Being There for U.S. Manufacturing

A longstanding client in OEM Automotive Electronics industry approached me right before releasing a new product.  It was an electronic safety device for vehicles with a buzzer designed for a piercing audible warning if the vehicle is in an unsafe condition.

They needed a custom circuit tester built for their production line.

Testers that are crucial in testing 100% of their parts right off the line, at full load/duty cycles. Maintaining the tradition of being exemplary of American manufacturing quality potential.

But this brake buzzer was driving people crazy.

The Problem? 

The buzzer buzzed, or more aptly: screeched. 

Well technically the problem is: when testing the device inside their laboratory, it would screech.  And it would screech every few minutes…

All day long… To the delight of employees. 

It was also quite a process to hook each board coming off the production line so, with a history of building their custom testers, an initial quick fix was requested.

First production runs are anything but final.  Revisions being made on the fly.

And they were.

Circuit board changes, additions to the test protocols, new software… a design was settled upon that would be Obsolescence-resistant and could scale with needs and production. 

The Right Solution at the Right Time

To solve this, a sprung testing socket was 3D-printed and fabricated that could be hand-held and used in time with the start of production. 

As precision was the utmost of importance for testing circuit traces, the socket was made with tiny sprung gold test point pins while the board itself was located on hardened steel pins ground to fit the board.  When the board was pressed down on this test socket, it would both engage the test pins simultaneously, and muffle the buzzer.

Now back to obsolescence-resistance part in the story.

It’s a story as old as time. A few weeks later the client’s production numbers jumped.

They needed some radical changes to the tester’s operation.  A clamp.  Well maybe not radical, but significant.  It was found fatiguing to use throughout the day and with a vendor switch the new circuit boards were also out of spec and ill-fitting.

The Little Tester that Grew with Production

In order to get these changes pushed back to production quickly, the focus was on re-using that original socket (and the time/effort/budget invested) attempting to 3D print a large component base to mount it to for clamping.

One of the major cons of utilizing 3D printing is in large parts.  The bigger they are, the longer they take to print.  The longer they print, the more that can go wrong, wasting everything. 

With a vast experience in testing designs for printing (read: there is a decade-old bin of failed prints to reference…), a very stunning and minimal base was modeled, printed, and fitted with heat-inserted metal threads for longevity. 

Just barely fit inside the print bed.  Rubber feet were inset, otherwise they fall out after a couple years. 

Oh and those new board specs? 

Problem no more, press-fit pins pressed out, re-ground to a completely new profile, and pressed back to success.  Even soldered in a new button for another software trigger.     

A Screaming Success

Screw it all back together, tune, lube, and break in.  Problems solved.  Tester is back to putting in over 8 hours days of production.

The screeching muffled, the circuits tested with expediency and ease, and a long-lasting test unit ready.

The real problem being solved is allowing the client to focus their efforts on where it mattered- on their product.