A bed of nails fixture commonly refers to a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) fixture that is comprised of spring probes that make contact with test points. The spring probes in the probe plates resemble a bed of nails.

Final assembly can refer to any product past circuit board stage. This product may have plastics, additional screens, buttons or other components that need to be tested.

We often get contacted early in a PCB’s development stage asking what they should prepare for. Our common answers are:

1. Clearly defined test points with a pitch greater than 1.2mm
2. Asymmetric tooling holes or locating features 

Pitch refers to the distance between test points on your PCB. On probed fixtures minimum pitch is driven from the diameter of the probes, as they need to have separation to avoid a short. We can probe smaller pitch boards, however it may require a customized PCB for pinout.

A DUT refers to the Device Under Test, the object you’ll be testing. It can also be referred to as a UUT (Unit Under Test). 

Anything! We create custom solutions for our customers unique needs. These include but are not limited to:

• LED monitoring by visual, probe, or camera
• Button Pressing or sliding. Either manual, or pneumatic
• Heat sensing
• Ambient light monitoring
• Color verification with spectrometer
• DUT rotation manual or pneumatic
• Capacitive touch processes

While we incorporate our customers needs into every custom fixture for their PCB or Final Assembly fixtures, we do not do any programming. We provide the mechanical fixture, wired to your specification. 

Just as the name implies a manual fixture is operated manually via gear lever, press, pull, or other operation. Our automatic fixtures can include some pneumatic or electrical element that can be automated by our customers programming. The choice of which to choose can depend on your estimated cycles, the amount involved in testing, and budget. 

In order to get a quote started we will ask for the following information if applicable to your project.

• DUT Information
• Testing Spec if available
• Gerber Files
• 3D Files if applicable