Wireless testing enhances Swiss manufacturing plant

26th May 2015

ESCATEC

Mick Elliott

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Wireless testing has been installed at ESCATEC’s manufacturing facility in Heerbrugg, Switzerland. "The Internet of Things will mean that almost all products will have some form of wireless interface," said Thomas Eschenmoser, ESCATEC's Section Head Test Engineering.

"During manufacture it is vital to test the wireless output of each device to ensure that it is functioning correctly and that there are no unexpected signals caused by a fault that would interfere with other devices. The new wireless test unit is capable of testing across the radio spectrum to include WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, etc."

A key challenge that ESCATEC solved was making the test regime of the spectral analyser fully automatic. This is part of ESCATEC's programme of making testing as automatic as possible to reduce production costs.

"The network analyser is a complex measuring instrument that requires a lot of knowledge to use," explained Eschenmoser. "The staff on the production line don't have this skill base so we devised a test programme that can take the analyser through all its tests quickly and automatically giving a simple pass or fail for each product."

Another challenge was the need to calibrate the analyser quickly for product production changes. Again, a software programme has been generated that enables this to be done automatically when required.