Sparkfun is a relatively small electronics company located in Boulder, Colorado that sells small-quantity parts and boards to the hobby, experimenter, and prototyping markets. Out of the 1300 products the company currently sells, about 300 are small, board-based products designed by the company. That’s 300 boards to test and Sparkfun has taken a small-and-simple, low-cost approach to creating production test fixtures for relatively low-volume production testing. The company’s approach to production testing has evolved somewhat over time and the current, ingenious scheme is to create self-contained fixtures using multiple circuit boards, Pogo Pins, and as much off-the-shelf hardware as possible.
It’s unusual for a company to reveal so much about its internal test methodology but Sparkfun is quite an unusual company. I suspect you’ll get more than one idea from the company’s writeup of their test approach.
Click here: PogoBeds: SparkFun Production and Testing
