Challenge:
A customer needed a guided assembly tool and a final test solution for a medical catheter. Each catheter had numerous conductive rings at its distal end. And each ring connected to individual points on a connector at the catheter base, the proximal end. Because of the wide tolerance of the rings position, pogo pins could not be used in the test fixture. Also, production volume was such that an automated fixture was desired to meet the required throughput.
Solution:
Because it was not practical to accurately position the catheter in a way to touch each ring with a pogo pin, a fixture was made utilizing a conductive elastomer. The catheter end was loaded into a pneumatic fixture which closed down on the conductive elastomer. A custom script written for the Touch1 determined which wire connected to each ring of the catheter. This allowed the operator to probe the other end of the wire to correctly terminate it into the connector.
Results:
The assembly time was reduced for each catheter from approximately 45 minutes to 1.5 minutes. This resulted in a substantial throughput improvement for the customer.
