Plantronics Cycle Tester

 Plantronics, world renowned for its superb quality audio headsets, has often called upon IDE for assistance in the design and development of their audio products. IDE had also assisted Plantronics Quality Assurance Test Group by designing and manufacturing three new cable flex testing machines used for electromechanical cycle testing of the cables used on Plantronics' audio head set products. The Quality Assurance Test Group was so pleased with the Cable Flex Tester, they asked if IDE would design and manufacture a new linear and new rotary stroke cycle test machine for use in their Santa Cruz, CA Quality Assurance Test Lab.

IDE met with the Plantronics Quality Assurance Test Group for a briefing and demo of their existing linear and rotary testers. The existing testers were very difficult to operate, difficult to set-up and were maintenance intensive causing the lab technicians to spend far too much of their time on repair and maintenance of the machines instead of testing products. The existing linear machine, which used pneumatic cylinders, was particularly disturbing because of the constant racket caused by the pneumatics during testing.

The Plantronics Test Group provided IDE with a one-page spec sheet of functional requirements for each of the new machines. With these requirements, and videos of the existing machines taken by IDE's design team, IDE began the research and analysis activity that would provide a foundation for the conceptual development of the new machines.

IDE's design team utilized its vast experience in user interface design and applied this expertise to the user interface of the new machines. Time consuming meticulous adjustments of mechanical stops, limit switches and clutches, which were characteristics of the existing testers, would not be tolerated for the new IDE designed machines.

IDE's solution was to create a computer controlled robotic tester in which the adjustability of the stroke, speed, torque (force) and number of cycles, could be easily adjusted by the operator using an easy to read color touch screen display. After researching all requirements for motion control and motion components, IDE's design team settled on the combination of high precision servo motors and modular PLC motion control components manufactured by Omron, a leader in factory automation systems.

The new machines were designed for 9 million plus cycles per year. Each machine consists of 10 individual test stations. Each test station shares a robotic motion axis consisting of a servo motor and motor driver, thus each machine has ten test stations and five separately adjustable robotic motion axis, all controlled by a single PLC controller. The linear cycle tester utilizes precise Bosch linear actuators coupled to the servo motors. The rotary cycle tester utilizes a dual axis right angle helical gear head coupled to the servo motor.

IDE initially developed each of the machines, including custom GUI and motion control software using a single axis version of each machine. The single axis machines were then tested by IDE and again by Plantronics to insure that each machine met all of the desired requirements of the QA Test Lab, both in terms of robotic performance and machine/user interface. Once the performance of the single axis machines was validated, the IDE design team completed the design of the five axis, ten station machines.

Immediate Productivity Gains
IDE built and installed two ten station linear and two ten station rotary machines at Plantronics' Santa Cruz, CA QA Test Lab. Once the machines were installed, Plantronics realized amazing productivity gains. Test set-ups that took 15 minutes per station on their old machines were accomplished in 1.5 minutes or less on the new machines. This resulted in a productivity gain of 13.5 minutes per station or 135 minutes (more than 2 hours!) per ten station machine.

Needless to say, Plantronics was so pleased with the new machines they contracted IDE to build six more machines for use in their factories in China and Mexico.