Aluminium Electrolytic Capacitor Research and Development Time Optimization Based on a Measurement Automation System

The aim of this paper is to present partly the Measurement Automation System (MAS) of an Electrolytic Capacitor Development Laboratory at EPCOS Hungary. The main role of the MAS is to facilitate the electrolyte and capacitor research and development, through the automation of the related measurement tasks, and to provide a powerful database system background for data retrieval and research decision support. The paper introduces only a few applications of the entire system. More than 27 different electrolyte and capacitor measurements were automated. All the measurements have been implemented in a similar manner. During the process the user initializes the measurement, sets the measurement environmental parameters, and launches the execution. The program runs on its own, sending automatically the results of the measurement to a database system, from where the data can be retrieved in a predefined or a non-predefined way. For the realization of the above requirements the National Instruments measurement, data acquisition and LabVIEW software development tools were chosen as implementation and development platform. After validation of the system, there are many advantages as making the measurements more precise, more reliable, fault tolerant, parallel running, which all contribute to speed up the research and development of new components and devices. The developed measurement system controls and harmonizes the different devices and supervises their work. The developers do not have to encroach. The user can simply check the measurement phase by a glance on the screen. The programs estimate and display the running time of the experiments, allowing for the researchers working on the laboratory to manage the instrumental resources in time and to schedule in advance (for hours, weeks and months) the new measurements. Another big advantage is the database system behind, which stores the result of each measurement in an easy searchable way. Different measurement reports and statistical diagrams can be made automatically and the results can be reused in later research. The effectiveness of the