Patent ID: 8224623
Filing Date: 2012-07-17
Classification: H01R

Abstract:
1. A method of determining a quality acceptance criterion for a force signature produced on an element, comprising: providing a first set of elements having no quality defect and a second set of elements having a deliberate quality defect; providing a press apparatus to generate a force to be applied to each element in each of the two sets to produce a force signature for each element in each of the two sets; providing a Mahalanobis Distance (MD) algorithm disposed in a memory of a data processing device; measuring the force signature having force data for each element in said first and said second set produced by the press apparatus, each force signature being measured at a plurality of time points over a time range so as to produce a respective first and a second family of force signatures for the first and the second set of elements; statistically analyzing the respective first and the second family of force signatures to establish predetermined statistics on said force data on the measured force signatures in the respective first and the second families at each time point in the plurality of time points over the time range; selecting an initial subset of time points from the plurality of time points based on the step of statistically analyzing the respective first and the second family of force signatures; producing a single Mahalanobis Distance (MD) value for each element in the first and the second set, respectively, with the MD algorithm by inputting said force data associated with each element in the first and the second set at said initial subset of time points, the MD values produced for elements in the first set forming a first MD value group and the MD values produced for elements in the second set forming a second MD value group; evaluating a first spread of the data of the first MD value group against a second spread of the data of the second MD value group, the first and the second MD value group forming an initial quality metric MD family group with a corresponding initial optimization metric value; defining an initial quality threshold to be the quality acceptance criterion using the initial quality metric MD family group at said corresponding initial subset of time points, wherein an output of determining the quality acceptance criterion is using said defined initial quality threshold to separate said element having said force signature into one of,