PCB Electrical Test

Electrical testing is a reliable method used to verify the quality of all types of PCBs. Bare boards are electrically tested using information from their netlist.

Usually, two types of electrical tests are performed on bare printed circuit boards:

Flying Probe Testing

The flying probe test method is the latest solution in electrical testing. It uses a generic board holder along with one or more probes. Under software control, these probes access all the nodes on the board one by one. This allows testing for opens, near opens and shorts.

 

Bed of Nails / Universal Grid Testing

The universal grid is also known as clamshell or bed of nails fixture test.  Just as the name describes, the electronic fixture for universal grid testing has numerous pins inserted into holes in an epoxy phenolic glass cloth laminated sheet. These holes are then aligned to the test points on the printed circuit board using tooling pins. This type of testing is used when there is a large volume production of PCBs. In the universal grid process, all the test points are checked at the same time.