Tips and Tricks

Program TIC MSP430F155IPM On Board

Many of our boards these days have TIC controller (MSP430F155IPM) to control power supply inputs – One of the requirement for our ICT is to program this TIC on board. We need a main board that has the CPU to check and program the TIC controller if it’s blank or wrong firmware version. It does

Test Switches Using Pneumatic Solenoid Push Rods

If our test boards have some push button switches that need to be tested, we used to use manual hand push rods, it’s time consuming and the operators do make mistake when their fingers are tired from pushing them. Some fixture vendors offer pneumatic solenoid push rod which are very reliable and extremely quick to

Some BT-Basic Editing Short Cuts

Beside changing tolerances using unix, sometimes I edit many files using F8 and re-save\compile file for quick modification sometimes.

Optimize Config File For Portability

These days, most of the CEMs HP3070 systems are old and some are not well kept up, their pins cards may fail in the middle of the run and our production line may halt for days. I believe in optimizing the config file to use as fewer hybrids cards and power supplies as possible. The

Program PIC18F8722 At HP3070

I had to program PIC28F8722 micro controller at ICT test station. I found a solution for less than $300. and some custom fixture designs. The main board design must have a 5 pins header which has ICT test points. MCLR, DATA, SCLK, GND, VCC. I found a PIC program to go on the internet for

Find And Replace Repeated Tolerance In Analog Folder

I always set tolerances for all passive components in the board file to 1% to make sure IPG generates all guarding possible. For testing stability, I change all resistors to 10% and capacitors to 20%. If a board has many components with the same values, chances are, the tolerance for these components are generated the

Control XT and Control Plus

If we want our analog tests to run much faster, make sure our config file is using control xt instead of control plus. The control plus can run with control xt compiled system, but not the other way around. If the program is develop with control plus, in order to use control xt option, we