Medium-Volume Functional Test Fixture

A Mid-Atlantic manufacturer of industrial metering pumps, needing a semi-automatic test fixture with which to reliably qualify products in its factory in China, turned to Advanced Product Design & Manufacturing, Inc. – not especially a surprise for either company since they had partnered in the design and manufacture of the pump control products that had gained qualified regulatory approvals. The need presented many challenges beyond engineering and manufacturing: There are 7,000 miles and 13 time zones separating APD&M's suburban Philadelphia site, where the test fixture would be built and manufactured, and the Chinese factory, where tests would be performed to ensure that the company's industrial metering pumps being manufactured there did in fact fulfill their functional specifications. Required was test software that would allow production line operators in China to perform the functional test in an automatic way through a computer. This important test, performed in the last phase of the production line of the product, serves as a final quality control for the pumps.There were no engineering breakthroughs required; rather APD&M customer wanted a test fixture that would simply, reliably and cost-effectively do its job in simulating the operational environment of the product in order to check its correct functionality.Which is what APD&M set out to do –

Designing and fabricating an inexpensive physical clam-shell type fixture.
Designing internal fixture interface control electronics and firmware to control the device under test.
Designing a PC-based test application with simple user interface controls to drive the test fixture.
Completely wiring and building the fixture at its manufacturing plant in Coatesville, PA.
Developing and providing a complete fixture documentation package that included schematics, wiring diagrams, parts list, and software and firmware listings.

Ask APD&M's long-term customer if its product idea was successfully turned into reality, you'll get a simple two-word response: "Mission Accomplished!".