RU2817005C1 - Test bench for checking correctness of soldering of cable harnesses wires - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: control and measuring equipment.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to instrumentation for checking correctness of connection, soldering of connecting wires to terminals of connectors, absence of breaks and short-circuits in them. Test bench comprises a personal computer with a control program, a contact polling module, which includes a control microcontroller and input-output ports expanders, made in a single housing with a mounting platform located on one of its sides and implemented in the form of a switching panel. Control microcontroller is connected to the input/output port expander via the SPI bus, and a contact module is connected to one of the inputs of the control microcontroller. Polling of the contact of the wire of the tested connector is realized based on reading the logic level of the signal in accordance with the selected continuity program of the tested connector from the I/O port extenders and is carried out continuously with maintenance of statistics and analytics.

EFFECT: broader functional capabilities, reduced human factor.

5 cl, 7 dwg

Description

Application area

The invention relates to control and measuring equipment, namely, to quality control devices with the function of tracking tested products, and can be used in production to check the correct connection of connecting wires to the terminals of the connectors included in the cable harnesses, as well as to check the absence of breaks and short circuits

State of the art

There are known technical solutions for the same purpose as the claimed one, which are mostly aimed at improving the process of checking cable harnesses in which the connecting wires are already distributed and soldered to connectors at all ends of the harness, i.e. The finished harness is checked.

However, in some industries, harnesses are checked in several stages. The first stage is carried out after soldering the prepared wires into connectors, which must be filled with sealant. At this stage, the harness is an assembly with a connector at one end and a bundle of marked wires at the other; it is not possible to connect this assembly to the mating connectors for testing on the above-mentioned technical solutions. The connector testing process consists of determining whether each wire fits a specific connector terminal, checking that there are no shorts between the connector terminals, and checking that the necessary jumpers are present. After pouring, the final assembly of the harness occurs, the remaining connectors are soldered, and the final stages of checking the finished harness are carried out.

There is a known method for checking the correct wiring of connectors by testing and checking for the absence of short circuits between the contacts, performed using a multimeter.

The disadvantages of the known solution are the inability to monitor terminals that have already been rung and those that have not yet been rung, especially if their number is more than ten. And as they increase, the likelihood of errors due to the human factor increases. Also, in this method there is no automatic tracking of tested products, which leads to increased labor costs for this process.

The closest technical solution in essence is a stand for testing cable harnesses (patent for invention RU2772688, IPC G01R 31/08, published on May 24, 2022), which consists of a personal computer with a program for controlling switching modules, an installation platform on which they are installed, at least two multi-pin connectors, switching modules, terminal devices, start-up protection equipment, power supply. Switching modules are combined into blocks for checking the connection diagram of connector jumpers, and are connected to each other and to a personal computer via a CAN bus. The stand operates automatically under the control of a computer program and is based on a comparison of the reference values of the cores and the actual values obtained during diagnostics, while the stages of checking cable harnesses are independent of each other and depend on the choice of the operator.

The disadvantage of the known device is its limited scope, namely, the possibility of its use solely for checking the correct connections of the wires of finished harnesses that have mating connectors.

The essence of the technical solution

The main technical objective of the invention is to create a stand that allows checking the correct wiring of cable harnesses, which have a connector on one side and unsoldered wires on the other.

The technical result consists in eliminating the above disadvantages, expanding functionality and reducing the influence of the human factor on the occurrence of errors.

The technical result is achieved by the fact that a stand for checking the correct wiring of cable harness wires, which contains a personal computer with a control program, a switching module and a mounting pad with connectors installed on it, intended for connecting the cable harness being tested, and which operates in automatic mode under control of a computer program, while the stages of checking cable harnesses are independent of each other and depend on the choice of the operator, according to the proposed solution, a control microcontroller, a contact module, a contact polling module are additionally introduced, and the switching module is made in the form of a housing with a mounting pad located on one of its surfaces and implemented in the form of a patch panel, and includes a contact polling module connected to the PC via the microcontroller input, in which one of the outputs of the control microcontroller is connected to the input of the I/O port expander module, which consists of port expanders and is implemented in software with a function of polling each wire of the harness being tested, based on reading the signal from the digital outputs of the I/O port expander module, depending on the selected software modification of the connector of the harness being tested, and the output is connected to the inputs of the patch panel, while the contact module is connected to another output of the control microcontroller and made with the ability to read the signal from the output of the wire harness under test, and the function of displaying the test results in a graphical interface, with their subsequent analysis, analytics and statistical processing, is implemented in software.

In a particular case of implementation, the contact module is made in the form of a platform.

In a particular case of implementation, the contact module is made in the form of a probe.

In a particular case of implementation, the number of expander ports is made from one to eight.

In a particular case of execution, the number of ports in the port expander is sixteen.

In a particular case of implementation, the connector of the cable harness being tested is connected to the patch panel through a process harness.

Implementation of the claimed invention

A specific example of the implementation of the claimed invention is illustrated by drawings, which show: Fig. 1 - its block diagram; fig. 2 - its appearance; fig. 3 - the process of leaning the free end of the wire under test against the contact pad; fig. 4 - one of the interface options for its control program; fig. 5 - another option for the interface of its control program; fig. 6 - window for selecting the modification of the connector being tested; fig. 7 - data on tested connectors.

