We hope you enjoy this month's issue of Test Connections which includes new product updates and news events.
Please send your comments or suggestions regarding this newsletter to marketing@MarvinTest.com.
New Website Offers Ease of Access and Focus on Test Solutions | We’re excited to unveil our new extensive website redesign, now live at MarvinTest.com. The new design makes our site easier to navigate, and even easier to find and read valuable content you need to make informed purchasing decisions. Our new website also reinforces our focus on test solutions, allowing users to more easily navigate and find those solutions that address their specific test needs. We look forward to your feedback.
|  | | | | Farnborough Air Show Recap | The Farnborough Air Show 2014 provided an excellent opportunity to meet with other leaders in military and aerospace organizations, experience the latest aircraft industry updates, and share Marvin Test Solutions’ news and product enhancements with both current and future customers. We’re excited to share some of our favorite parts of this year’s show.
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Migrating Legacy ATE to the PXI Platform | | | | | Many aerospace, military, and manufacturing organizations face the challenge of maintaining products that were originally tested on systems that are now obsolete. So how do you either maintain these obsolete systems or migrate their applications and capabilities to a modern test platform? Find out how the PXI architecture, and associated instrumentation and software, can provide the basis for a modern functional test platform that can effectively support both legacy ATE functionality as well as future functional test needs. |  |
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Flightline Testing of Laser Munitions in the Palm of Your Hand | | | | | With the increasing sophistication of laser-guided munitions, an advanced and reliable test solution is now essential to successful operations. Offering hand-held, O-Level functionality, Marvin Test Solutions’ MT1888 laser source simulators deliver efficient functional test of munitions while loaded aboard aircraft. These state-of-the-art products feature compatibility with all NATO specification-based, laser-guided munitions in a portable, cost-effective unit. |  |
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Interested in learning how you can use MATLAB applications with ATEasy? Read how you can easily interface with MathWorks’ “MATLAB Application Type Library” which can be used to write and retrieve variables from environments other than the MATLAB command window, including ATEasy. Click here
to learn more.
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Farnborough Air Show Recap and Photos
Farnborough Air Show 2014 provided an excellent opportunity to meet with other leaders in military and aerospace organizations, experience the latest aircraft updates, and share Marvin Test Solutions news and product enhancements.
The Marvin Group team stands at the front of its booth, waiting for the Farnborough Air Show Expo Floor to open.
MTS exhibited a wide range of advanced technology test solutions for flightline, I-level, and depot level test applications
at the Farnborough Air Show.
Show attendees were also the first to access our newest resources, including three white papers on some of today’s most pressing military armament challenges, and how they can be addressed with innovative, MIL-STD COTS solutions.
General Frank Gorenc, Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe; Commander, U.S. Air Forces Africa, Commander Allied Air Command, headquartered at Ramstein Air Base, Germany; and Director, Joint Air Power Competence Centre, Kalkar, Germany;
stops by the Marvin Group booth.
From our many discussions in and outside of the booth, we observed the following three key takeaways from Farnborough 2014:
- Militaries across the globe are extending the service life of their aircraft, often adding more advanced smart weapons and avionics.
- Maintenance and sustainment test equipment needs to be replaced or upgraded to provide the required capabilities.
- Aerospace automated test equipment installed years ago is often obsolete and needs to be replaced or modernized to reduce the cost of maintenance and increase test effectiveness.
Click here to
obtain more information about any of the solutions we demonstrated at Farnborough 2014.
Migrating Legacy ATE to the PXI Platform
Beginning in the late 1960s, proprietary ATE systems were deployed by a wide range of customers for the functional test and verification of high-value, mission-critical products, including board and box level avionics, depot level test & repair of armament and avionics electronics, and communications/satellite subsystems.
Even though these test systems are now obsolete, the products (and their derivatives) are still in use and need to be maintained. So how do you either maintain these obsolete systems or migrate their applications and capabilities to a modern test platform?
Today’s functional test systems and digital subsystems can address the legacy test needs of these proprietary systems using PXI components, which offer a reduction in form factor and test system footprint. With the increasing availability of high-performance/high-density FPGAs and highly integrated analog electronics, high-performance digital functional test subsystems based on the PXI architecture are now a reality and can be incorporated as part of an overall functional test system. These digital subsystems offer features and performance that meet or surpass the capabilities of the legacy systems.
Besides offering high performance digital test capabilities, these legacy ATE systems supported hybrid pin capability, offering an 'any resource to any pin' architecture. Additionally, since these systems offered combinational test capabilities (both functional and in-circuit test methods), pin multiplexing was also part of the ATE’s architecture.
To fully replicate all of the capabilities and features associated with a legacy test system, the replacement system needs to offer the following key features and capabilities:
- A high performance digital subsystem with timing per pin, wide drive /sense voltage range, and flexible sequencing.
- A modular and expandable analog matrix supporting an internal 16 wire bus for routing analog instrumentation and triggers from an instrument source to the receiver interface, providing hybrid pin capability and preserving the 'any resource to any pin' architecture - a hallmark and key feature of legacy test systems.
- A modular switching architecture that can preserve an overall signal bandwidth of > 10 MHz with dedicated switching cards offering > 100 MHz of bandwidth.
- The ability to support a multiplexed pin configuration, supporting > 4000 test receiver connections.
