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PR Newswire - June 09, 1998 07:14
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BOSTON, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE: TER) introduced the
Paperless Repair Station, a web-browser-based software system that
improves the efficiency of the circuit board repair process. The
Paperless Repair Station can be networked to a variety of test and
inspection systems to provide a database of information about board
failures during prototype, inspection, process test, and product
functional test. Using the Paperless Repair Station's client/server
technology, repair operators can access information to speed up the
process of diagnosing and repairing boards that failed during testing.
The announcement was made at the Nepcon East show held June 8-11 at
Boston's Bayside Exposition Center.
"In today's modern electronics manufacturing facility, many aspects of
the assembly process have been automated. It is common to see production
lines where all phases of the SMT and through-hole assembly process are
automated and tied to a central factory database," explained Charles
Dauber, Teradyne product manager. "Companies are using that data to
improve decision making, resulting in higher yields and greater
efficiencies. The Paperless Repair Station brings the benefits of that
automation to the repair loop."
Historically, test operators would print out a board failure ticket and
tape it to a failed board. The board would then be put in a board
stacker and would eventually reach a repair station, where a repair
operator would look at the failure ticket and try to fix the board with
limited information. The Paperless Repair Station streamlines that
process by automatically downloading failure information from the test
system to a local database. There, the repair operator uses a bar-code
scanner to bring up each board's file, which contains a variety of
information about the board and the failure. For example, if a component
failed, the operator could click on the failure ticket, bringing up a
photo of the board with a yellow arrow highlighting the failing
component.
"The Paperless Repair Station will help the repair staff to diagnose and
repair boards more quickly and send them back to production," Dauber
said. The Paperless Repair Station gives operators the ability to view a
CAD layout as well as a photographic view of the board. It uses a
web-browser graphical user interface to provide a familiar, easy-to-use
environment.
The Paperless Repair Station is platform-independent, running under
Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 3.1, or UNIX. The system uses a
company's existing LAN infrastructure to provide the right information
quickly to the people who need it, without costly additional network
development, installation, and training, Dauber said. The Paperless
Repair Station is tightly integrated with Teradyne test systems and the
related test programming and fixture development software; systems
supported include Teradyne's Z1800-Series Test Systems, Spectrum(TM)
8800-Series Manufacturing Test Platforms, VECTOR 9000 VXI Functional
Test Platform, L200 and L300 Functional Test Systems, and Teradyne
Flying Prober, as well as other non-Teradyne test systems.
A version of the software called the Defect Display Station is also
available for integration with Teradyne's Automatic Optical Inspection
(AOI) system. It takes advantage of the optical inspection system's
photographic view of the board to pass failure information to operators,
who can use it to quickly locate and repair failures.
The Teradyne Paperless Repair Station price is starts at approximately
$12,500. Shipments will begin in the third quarter of this year.
Teradyne is a leading manufacturer of automatic test equipment and
connection systems for the electronics and telecommunications
industries, with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. The Paperless
Repair Station, Spectrum 8800-Series systems, and Z1800-Series systems
are supplied by the Assembly Test Division in Walnut Creek, California.
That division also produces other circuit board test and inspection
equipment for the commercial board-test market. Teradyne sales in the
first quarter of 1998 were approximately $432 million. Its site on the
World Wide Web is at www.teradyne.com.
SOURCE Teradyne, Inc.
/CONTACT: Charla Gabert of Teradyne, 925-746-5521,
charla.gabert@teradyne.com or Sue Hudson of Presidio Communications,
805-522-3127, HudsonSue@aol.com/
/Company News On-Call: prnewswire.com or fax, 800-758-5804,
ext. 847750/
/Web site: teradyne.com
(TER)
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