Connector Pin Testing...

OptoDragon

Question? I'm trying to design a connector pin tester using a BS2. I've learned in the past to present this type of project in Forums, because why re-invent the wheel or start making the same mistakes others have made. Help! I want to preform insulation resistance 5,000 to 100,000M ohms with approximately 500V and dielectric withstanding voltage 500 to 3000V with minimum breakdown or leakage at approximately 2mA -- all variables should be variable. Testing will be pin to pin and pin to shell -- up to 200plus pins (again variable). I know that one of the post dealt with check if wire(s) were "HOT". I'm looking at something similar. HELP!

allanlane5

This sounds like it's WAY more difficult than a BS2 will deal with. A BS2 has 2K bytes of program space (for tokenized PBasic programs) and 26 bytes of ram. And cycles at about 2000 PBasic instructions per second.

Shoe-horning 200 plus pins and controlling 500 to 3000 volt supplies while measuring their current sounds like an awful lot to expect out of this extremely reliable, but fairly limited platform.

OptoDragon

I wondered about that, but I felt the BS2 is a good starting point and I have a couple to use and/or play with. I can start at a lower point -- less pins, but unfortunately have to maintain parameters. I was thinking of using the BS2 to control the testing. I have a Associated Research Hypot III Tester... This piece of equipment can perform the actual testing. Unfortunately, this tester is limited to point to point testing. As a temporary fix I made "squids" -- short wired leads with soldered mating connector pins -- this allows for my techs to test one (1) pin to the surrounding pins, with this setup we actually test about about 3 "Hot" pins to the surrounding pins/shell. I want to do this in larger scale.
Thanks... OptoDragon

stamptrol

A while ago I designed/built such a device for a military contractor here on the east coast. It was set up to test pin-to-pin and pin-to- ground for each conductor of a pre-fab cable.
It also did a hi-pot of each conductor.
The prototype actually ran on a Sinclair ZX81 and the final version was used with a Tandy 100 (one of the first laptops). The printout had a serial number attached to it and it printed out the status of any failed pins.
Its not a trivial project, but should be doable on a BS2sx or BS2px and some creative use of multiplexing to get the number of pins you need. Start with a few conductors, get the test sequences working then increase the number of conductors.

Cheers,

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Tom Sisk

http://www.siskconsult.com
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