By: Victor M. Rodriguez, Test Engineer, dataCon, Inc.

Your prototype has to be on time, and defect free, every time-without fail. How? With a flying probe test.

The flying probe test is the most time efficient, cost effective, quality tool at your disposal. It’s a superior alternative to the traditional Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) performed on a bench top, which is often a manual process that can add cost and schedule slip.

The dataCon solution is to use your existing ATP translated into a flying probe test — a repeatable, quality driven, and cost conscious approach. Using the latest CAD data, bill of materials, and schematics of your product, you are practically hours away from developing an automated program that will test in significantly less time.

Once your product leaves our robust SMT Assembly process, first piece flying probe development begins, and a first piece ‘golden unit’ is 100% verified. Flying probe tests provided by dataCon extend in-circuit test benefits to applications where bed of nails is physically impractical, time inefficient, or cost prohibitive.

What if my product is not designed for proper test coverage? Some boards are not designed for testability, and that’s where the flying probe EXCELS. One of the primary goals to a successful flying probe test is physical access to every net on the board. Most engineers would use Through Hole, Designated TPs and Via Holes as Test Points. When this isn’t the case, dataCon test engineers would explore the option of using Surface Mount Pads.

Flying probe test programs accommodate many features. For the most part, flying probe tests will include Shorts/Opens, Passive Components (resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc.), Cluster Test, DeltaScan (junction diode), FrameScan (capacitive), Vision Test (presence, orientation), Power-up (voltage regulation) and Boundary Scan (separate bench).

Please contact dataCon today to talk about flying probe testing, and how we can make your next quick turn, or EMS prototype, or production project 100% successful.