Improving Hardware Quality Measurements Using Automated Testing

Testing and verification of cards and modules in electronic devices containing multiple sections are critical points in system qualification. Factors such as long test times, large amount of test data and complex operational processes are some of the issues that prevent fulfilling of the quality objectives. In this study, a test processes of an electronic power card designed by ASELSAN Inc. were automated. The designed test system were examined. A custom test fixture that is specific to the card was designed. It has pins contacting the test points of the card. The control of test and measurement devices was established by general purpose interface bus (GPIB) and peripheral component interconnect (PCI) communication methods. The test of the card were written C# programming language and National Instruments (NI) TestStand test manager was utilized for the running and reporting of the tests. Voltage, current and waveform measurements were taken with the semi-automatic test system that was designed in this study. Based on the test results, automatic test and manual test were compared in terms of test time and efficiency. It has been seen that the designed semi-automatic test system reduces the test time by approximately 82%. Since the time spent in the test processes increases the production cost of the product at the same rate, the test time was shortened and the cost was saved with the designed test system, thus the loss of workforce was prevented and the efficiency was increased considerably.