Chaff or wheat?

Test environments for prototypes

Development test benches are used to test prototypes from top to toe. High levels of resolution are required. If you want to identify limits or faults, you have to go beyond the limits or simply be better. Depending on the application, that thus means being, for example, ‘even faster’ than the fast part to be tested, or ‘even smaller’ or ‘even colder’. A development test bench is one of those special machines with which work is very frequently done at the very edges of physics. They are, incidentally, also used in mass production for precise spot-check tests.

Problem zones

Diversity of functions and components

The main problem for development test benches is the test objects’ diversity of functions and components. What needs to be tested is itself still in a state of development. Development test benches therefore need to be suitable for the widest possible breadth of applications. Everything, after all, is still being developed. The test bench must give the development engineer a free hand.

Example 1

Steering angle sensor test bench

• Checking and calibrating CAN sensors
• Under climatic conditions from -40°C up to +125°C
• Client: Bosch

Example 2

Robot door closing test

• Development and long-term test bench
• Testing commercial vehicles
• Teaching-in different types of door: side-hinged, hatch and sliding
• Sensory monitoring of door position, acceleration and forces applied to the doors
• Client: Daimler