Test bench for mechanical characterization in reliability testing

The objective of this project isto design an ‘automatic photography bench’ for reliability validations (mechanical stress tests, chemical tests, climatic tests...) of Telematic Control Units (TCUs) atthe company Ficosa A.C., both at softwareand hardwarelevels.For each test sample, after each test, 6 photos must be taken from the 6 sides of a cube,in order to detect cracks and other defectsproduced as a result of thesereliability tests. So far,thisprocess was done manually,by laboratory technicians, which made the company waste money in each validation, so the process needed to be automatized.In order to automatize this project, a device called “PhotoBench” has been designed and tested. It has six USB cameras, a cube-like structureto support them,with reflective panels and innerlighting, and connects to the laboratory technicians’ laptop or Raspberry Pi 3 through a USB HUB. An application with a fast and easy graphical user interface(GUI), programmed in Python and wxPython,lets the user control the PhotoBenchcomfortably.Three design releases of the PhotoBench have been delivered with this project. The first one, designed experimentally by agreeing design parameters with laboratorytechnicians “by trial-and-error”and physically built as a prototype; the second one, designed through optics calculations as a proposedimprovement ofthe first release without changing the already built prototype structure; the third and last one, redesigned completely through optics calculationsas a proposed improvementto optimize the mechanical structureand image qualityfor a given high-megapixel USB camera.This way, the project’s objective has beensuccessfully fulfilled, with all threereleases being directly usable in real reliability validations atFicosa A.C. The application and the GUI let the user comfortably control the PhotoBench and remarkably reduce validation process times, showing to be a profitable investment for the company. Second and third releases werenot fullyphysicallyimplemented, but they are already being manufactured,or planned to do soin the near future.Other business units, who produceother products like mirrors or electric car componentsat Ficosa,have also shown interest in using this project’s result, as they have thesameinefficiencyproblem with reliability validatio