The inventive stand for checking the correct connection of wires in the connectors of cable harnesses (Fig. 2) consists of interacting software and hardware parts. Personal computer (PC) 1 is connected via a USB interface to the control microcontroller 2, which is connected via an SPI interface to I/O port expanders 3. The outputs of the I/O port expanders are connected to the patch panel 5. Control microcontroller 2, I/O port expanders 3 and patch panel 5 form a contact polling module. The connector 6 being tested is connected to the patch panel 5 through an adapter harness, the wires of which, during the testing process, are alternately applied to the contact pad 7, connected to one of the outputs of the control microcontroller.

The hardware of the stand is implemented using microcontroller 2, I/O port expanders 3 based on the MCP23S17 chip with an SPI interface. The software part of the stand is implemented using a developed control program for microcontroller 2 with the function of polling contacts of I/O port expanders 3 and transferring data to a PC, and a developed PC application with a graphical user interface “Module - 1”, which processes data from contact polling module 4 The application can run on any computer with the Windows 10 operating system installed.

The claimed stand works as follows.

The connector to be tested 6, to which the marked wires are soldered, is connected to the mating connector of the process harness, which is connected to the patch panel 5. Next, in the “Module - 1” program, in the window for selecting a modification of the connector (Fig. 6), the operator selects the necessary dialing program corresponding connector being tested and presses the start button. The connector check window opens (Fig. 5) with a graphic diagram of the connector. Next, the operator, one by one, in any sequence, by touch, leans the free end of each wire against the contact pad 7.

In the process of touching the contact pad with the wire, the logical unit signal of the contact pad is sent through the leaned wire to the output of the I/O port expander 3. The control microcontroller polls the I/O port expanders and transmits the received data to the PC. The received data is processed and automatically displayed in the graphical user interface window, in the form of a wire tag number, backlighting of the contact presence (absence) indicator and backlighting of the memory cell.

For example, round indicators for the presence (absence) of contact (Fig. 5) light up green only when the wire comes into contact with contact pad 7 or the probe, and turn back to red when there is no contact. The green circle is the memory cell. It also lights up green when the wire contacts pad 7 or the probe, and remains lit without switching to red.

In fig. 5 contacts that have already been called are displayed with a green circle, which indicates that the operator has called the wires on terminals 2 and 4, with tag numbers “571” and “122”, respectively. And terminal 1 is highlighted in green, which indicates that the operator is holding the wire of terminal 1 with the tag “114” on the contact pad, the program displays the tag number and the contact is highlighted in green.

Memory cells allow you to monitor already checked and, accordingly, not yet checked connector terminals. For memory cells, the time of their operation has been adjusted, i.e. The memory cell can operate simultaneously with touching the wire, or with a certain delay, for which you will have to hold the wire on the contact pad for the configured time.

The operator's task comes down to comparing the number of the physical tag of the wire leaning against the contact pad with the number displayed in the connector check window. In case of short circuits or missing jumpers in the connector, an error message will automatically be displayed in the program's graphical interface.

Data on the test results (Fig. 7) from the stand are saved in text format and contain the following information:

- full name of the performer;

- proven product;

- product number;

- start and end time of the check;

- date of inspection.

Thus, in addition to expanding the functionality, thanks to the use of the proposed stand for checking the correct connection of wires into the connectors of cable harnesses, on the one hand, not soldered to the connector, additional functionality appears for tracking, statistics and analytics of tested products, which ultimately contributes to the reduction labor costs when planning bench loading and increasing productivity in the process of product testing.

It is also worth noting that the data transfer rate via the CAN bus does not exceed 1 Mbit/s (in the prototype), while the use of the SPI interface in the claimed invention allows the speed to be increased to 10 Mbit/s, with the use of peripheral devices, which significantly affects speed of contact surveys with their significant increase.

Claims (5)

1. A stand for checking the correct wiring of cable harnesses, containing a personal computer, a switching module and a mounting platform with connectors installed on it, intended for connecting the cable harness under test, which operates in automatic mode, characterized in that a control microcontroller is additionally introduced into it , a contact polling module connected to a PC through the input of a control microcontroller, a contact module, wherein the switching module is made in the form of a housing with a mounting pad located on one of its surfaces and implemented in the form of a patch panel, and one of the outputs of the control microcontroller is in the polling module contacts is connected to the input of the I/O port expander module, which consists of port expanders with the ability to interrogate each wire of the harness being tested, based on reading the signal from the digital outputs of the I/O port expander module, depending on the selected software modification of the connector of the harness being tested, and the output connected to the inputs of the patch panel, while the contact module is connected to another output of the control microcontroller and is configured to read the signal from the output of the harness wire under test, while the control microcontroller is configured to interrogate the contacts of the I/O port expanders and transmit data to a PC with subsequent analysis , analytics and statistical processing and display of test results in a graphical interface. 2. A stand for testing cable harness wires according to claim 1, characterized in that the contact module is made in the form of a platform. 3. A stand for testing cable harness wires according to claim 1, characterized in that the contact module is made in the form of a probe. 4. A stand for checking cable harness wires according to claim 1, characterized in that the number of expander ports is made from one to eight. 5. A stand for checking cable harness wires according to claim 1, characterized in that the number of ports in the port expander is sixteen.