> Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 1998 7:53 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [TN] Bare Board Test: Automatic Pin Loaders
> Importance: High
>
>
> Has anyone had experience with auto loaders for test fixtures?... Who
> supplies them?... I know of Intertrace Technologies APL-2000/200 and PDIs
> pin loader. How well do they operate?
>
> Blaine R. Shelkey
> Test Engineering
> 407.752.8843 (Ph)
> 407.752.8868 (Fax)
> [log in to unmask]
>
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