An extremely crucial part and process that
falls under PCB designing and manufacturing is the reliability testing. As the
name suggests, this procedure determines the correctness of PCB design and how
well it will be able to withstand harsh
conditions, deliver desired output and whether it has any faulty points or not.
ESS or environment stress screening is the
most important tool under this type of testing. It exposes the board design to
a variety of environment stresses and conditions to see how well it encounters
those situations. The kind of stresses, a design is generally exposed to would
be vibrations, power cycling and rapid temperature variations.
It helps in identifying any hidden and unknown
defects and faults in electronic product design and structure,
so that the team of engineers could work on those faults and flaws before
finalizing the design and product. Electronic
devices, gadgets and products have become an essential part of every modern
industry. ESS gives the
makers of electronic devices, gadgets and equipment a chance to look deeper
into the layout and work on the design before going ahead in the production
line and actual development of the product.
Before beginning with screening, the
electronic manufacturer must first determine the type and number of flaws and
defects, the design is most likely to have and the maximum acceptable number of
defects. The aim of this testing is not to remove those latent defects, but to
recognize them and put the type and number of flaws into a category which is
acceptable.
Manufacturers that work on contractual basis
make sure to implement ESS testing and provide their clients with the resulting
recommendations and data. They make use of certain software applications for
this purpose in order to draft the data that explains the failure of product
during the testing phases. Below mentioned are some major points that you can
expect to find in one such report.
·
List of
components that failed
·
Time and
date of failure
·
Tests that
caused the failure
·
Tester’s
name
·
A
description explaining the symptoms of failures
·
Some
additional important information associated with the failure
The last phase in PCB testing is monitoring
which is generating reports and comparing the results of ESS with the set
expectations. The parameters considered during comparison can vary as per the
product and components under testing. However, some common parameters are:
·
Screen
strength
·
Defects
remaining
·
Incoming
defects
·
Trend
analysis
Designing and implementing a good
testing process such as ESS is beneficial in more than one way, whether applied
during the initial electronic productdesign stage or at any later stage of production.
