A Microcontroller-Based Bed-of-Nails Test Fixture to Program and Test Small Printed Circuit Boards

The production of a consumer product that includes a microcontroller on a printed circuit board (PCB) with supporting hardware necessitates thorough testing to ensure that the board will perform as designed. A simple solution was developed to automate the testing process of small, low-density printed circuit boards populated with surface mount device (SMD) components. A simple manual test fixture was previously developed. A new test fixture was built, that not only enhances the old test fixture by making the whole process automatic but also is capable of programming multiple boards in parallel. This paper describes the design and development of this new test fixture