Creative engineers found alive and well…..
17 July 2007
While the production engineer has a straight-forward process to replicate, the test engineer (admittedly these days often the same person) has a host of strategies that he can buy into. Is it in formulating and implementing these strategies that true engineering creativity now lies?
Despite the conspiracy theories – the majority of the responsible media reflects what is going on in world rather than setting the news agenda itself. And counting EMTWorldWide as part of the responsible media, which I like to, the news and products that arrives in your inbox every Tuesday is a what I consider to be the best of what we have been sent or have found out in the previous seven days.
And this week, quite unintentionally, the products are all aimed at the test engineers. In a way this should not come as a surprise. Production equipment these days is now good. All of it. In fact, comparing it to the pioneering days of surface mount then it is excellent. It is fast, reliable, flexible – all the things that we need if we are to assemble our PCB efficiently. And while there are, and always will be, technical issues that still need to be resolved, you can’t get away from the fact that the surface mount process is mature and relatively standard wherever you are in the world.
There were days when the wave soldering machine ‘engineer’ was regarded as master of a ‘black art’, and having a ‘feel’ for the machine was an important part of getting the best performance out of it. Those days are gone. Productivity is vastly improved and quality is uniformly good and so the machines have achieved what the best engineers were aiming for.
And yet there is a slight sense of sadness about this situation. Where has the creativity gone? The engineering intuition? Well I believe that you could argue that it lies within the test arena.
There are a host of options available and more coming on line. The ‘build it, test it’ philosophy is no longer relevant. The test needs to come earlier in the process so that it can be used for process control, or right at the end of the process, including final assembly of the product, because of the faith the manufacturer has in his process. Or even the test equipment can migrate from one part of the process (starting at design) through to other areas as the manufacturing process matures or changes.
If you take a look at some of the technologies covered in the products (and in our automotive test feature new on the web site) they cover a host of different and sometimes conflicting technologies – LXI, PXI, PCI Express, Boundary scan, flying probe, virtual instruments. All of these have a role to play in some environments while not being appropriate for others and, as mentioned in the automotive test article, the test strategy can have a huge bearing on the economic viability of the end product.
What is more is the rate of development of these new test instruments. PXI is still growing and yet was unheard of a decade ago, while LXI is the new kid on the block. In fact we will be launching a new section in The ShortList in the autumn dedicated to LXI. X-ray is going through a similar cycle that AOI was five years ago – engineers were neither convinced that it would work or that they could afford it. But if they don’t use it, how can they test all those hidden joints? And where does AOI go? After the printer when most of the defects originate, or after reflow when actual defects can be seen? There is no right or wrong.
This constant evolution has got to be good for industry. These technological advances are proving to be a new differentiator in both productivity and quality.
And from an engineering point of view – it keeps the creative spirit alive!
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