What is ICT Fixture?
ICT – In Circuit Test, a test system composed of individual probes intended to make contact with the test points on your brought together printed circuit board. This will review the functionality of the board and will check for assembly defects. ICT performs extensive testing. In circuit testing is customarily used on mature products, particularly in subcontract manufacturing. It uses a bed-of-nails test fixture (a traditional electronic test fixture) to approach various test points on the PCB's bottom side. With enough access points, ICT can pass test signals into and out of PCBs at high speed to perform assessment of components and circuits. ICT fixtures can be created to test the top, or the top and bottom together, of the board, depending on the needs of the circuit board.
What are the advantages of ICT?
The advantages of it are that ICT systems can handle more sophisticated testing method, including those specified in the Joint Testing Action Group (JTAG) standard. This is why ICT can test for assembly defects as well as for functionality. In Circuit Test is contacting all the test points of the board at once, therefore it is normally a lot faster than other types of systems. Thank to this speed, the expense of setting up the ICT test fixture and program can be recovered very fast on boards being assembled in large volumes.
ICT is the most tedious, cumbersome, and expensive type of testing. However, it is ideal for mature products requiring high volume production. It runs the power signal to review voltage levels and resistance measurements at various nodes of the board. It is excellent at finding component failures, parametric failures and design related faults.
The benefits ICT provides to OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer):
Testing platform is a little universal for most testing requirements because it is available in Windows as well as UNIX.
Despite the requirement for a costly fixture, ICT covers 100% testing so that all power and ground shorts are detected.
Highly trustworthy and comprehensive test catching all design faults, flaws and manufacturing defects.
Test development interface and operating environment is based on standards for an open system with fast integration into an OEM customer’s existing processes.
ICT testing does power up testing and eliminates customer debug requirements nearly to ZERO.
Detects and checks opens, shorts, current leakages in the circuitry, missing components, wrong value components, wrong polarities, and defective components.
ICT does not take a very long time to perform. It can be 20 times faster than a flying probe.
