Automotive Gear Shift Control Test System

The Challenge

The customer needed an end-of-line tester to perform final testing on electronic pushbutton gear shifters for heavy trucks. They needed a versatile system, capable of testing models that varied electrically as well as physically. They desired to tightly track test result statistics to help improve the product yield.

The customer's test department had already designed a mechanical platform for handling the mechanical variations when they approached us to write the software.

Solution

We designed a system of analog and digital I/O and created a LabVIEW program for control. The system features include:

• Control of pneumatic actuators, buttons, proximity switches
• Expandable to handle future shifter designs
• Simple touch-screen interface
• Bar code scanning and printing
• Login password security with barcode badge scanning
• Access database for logging results
• Rack-mounted PC
• Rack-mounted custom electronics for interfacing and signal conditioning

Technical Details

This system was created using National Instruments DAQ boards for digital and analog I/O. LabVIEW™ was used as the programming environment.