Next Generation Contact Design

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The owner of Signal Probe sought to improve his bottom line through a reduction in the cost of goods sold. My business partner and I investigated strategies including reducing the manufacturing cost of his sold parts, as well as limiting the material costs of those parts. Bladed contacts are a relatively new technology in the realm of Integrated Chip Quality Assurance, and has potential to evolve into an extremely cost efficient process. Our propositions are described below.

Proposition 1: Material Alteration

Instead of wirecutting brass geometries and subsequently gold plating them, it would be more cost effective if we could use thin PCB material that was already plated, and merely cut the shape out of that. This approach also enables a signal process known as kelvin sensing because of the thin layer of insulating material inherent to PCB boards.

Proposition 2: Actuator Alteration

Instead of using a bladed geometry, we proposed circumventing the costly blade making process the process by bending metal wires into geometries that mimic the actuation and contact points of the original blades in the socket housing. These wires offer increased material possibilities, which enables specialized functionality; for example, tungsten wires bent into a standard blade geometry were used in our Hi-temp socket.

Proposition 3: Geometry Alteration

Instead of using the same geometry, we proposed a new geometry designed to take advantage of novel materials and conventional machining techniques. We designed the arc shaped blades to be stamped out of a slice cut from an extruded metal tube. This enables flexibility in material selection and limits the cost of manufacture to the initial investment of the stamp to cut the shapes.