PCB Testing Goes Socketless

摘要

As technology advances, more and more electronic components that do bigger and better things are hitting the market. At the same time, the size of the PCB is shrinking. While circuit board designers could resolve the issue by building multiple boards into products to accommodate the additional components, they instead are opting to squeeze them onto a single PCB. To fit more components in a smaller area, designers have no choice but to decrease the size and spacing of test targets commonly used in bed-of-nails fixtures. These test targets, namely, component leads, test pads, and via holes, allow electrical access to the UUT. The challenge is to hit these smaller targets and still achieve accurate test results. To accomplish this, it is only logical that test probes also need to be smaller.