Meaningful Work with Ventec Life Systems

One of the best things about being an ODM and electronics testing expert is getting to help our awesome clients reach their goals faster. Be it perfecting a consumer device that'll bring joy to countless users or advancing agritechnology to make farming more efficient, every project we take on is one to be cherished.

In these difficult times, as lives are at stake during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are especially proud to partner with our new friends at Ventec Life Systems to help test the circuit boards in their VOCSN ventilators. From a design and manufacturing perspective, we always knew the value of efficient, high-quality, and data driven hardware testing. When we first launched the PLT in 2019 and supplemented it with a redesigned ICT offering, we always knew that our line of solutions would help companies innovate more quickly and with less waste.

Truth be told, we were hoping to help make self-driving cars or contribute to the electronic space race. Little did we expect our invention to be helping test life-saving ventilators! (Though, maybe Pete, in his ability to be prepared for every situation, saw the use case long before any of us did).

Anyway, this is an appreciation post to our new clients, Ventec Life Systems, as well as our hardworking beavers who worked tirelessly to provide a custom in-circuit test and firmware deployment solution for 7 different board designs in less than 2 weeks.

If you are wondering how we are able to make custom test fixtures so quickly, then you might be interested in the fact that we managed to standardize the computing aspect: the PLT. Right out the box, the PLT is armed with firmware flashing capabilities, various electrical test capabilities, as well as cloud-based data logging and deployment.

Meanwhile, we standardized the process for making custom bed of nails (or in-circuit testers) by isolating the custom component to what we call the pogo pin cassette. Pogo pin cassettes (PPCs) are custom made for each of our clients' unique board designs.

There are two main aspects when it comes to pogo pin cassettes: 1) the board that facilitates all the testing and 2) the custom chassis or shell protecting the board. After receiving our clients' board designs, we create our own board to test their board. We can do this very quickly, since the PLT handles all the more complex computing, while the board in the PPC is mainly used to facilitate the data/signals between the PLT and the client's board. Think of the PLT as the brain, and the PPC and its pins as the nerves.

Additionally, we also need to make sure the pins are able to interact with the board, so the pogo pin cassette's chassis is made custom using CNC routing machines.

In the case of Ventec, their meticulous design uses multiple different boards to regulate what happens within their ventilators, meaning each of their boards would get its own custom pogo pin cassette. Using traditional methods for making custom test fixtures, it might take 6 - 8 weeks for a single board design. We were able to deliver 7 within 2 weeks. This means our brilliant friends at Ventec can continue moving quickly without having to wait on the custom test fixtures.

We love our awesome clients, and we are thankful that they choose us to be part of their journey to help innovate the world around us!