Fundamentals of Building a Test System

Learn about the tools and insight you need to evaluate your test organization, propose changes where significant cost savings are available, and improve the profitability of your company year over year with smarter investment decisions.

When building automated test systems, the primary tools at your disposal come in the form of measurement instruments. Learn about the major categories of instruments available and common selection criteria to help you zero in on the best choice for your application.

A power budget and layout ensures all components operate properly by avoiding bottlenecks where a component may need more power than the power distribution can provide. This resource is especially important for components that could compromise operation of the whole system if starved of power.

Switching can be a cost-effective and efficient option for expanding the channel count of your instrumentation, but it's not always the best option. Learn about the four different switching architectures and determine the best strategy to meet the needs of your test system.

Understand the purpose and core functionalities of text executives and how they can automate and streamline large test systems. Examine three different practical scenarios to determine how an in-house, custom-built executive or a commercial, off-the-shelf solution can impact the efficiency and cost of deploying and maintaining a test system.

Hardware and measurement abstraction layers are effective design patterns that make test software markedly adaptable. Rather than employ device-specific code modules in a test sequence, you can use abstraction layers to decouple measurement types and instrument-specific drivers from the test sequence. Learn how to drastically reduce development time by giving hardware and software engineers the flexibility to work in parallel.

Often overlooked, thermals can impact measurement quality and measurement system reliability. Learn basic design approaches and explore thermal modeling tools for designing a rack measurement system.

A mass interconnect system is a mechanical interconnect designed to easily facilitate the connection of a large number of signals either coming from or going to a DUT or DUT fixture. Learn how to choose a suitable mass interconnect system and design an appropriate fixture that seamlessly connects your DUTs to the rest of your test system.

Although software deployment is one of the most important steps in building a test system, it can also be the most tedious and frustrating to set up because of the abundance of options available today. Understand the different considerations and tools to address the difficulty and confusion that surrounds test software deployment.

In a perfect world, systems would never crash. Unfortunately, this is not reality—at least not yet. Systems fail and sudden, unexpected breakdowns can be costly. Although you cannot completely remove this risk, even with the most well-thought-out plans, you can reduce it. Be sure you have a maintenance strategy that can help you manage cost if something goes wrong with your test system.