Boundary scan answers CEM test demands

UK based contract electronics manufacturer Barric has selected XJTAG as its boundary scan test solution partner.

UK based contract electronics manufacturer Barric has selected XJTAG as its boundary scan test solution partner.

The XJTAG system has been implemented at Barric's 1100m2 production facility at Diss in Norfolk, UK.

The powerful and easy-to-use XJTAG boundary scan development system meets the growing market need for a cost-effective solution for testing tightly-packed printed circuit boards populated with JTAG devices such as ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale devices, which cannot be tested by traditional methods.

According to Barric, since introducing XJTAG the company has seen production yields increase significantly.

"The XJTAG system is an excellent and highly versatile product which has transformed the way we test complex printed circuit boards populated with BGA devices", said Simon Bayley, Technical Director at Barric.

"XJTAG is easy to use, requires no training, enables rapid fault diagnosis and consistently gives us 80% test coverage across digital circuits", added Simon Bayley.

"We can now test our boards in a matter of minutes rather than hours and we have reduced the number of more complex board faults".

"This is good news for customers and for our overall efficiency as these boards typically contain large and expensive chips such as FPGAs, which we do not want to hold in our inventory any longer than necessary".

Barric provides a range of electronics manufacturing services from prototyping and new product introductions through to printed circuit assembly, system build and repair.

The company offers low volume, high mix, high-technology manufacturing and specialises in prototyping as well as short run and batch production of printed circuits.

"We opted for the XJTAG system ahead of competitive products due to its price, speed of development and because the technical support was excellent", added Bayley.

"In addition, because the test scripts are device rather than board-centric in XJTAG, we are able to reuse them on different projects - this is a major benefit for a company that manufactures numerous different board designs for multiple customers each month".

Barric works for variety of original equipment manufacturers across communications, medical, industrial and consumer markets.

Having a sophisticated boundary scan solution is becoming a prerequisite and many customers are already using XJTAG during the board design and development stage.

"We manufacture a dozen or so different development boards for one Cambridge-based company and work closely with their designers to ensure that XJTAG is optimised to best effect", said Sarah Green, Test Engineer at Barric.

"Using XJTAG, the designer or developer can automatically select or 'pack' all the relevant data for a particular board BSDL files, netlists, XJEase files, pin mapping files etc".

"and forward this to our production team".

"This streamlines the whole development process and ensures that the yields are kept high and that any recurring issues are looped back to the design stage for rectifying".

The powerful and easy-to-use XJTAG development system is designed to cut the cost and shorten the development cycle of electronic products and provides a unique solution that can test JTAG as well as nonJTAG devices.

XJTAG can test a high proportion of a circuit including ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale devices, SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, Flash memories, FPGAs, microprocessors and many other devices.

XJTAG also enables in-system programming of FPGAs, complex programmable logic devices and Flash memories.

The XJTAG development system can migrate through the product life cycle from early design to field support and repair.

XJTAG enables circuit designers to shorten the development cycle and prototyping process by facilitating early test development, early design validation of CAD netlists, fast generation of complex functional tests and test re-use across circuits that use the same devices.

XJTAG test scripts are also re-usable and portable across different boards, due to the novel device-centric approach that the designers have adopted.

Simon Payne, Chief Executive at XJTAG, said: "XJTAG is becoming a popular choice for contract manufacturers who are under pressure to improve yields and because of the prevalence of BGA devices on modern printed circuits need to complement their in-circuit, functional or flying probe test equipment with a cost-effective boundary scan solution".

Back to top