Testing at Scale

We’ve said it before: building one-offs is different from building at scale. Even on a small scale. There was a time when it was rare for a hobbyist to produce more than one of anything, but these days, access to cheap PC boards makes small production runs much more common. [VoltLog], for example, is selling some modules and found he was spening a lot of time testing the boards. The answer? A testing jig for his PC board.

Big factories, of course, have special machines for bulk testing. These are usually expensive. [VoltLog] found a place specializing in creating custom test jigs using 3D printing.

They also have some standard machines, too. He did have to modify his PCB to accomodate special test points. He sent the design files to the company and they produced a semi-custom testing jib for the boards in about a month.

A Raspberry Pi runs the test and can even sense LEDs turning on if you need it to. Although the device is 3D printed, it looks very professional.  The machine accepts an entire panel of PCBs and wedges pogo pins to the test points.

We were curious about the cost of this fixture. Of course, each one is unique, so the cost of his fixture will not be the same as yours, but it would still be nice to have an order-of-magnitude idea of the price. On the other hand, he claims his testing is now 15 times faster, so if you spend enough time testing, the cost is probably insignificant.

Replicating a design many times has plenty of challenges. While we do like the look of [VoltLog’s] machine, we also know you could roll your own pogo pin setup if you were on a budget.