Design A Simple PCB Functional Test Board (Environment)

When you finished the design and manufacturing of your board, it is important to run a test to see if everything is working as expect, for many simple boards, this is done by human eyes check, but sometimes for more complex board, it is better to run a fully functioning test. Let do it here.

For the board design:

The board should be penalized based on the test need, for example, in our this tutorial, it is the DTMF board, cell phone signal comes in from the audio jack,and display by LED indicator to tell the button pressed on cell phone. So we must consider the audio jack should be not conflict with other boards.

For PCB design, add a 3.5mm empty board outline on the side for the PCB locker to hold the board. If you are using eagle, add a rectangle on the side of the board on layer dimension 20, and nothing else need to draw. See picture below. And check how it looks like on the pictures of real PCBs more below.

Tools:

• Drill, double side tape, strong fast glue – please prepare in your local store.

Materials:

Most of these materials you can find it later on our store.

• Drill Bit: 0.8mm – for pin header holes drilling. 1.7mm – for drilling the insertion holes of the test pins, 3.0mm – for PCB locker and installation hole.
• Test pins – it is actually two part: a socket and a pin inserting inside the socket, for 2.54 mm pitch pin headers testing, quantity depends on how many pin headers you need to test, but this test pins normally sells 100 pcs as a small pack. The socket has a small rod to help it lock the top surface of the baseboard, it is slightly bigger than 1.7mm holes you will drill, so it can not be pressed down anymore and lock on the baseboard.
• Baseboard materials – we use the PCB type board, it is dielectric, easy for drilling and 4mm thickness to hold the test pins, red board in the picture.
• PCB locker (4PCs)- hold the side of PCBs, the yellow thing in the picture.
• Other wires for wiring up and testing, this is according to your board design and testing purpose.

So let’s start to make it, follow the slideshow and note to do so.