Test and measurement automation of printed circuit board assembly using digital oscilloscope

Abstract

The testing and measurement (TM) of electrical parameters of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) plays an integral part in the manufacturing sectors. These industries work on embedded system which widely use digital oscilloscopes (DO) for such purposes, however, operate them manually. An exponential rise in the implementation of industry 4.0 with the increasing demand for industrial products makes manual TM cumbersome. The automation of oscilloscopes (AO) remains a viable alternative to these issues requiring further investigation. An accurate and automated TM block facilitates efficient design, development, and assembly of a fully functional system hence addressed here. The AO has been carried out using generalized software that can be configured based on industry requirements. It subsequently stores the data on the server for better traceability. The automated software is developed using VB.NET and installed on a personal computer. Experiments reveal the proposed approach saves approximately 60%-70% of the time required for each PCBA operation than that of the manual system. This can enhance the productivity of the industry in terms of manpower and Resource utilization with a reduction in operating costs.