Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1424540
16 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2021 bled well back then may fall short with the new- er technologies, such as the 0201s, the 01005s. e physical size challenge that you have put- ting the control access onto the board, inter- connecting with connectors and stuff like that, is really a testing challenge. Johnson: Bert, you're talking about having somebody who is a competent expert at run- ning those test planning tools. It sounds like that's a make-or-break situation for more com- plex designs. Do you need to have that exper- tise on your staff or can you hire somebody who is just project-based? at seems like a critical part of the project, and yet maybe not a lot of people are doing it. Horner: e simple answer is you can pick up or outsource. We can do it, and some of my industry competitors offer that as a solution. Back in the '80s and '90s, most companies had an in-house test engineer doing electrical re- views manually. ey were looking over sche- matics, putting in their red pencils, and put- ting in what they thought were needed. As designs are changing more quickly, access is eroding; there's that challenge of one person handling maybe a whole corporation of prod- uct. So, the bandwidth is narrowing with that in-house. ere's a challenge with keeping it all in- house. at's why, if you have maybe not the highest-level test engineer, but somebody who understands the philosophy of tests and some of the inspection limitations that the contract manufacturer has that you're partnering with, they can be very successful using these auto- mated tools like ASTER or Mentor. ere are automated tools that can fill the gap and pro- cess things a lot faster with nice reporting ca- pabilities that you can share with the design team, whether it's the electrical engineer or the PCB layout. Matties: Well, it's not going to get any easier, is it? Horner: No, it's not. As we're moving more onto complex chips, placing of those devices is going to be more critical because now it's in- corporating more of the functionality of the as- sembly at one device or a couple of devices. So, placing those devices on a smaller PCB is go- ing to drive cost and drive defects onto a card. Johnson: Components are getting smaller, trac- es and features on the boards are getting small- er, but are test points getting smaller? Horner: Yes, they are. When I first started, I used to get growls and frowns when we asked for ICT 30- or 35-mil test targets. Now we're down to 20-mil test targets for ICT bed-of-nails, and that's where you're getting the growls. On the flying probe, anywhere from 12- to 3-mil test targets are becoming popular. at's why the technology gap between systems that are 10 years old and newer systems are really starting to age in the technology that's out there. So, not to say that an older flying probe can't test product, it's just that if you're building more complex, smaller devices, you could be run- ning into a technology challenge. Matties: Who ultimately owns the test strate- gy? Horner: If I'm putting my name on a product, I think the OEM would have to own it. But if you're talking about a manufacturing process Ten years ago, equipment that might have assem- bled well back then may fall short with the newer technologies, such as the 0201s, the 01005s.