Although electronics is a fast-moving industry with rapidly changing technologies, in some industries such as aerospace and defence, products must be supported for many years or even decades, which can lead to the issue of associated test equipment becoming obsolete over this period.
After discussions with a major multinational communications and defence corporation, TestWorks Group developed a functional test solution to replace an obsolete system which had become unreliable and difficult to support. Due to the specialist nature of the product being tested, TestWorks reused some of the original code and incorporated it within an industry-standard NI LabVIEW ‘wrapper’, and also developed a custom PCB, using latest-technology components, for use in the test fixture. Most elements of the new system are industry-standard and therefore easily supportable in future.
The new test system has proved extremely reliable and requires none of the on-going maintenance and modifications to the original system, dramatically reducing support costs and ensuring that there are no product shipment delays due to non-functional test equipment.
TestWorks has since supplied further replacement systems to this customer.
