Automation of printed circuit board testing on a bed-of-nails testbench

Sammanfattning: Syntronic Research & Development AB both designs and performs tests of PCBs of differentkinds. At lower volumes, big parts of the test process are manual. This thesis examines oneway to automate the loading and unloading process with a cheap and simple solution so that itcan be profitable even at low volumes. If all parts of the process are automated manpower canbe freed, hence the cost of testing can be lowered, and tedious monotonous work can beavoided. Human error can also be removed from the equation, which could result in lessstochastic errors. The approach to automate the loading and unloading of test objects in this thesis is to design atwo-axis linear robot. This way the PCBs can be picked from incoming plates, placed in thetestbench, and then be placed in outgoing plates, as long as they are all in a straight line. To find weakness in the design a prototype was constructed on which tests were performed.These tests showed some areas on which improvements are needed before it can beconsidered a finished product. These improvements are discussed. The tests also showed that this approach can be made profitable, with some limitations. The cost savings are greatly dependable on how the other process are automated. There are both limitations on the setup of the test fixture used and, perhaps mainly, on how theother process are automated. This is also discussed. One challenge yet to overcome is how to make it easy to adapt and implement for a specifictest. When and if a robot based on this concept is implemented the setup time will by far be thelargest contributor to the cost.