SANMINA-SCI SELECTS NI MODULAR INSTRUMENTS & PXI TO BUILD FDA-APPROVED MEDICAL DEVICE TEST SYSTEM

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SANMINA-SCI SELECTS NI MODULAR INSTRUMENTS & PXI TO BUILD FDA-APPROVED MEDICAL DEVICE TEST SYSTEM
01 November 2005 - National Instruments Corporation (UK)

Sanmina-SCI, one of the world's leading contract manufacturers, selected PXI modular instruments and test management software from National Instruments to develop an FDA-approved production tester for testing and calibrating medical devices that measure blood glucose levels.

"The NI test platform delivered the accuracy and flexibility we needed to quickly build a compact test system that exceeds our throughput requirements of testing 83,000 devices per week while maintaining a cycle time of 30 seconds per device, and exceeds our yield requirements with production yields greater than 95 percent," said Mike Oehrlein, Sanmina-SCI senior staff engineer.

The PXI-based system tests a medical device that measures blood glucose levels by performing measurements of the current and impedance characteristics produced from an electrochemical reaction. The system calibrates the DC amplifier circuits of the measurement engine and verifies the operation of other critical support circuits contained within the device under test. In addition, the system switches various input loads into the measurement engine to emulate the complex task of simulating the blood response.

Sanmina-SCI had traditionally used GPIB-based rack and stack instrumentation systems, but due to the high throughput requirements of the system, the company chose a hybrid test system based on PXI modular instruments and GPIB. The test system hardware is based on NI PXI-4070 6½-digit FlexDMMs for voltage and current measurements, NI PXI-6533 high-speed digital I/O modules to communicate to the device under test and write the calibration values to the onboard EEPROM, an NI PXI-6508 general-purpose digital I/O module and an NI PXI-1045 chassis. The PXI platform delivered the throughput and accuracy needed to make all of the measurements on the device under test while still exceeding the company's yield goals.

Sanmina-SCI chose NI TestStand test management software because it provided test sequencing of LabWindows/CVI and C# .NET modules, native parallel testing support and a custom software interface with strict user management for administrators, supervisors, engineers and manufacturing operators. The company used NI LabWindows/CVI for test module development because of the built-in test and measurement functions and user interface controls, as well as the SQL database connectivity capabilities. With LabWindows/CVI, the software developers created highly efficient ANSI C source code that integrated with modular instruments and GPIB. By using commercially available software, such as LabWindows/CVI and NI TestStand, Sanmina-SCI kept software development time and costs to a minimum.

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About: National Instruments Corporation (UK)
National Instruments is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Utilising the PC and its related technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular hardware, such as PXI modules for data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,100 employees and direct operations in 41 countries. In 2003, the company sold products to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries. For the past five years, FORTUNE magazine named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

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