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Test room for electromagnetic compatibility
Vibration testing
SMT assembly line
For the most part, the shop was concerned with high-mix, small batch work, although a couple of long-running jobs were included to maintain continuity of operation. There was a full surface-mount line with two new pick-and-place machines with 25,000 components per hour capacity, a reflow oven, AOI and X-ray inspection, and a wave-solder line for manually inserted components. Alstom continued to use tin-lead solder. After 24-hours static burn-in, each completed assembly was ICT tested using bed-of-nails for long-running designs and flying-probe for prototypes. After testing, all assemblies were coated with a silicone conformal coating, applied manually. Every operation was recorded in a manufacturing control system. Every assembly was comprehensively labelled before being placed in storage or integrated into a rack to form a complete system, which was then subjected to burn-in and full functional test.
In a separate area delegates were shown Alstom’s global qualification and environmental testing laboratories, where all new designs were tested to a higher level than in production, and sample production assemblies were subjected to periodic re-qualification. The environmental testing included temperature cycling, shock and vibration, and electromagnetic compatibility. Railway devices operate in temperatures of -25°C to +70°C, and as low as -40°C in Russia! Alstom’s climatic laboratory was equipped with 10 chambers, each with a 1 metre cube capacity, and the facility to operate at -50°C to +130°C, with damp heat and salt spray as options.
It was well into the evening when delegates thanked their guides, peeled off their protective clothing and clambered wearily onto the buses that brought them back downtown to the internationally-famous Brasserie Georges for a magnificent conference dinner—a convivial opportunity for relaxing and networking.
Conference dinner
A few of the old and boring (the writer for example) retired to bed soon after dinner; others continued to make the most of the networking opportunity in the hotel bar, although the writer is reliably informed that the party dispersed at a reasonable hour!
I am grateful to Alun Morgan for allowing me to use his photographs.
