MTA

MTA Spa is a leading company in the design and production of electronic and electro-mechanic components for the Automotive, the Off-highway and Race industry. It needed software for testing fuses during the development and production process.

Making monitoring for fuses tests easier with a single application

The challenge

MTA needed software for testing fuses during the development and production process. In order to guarantee the best performances, in facts, every product must have definite electrical and physical properties and comply with the severe regulations of the automotive industry. These parameters are usually checked with cyclic, several weeks long, careful tests and single melting tests. The MTA laboratory uses DC power supplies capable to deliver up to 2500 A. Multiple components have to be tested in the same time with different DC patterns to improve quality of the executed tests. A complete log is required to analyze data gathered during the unmonitored tests. Moreover, test stations have to be interchangeable and configured in few clicks, to control the connected DC power supply.

The solution was to equip their laboratory with a system for testing fuses and verifying their properties.

A software system like that is supposed to:

• Control DC power supplies that can produce wide ranges of DC;
• Enable the operator to monitor voltage signals and temperatures;
• Create DC patterns. A wave editor with simple interface allows creating DC patterns as a composition of basic signals: square wave, tone, exponential, etc.
• Execute tests on different components at the same time.
• Manage programmable safety conditions. The software must protect the system and switch it on when monitored signals go out of safety ranges.

The solution

T4SM has worked out a single application to fulfill all requirements listed before: the proposed solution is made by two software layers.

• The higher one manages different kinds of tests and handles user interfaces customizable according to the technicians’ needs;
• The lower one interfaces with different suppliers of the laboratory through the NI board 6229.

The interaction between them and the definition of the layers interface has been very simplified by Object Oriented Programming of LabVIEW. Different Design patterns have been implemented to deliver a clean, easy to maintain LabVIEW code.

The recorded data of the cyclic tests and melting tests are saved in the MS-SQL database.

Benefits and results

MTA has installed four stations for testing and monitoring in its laboratory. Thanks to the operators’ feedbacks T4SM has succeeded in improving the application UI and in making absolutely more safe and fast every testing operation. With the application of T4SM’s solution, MTA has finally gained a great time saving and improvement in the tests precision.