Best material to make a bed of nails test jig

Hi All

I am new to this forum. Dont know if this is the best place to post this post.

What is the best material to make a bed of nails test jig and where to get it from?

Thanks in advance

Rob.

Best material is Gold or Gold-plated - look for PoGo pins or Spring Contact Probes.

Do a 'net search on the above names, plenty of places have them.

What's a good material to put the pogo pins into wood plastic?

That is very much going to depend on how you use them - wood is conductive if damp so high impedance circuits will be affected.

Place I worked at they were mounted to pcb material (soldered on), but then we were doing hundreds of one piece of equipment

Mill-Max and Keystone(?) make a variety of pins. Delron seems a good choice for a carrier. E

One way to do this, if you are making a bed of nails tester for a specific circuit board, is to lay out a circuit board to mount the pogo pins in the specific locations needed and add traces for necessary connections. Make two of these board, and drill the holes out on one of the boards with close clearance for the body of the pogo pins.

The pins are soldered to the first board, while the second board is positioned some distance above the first board to support the pogo pins.

We use a spare board of the same type and a thick wall plastic box (eg. junction box).

Drill through both the board and box lid together at the places you want the test pins, and some other positions for mounting holes.
Then screw the board to the box with spacers, eg. 3 - 6mm, and fit the pogo pins through both for rigidity.

A bit of loctite or similar thread lock compound can be used to fix them in place if they are not a tight enough fit.

You can fit either the test circuit or a connector to an external test rig in the side of the box.

i used to work in the test jig industry. we used 1/2" to 3/4" thick G10 fiberglass PC board material for the baseplate. i've also seen 1/2" plexiglass used as well in "low budget" test fixtures. the problem with plexiglas is you need to be really careful when soldering to the pogo pins that they don't melt the plastic and get misaligned.