Electronics > Manufacturing & Assembly

making testjig pusherplates for bed of nails testers

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Dennis Von Guzzi:
Good Afternoon,
I've been trying make the inverse 3D image of a pcb with components to use as the pusherplate on a bed of nails testjig. I have a method but its not good, and is very time consuming.
Does anyone have a tried and true way of doing this?
What I've done so far is....
In altium, open the 3D mech drawings and convert to VRML.
Open the VRML in meshlab and export as STL.
Then with a mesh editor, in my case tinkercad import the STL file, invert it and push it into a solid block.
This is now my inverse image, but because there is so much detail in the 3D mech file the stl file is full of voids and surfaces that don't form a proper inverted 3D image of the pcb, and Cura gives many errors messages about the object your've created.

So, I can simplify the STL of the original 3D pcb to remove detail, but this is the part that takes hours. I do this by blocking out the components into rectangles and boxes.

So, back to my question.   
Is there a better way?

Thanks
D

jmelson:

--- Quote from: Dennis Von Guzzi on November 24, 2021, 02:06:01 am ---Good Afternoon,
I've been trying make the inverse 3D image of a pcb with components to use as the pusherplate on a bed of nails testjig.
So, back to my question.   
Is there a better way?

--- End quote ---
Don't try to make an exact relief of the whole PCB, just do the edge and a few points at the interior that are free of components.
I have made several bed of nails fixtures, and generally only apply pressure to the edges.  This seems to work fine.
Jon

Dennis Von Guzzi:
Yes, that's the conclusion I've come to also.
The 3D mechanical model is so accurate and the detail so good that it actually hinders you.
One day Altium may have this feature built in.
Thanks
Dennis

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