The modular switching architecture employs 'extended' 6U PXI switching cards which utilize the J5 cPCI connector for access to the 16 wire bus, as well as offering direct, wireless connection to a 6U Mac Panel Scout receiver (see figure below). The result is an overall switching subsystem that is compact, modular, and reliable since a large number of wired connections are eliminated by employing the Scout receiver. Additionally the receiver can support over 8,000 connections, providing adequate I/O support for multiplexed system configurations.
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An additional key component associated with replacing a legacy ATE system is software tools that can facilitate test program migration and provide support for both simulation-based functional test programs, as well as manually-generated test programs. As part of the overall test solution, Marvin Test Solutions offers a range of tools for migrating test programs from these legacy ATE systems, including an L200/L300 software driver that allows for a straightforward conversion of L200/L300 digital test code and vectors. |
You can learn more about replacing legacy test systems by attending AUTOTEST 2014, where Marvin Test Solutions will be presenting a paper, 'Addressing Legacy ATE System Requirements with PXI' in technical session 'B5: Automatic Test Systems.' To find out more about this technical session, the GENASYS high performance functional test platform and other MTS products that will be on display at AUTOTEST 2014, click here.
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Flightline Testing of Laser Munitions in the Palm of Your Hand
The introduction of air-launched laser guided munitions - which first came into practical fruition in 1968 when the United States Air Force (USAF) completed operational testing of the BOLT-117/GBU-1/B - was a significant milestone in the evolution of precision-guided “smart” weapons. Given the mission-critical nature of air-to-ground support missions, ensuring that munitions are in good working order following their loading onto a platform is an essential step in their tactical deployment.
While maintainers and other armaments personnel periodically test LGMs for their deployment-readiness by conducting I-Level (Back-shop) and D-Level (Depot) checks, the ability to quickly perform functionality checks once the munitions are loaded onto their weapons carriage systems on an aircraft is crucial for ensuring maximum operational effectiveness prior to getting airborne. On the flightline, with munitions loaded aboard aircraft, the ability to rapidly determine responsiveness of the seeker head contained within the guidance unit of the laser-guided munition (O-Level checks) is paramount.
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The MT1888 product family is made up of state-of-the-art, handheld Laser Source/Spot Simulators (LSS) that can be easily used in the field to test seeker functionality on all NATO specification guided munitions. Additionally, MT1888 series products emit an extremely low power beam and can therefore be safely used without protective goggles, eliminating a major impediment associated with most laser guidance testing solutions.
Additional key features of the MT1888 Series include:- Lightweight, handheld design suitable for flightline, backshop, and depot testing
- Eye-safe operation, no protective goggles required
- Simulated returns from "laser painted" targets
- Support of all U.S. laser-guided weapons
- LCD screen and membrane switches select PRF and PIM laser code selection (MT1888A and MT1888A+)
- Remote control option (MT1888A+)
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To learn more about the MT1888 and handheld flightline testing, download the white paper, Flightline Testing of Laser Guided Munitions.
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Upcoming Events:
F16 World Wide Review, September 9th - 13th, 2014Ogden, UTBooth 162 - 164The Worldwide Review offers all F-16 and Proven Aircraft Technical Coordination Groups (TCG) member countries the opportunity to gather in one location to discuss common configuration/maintenance/and logistics issues and meet with qualified vendors, USG Engineers, Equipment Specialists and Program Managers for possible solutions.
Air Force Association (AFA) Air & Space Conference, September 15th - 17th, 2014National Harbor, MD
Booth 239This year, Marvin Test Solutions will be exhibiting for the first time at the AFA show which is being held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, MD. The Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition is truly a one-of-a-kind event where AFA brings together Air Force leadership, industry experts, academia, and current aerospace specialists from around the world to discuss the issues and challenges facing America and the aerospace community today. In addition, we will be hosting two on-site seminars,
'Post SDD Warfighting Enhancements to the F-35' and
'Addressing Obsolescence in Legacy Aircraft Test Equipment.' To register for these seminars or for more information about the show, please go to
www.MarvinTest.com/AFA. We look forward to meeting with you at the show.
AUTOTEST 2014, September 15th - 18th, 2014St. Louis, MOBooth 619This year marks the 50
th anniversary for AUTOTEST (formerly AUTOTESTCON). Co-sponsored by AESS and the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement section, AUTOTEST targets ATE leaders, commercial and government attendees to explore the latest technologies associated with supporting the production and maintenance of mil-aero products and systems for military and aerospace organizations. For more information about the show and our exhibit, please go to
www.MarvinTest.com/AUTOTEST. We hope to see you at the show.
2014 AUSA Annual Meeting, October 13th - 15th, 2014Washington, D.C.
Booth 3225One of the world’s largest land warfare expositions, the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army hosts nearly 30,000 attendees, including senior leaders from the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Congress, and international dignitaries. For more information about the show and our exhibit, please go to
www.MarvinTest.com/AUSA. We hope to see you at the show.
Featured Articles:Marvin Test Solutions’ products and people were recently featured in the following publications:
ATEasy training course
MTS has updated its ATEasy training course that now includes a
multi-function, USB-based, demo board, providing a comprehensive training tool for new ATEasy users. The board offers full instrument functionality via SCPI commands without requiring benchtop or card modular instrumentation to test out your test programs with hardware. The module is completely self-contained and includes an LCD display, measurement and stimulus resources, digital I/O, relays, and switches, delivering a simple yet complete vehicle that replicates many of the stimulus and measurement functions associated with ATE systems. Learn more about the
ATEasy training course now.