Reach designs and manufactures specialty test equipment and fixtures for electronic equipment manufacturers.

All electronic equipment needs to be functionally tested after assembly. The goal is to provide the most test coverage in the shortest time for the least cost. When a test engineer develops the test plan for a product, he or she selects the best off-the-shelf general purpose test equipment available. There are often cases when this is less than ideal. In these cases, Reach can design and produce a custom piece of test equipment that not only reduces test time, but saves money as well.

Custom test fixtures are generally required for ESS (Environmental Stress Screening) testing where ovens are used to cycle temperature of the units under test. For example, if the equipment has a mainboard that is not a plug-in unit, a test chassis is needed so that the main board can be easily inserted and removed during board test. ESS fixtures may also require high current voltage margin capabilities. Reach provides custom fixtures for these applications.

The following are examples of test equipment projects:

• MSS Cable swap tester. Special purpose switch to simulate 10 different cable types under computer control for router serial port testing
• Netswitch II RJ-45 switch. Provides computer controlled switching of twisted pair interface using RJ-45 connectors. Used to switch ISDN, Ethernet, T1/E1 connections to device under test via computer control.
• Universal CPLD / FPGA ISP programmer.
• Functional test fixture using on-board processor, JTAG, and ICT probes to eliminate separate ICT test operation.
• xDSL line simulator. Low cost high density twisted pair simulator for xDSL functional test.
• Mobile ESS fixture. Custom chassis and rolling rack for ESS testing of optical / Ethernet switch.
• Designed to roll into room-sized test oven; unique distributed power supply for accurate voltage margining; complete system including metalwork, cabling, connectors, and integration.