-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBreaking High-speed Material Constraints
Do you need specialty materials for your high-speed designs? Maybe not. Improvements in resins mean designers of high-speed boards can sometimes use traditional laminate systems. Learn more in this issue.
Level Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Talking Digital Twin and DFT With Aster
January 25, 2024 | Barry Matties, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Digital twin is a buzzword, but it’s really just a way to define what everyone has already been aiming for, says Dean Poplett, technical director at Aster Technologies. But how much does a test company need to put into digital twin? Is it all the equipment or just what needs to be tested? Dean lays out the scenarios Aster manages and how they work with companies to help them achieve their goals.
Barry Matties: What is today’s greatest challenge in testing?
Dean Poplett: It’s trying to find a new test strategy that helps with the board complexity and the size of the board. For example, you have boundary scan, which is limited by the components that are boundary scannable and limited by the design; ICT, where most of the boards are very limited in size, and we don’t have room for test points; and AOI, which is difficult because it's an optical system and tests can be quite subjective. You need to be an expert to understand whether it’s doing a good test on that component. It's not definitive.
With our TestWay software, we amalgamate the coverage from each machine and test strategy into an overall coverage. But the limitation is that there are some components we can't test. It would be nice to find the next strategy that takes us further.
Matties: Digital twin is a term we often hear in the industry. What’s your take on it?
Poplett: Digital twin allows a machine in the real world to predict what a machine will do to the design we have on the table in front of us. If we have it with the entire line, then we can make all the predictions for the real-world scenario before we get there.
Matties: Part of the issue, though, is every piece of equipment needs to be digitally benchmarked for performance characteristics and all the data must be ready for a true digital twin, a true manufacturing environment.
Poplett: Right. Test is slightly easier than assembly, where you have analog-type problems like heat transfer, and tombstoning is caused because of the disproportionate amount of heat and cooling of parts in question. When we are testing, it's reasonably straightforward, and we can predict exactly what a particular option on a machine can achieve. With the circuit and the parallel components around the component we want to test, we know exactly what it will do. With proper circuit analysis, we can predict exactly what a machine can achieve. Obviously, with any analysis, we can predict that, but we might get it wrong one time. Because we have a closed-loop system, our prediction is compared against the actual real cover measurement. Any discrepancy is either because the debug engineer has not done a particularly good job, or our estimator isn't so good. Whenever we get a discrepancy, we can look at the report and say, “Here's your problem, sort it out,” or, “It's our problem we will sort it out.”
This article continues in the January 2024 issue of Design007 Magazine.
Suggested Items
TRI Opens New Manufacturing Facility
05/16/2024 | TRITest Research, Inc. (TRI), the leading test and inspection systems provider for the electronics manufacturing industry, announced that it has opened a state-of-the-art R&D and manufacturing facility.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Circuit Board Testing Strategies and the Impact of AI
05/08/2024 |Editor Marcy LaRont speaks with Bert Horner, president of The Test Connection, about the importance of strategic planning and design-for-test (DFT). Bert touches on some common mistakes that occur when DFT is not adequately considered early on. The discussion outlines an overarching industry need for a culture shift toward increasingly higher levels of integration and collaboration. Bert mentions that AI now has an influence on testing, as everywhere else, and announces his forthcoming book.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Understanding Objective Evidence in Manufacturing Processes
05/07/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOGraham Naisbitt explains the importance of objective evidence in manufacturing processes, debunking the common misconception that the ROSE test is a cleanliness test. He also discusses the introduction of Rev J, a requirement for measuring ionic contamination on circuit assemblies, and the challenges in accurately measuring contamination. Alternative methods like ion chromatography and the need for updating standards like the ROSE test are mentioned.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Kendall Flies in AI-Piloted X-62A VISTA
05/06/2024 | Lockheed MartinLockheed Martin Skunk Works joined the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and other government and industry partners in hosting U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall to fly in the X-62A Variable In-flight Simulation Test Aircraft (VISTA), a one-of-a-kind aircraft modified to test artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy capabilities.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Software Solutions for Circuit Board Challenges
05/03/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPONolan Johnson speaks with Will Webb from Aster Technologies about their software solutions for design teams, manufacturing, test engineers, and process engineers. Aster's software addresses the increasing complexities of circuit boards and the need for alternative testing methods.