March - April 1999
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Twenty-Five Years of Progress in Test Handling
Historically, in spite of packaging and assembly advances, test has remained the same over the last 25 years. The single exception was the introduction of the first pick-and-place handler in mid-1980.This change, however, was actually a step backwards as handling times, equipment costs, lead times and sizes actually increased by a factor of 3-5x that of conventional gravity fed handlers.
This lack of technical progress has been accepted as a matter of fact. But since leadframe package designs take significant amounts of time for tooling development and package styles remained fairly constant over the period of 5 to 10 years, test could just be complained about.
With the introduction of the BGA and substrate "leadframes," tooling lead times are reduced to weeks. And now the delivery for test-related hardware can easily exceed the life of a package.