Continuity testing system

Hipotintegrityfor medical devices

Upon completion of the production of surgical instruments, electrical continuity and integrity of the plastic wrap must be examined. For multi-pole instruments, the insulation between the two electrodes must also be checked. To obtain a reproducible test with a short test duration, the customer's manual test station should be replaced by an automated testing system. The high number of versions to be tested must be considered. When contacting, it should also be noted that the DUT work in a very fine manner. Thus, contacting must be automatic without damaging the DUT. Nevertheless, a safe contact with low transition resistance must be achieved. Solution Referring to the accompanying documents, the correct test program is selected by scanning a bar code, so that the real test can also be performed by semi-skilled staff. Electrical continuity is checked with up to two continuity tests per instrument. The insulation between the electrodes and the integrity of the plastic wrap is checked by applying a high voltage. To test the wrap, the entire DUT is inserted into a narrow metal pipe. This metal pipe then acts as a potential for the hipot test. It is possible to cover the high number of versions using various test adapters that are also adjustable in their length. Contacting is partially done by spring contact pins and by pneumatic pins in case of hypersensitive DUT; these pins are also used to fix the DUT. The testing system PC software allows storage of an arbitrary number of test programs, so that the necessary scope of testing and the test data can be specified for each DUT.