Intermittent Fault Emulators delivered to NCMS
Published 08 Sep 2014
Following an intensive 6-month development programme, Copernicus Technology Ltd (CTL) is pleased to announce we have successfully delivered Intermittent Fault Emulators (IFE) to the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) in the USA.
CTL visited NCMS and United States Department of Defense (US DoD) staff at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey in late August (pictured) to deliver the IFE operator training course.
NCMS has procured IFEs from CTL for the US Navy and the US Air Force, and the US DoD will be using the IFEs to validate No Fault Found test equipment with intermittent fault detection capability. The US DoD’s focus on intermittent faults is being driven by a joint services working group, the JITWIPT, whose charter begins with the following statement:
"The impact across the Department of Defense resulting from the removal and replacement of Line Replaceable Units/Weapon Replaceable Assemblies which subsequently test No Fault Found during depot testing and are turned right around back to the field, is $2 billion annually." [JITWIPT Charter, Feb 2012]
As part of their work to tackle No Fault Found the US DoD is compiling a Military performance standard (MIL-PRF-32516) which testers used for intermittent fault detection purposes will need to meet. In due course the IFEs will be used to evaluate testers against that performance document.
CTL’s original design for a 128 channel intermittent fault simulation system provided the starting point for development of the NCMS-specification IFE. The IFE was then successfully verified, independently, by the No Fault Found research project team from the Cranfield University-based EPSRC Through-life Engineering Services research centre. The resulting IFE features 256 test channels on which it can generate combinations of random or user-defined ohmic variations as simulated individual or burst ‘faults’ on any test channel, and with ‘fault’ durations from nanoseconds to milli-seconds.
Overall the customer was delighted with the performance and user-friendliness of the IFE and the team at NCMS are now planning which test equipment types will be evaluated using the IFEs. This NCMS/USDOD-specification of IFE is available to purchase from CTL, and customer-specification IFEs can also be designed and built to order.
Follow this link to download a technical summary of the IFE
Contact us today for further details, call us on 01343 842406 or email:
About NCMS
Copernicus Technology is a member of NCMS, which is a non-profit, member-based consortium. NCMS’ main objective is to drive the global competitiveness of North American Manufacturers through collaboration, innovation and advanced technologies.