I purchased my pogo pins from http://www.solarbotics.com/ In the pins section: http://www.solarbotics.com/products/index.php?scdfa-250100084-viewCategory-categoryzq314=true&frm=sbsb They have good pictures there. If you needed more than hobbyist quantities I expect they could be found elsewhere for less. When I ordered them they didn't have the holders. Now that they do you could use a holder and one or two PCBs instead of the three PCB stack I suggested earlier. A pogo pin has at least three parts. A hollow tube, a spring, and a rod. The bottom of the tube is crimped, the srping goes in, then the bottom of the rod goes in, where the tube is crimped a little bit. The rod can slide freely in and out, but is caught by the crimp so it can't completely leave the tube. The spring pushes the rod constantly, so it look and feels like a little pogo stick The end of the rod is shaped for different purposes. Some are chiseled, some are cup shaped, some flat, etc. I usually put a large flat SMD pad with a small (via size) hole in the center and use the pointy one. I'm sure you can purchase huge bed of nail testers that have standard positions and you simply load the pins you need. For anything more than a few hundred uses, though, most places custom make a test fixture which is designed around the PCB instead of the PCB being designed with the test fixture in mind. Usually the test fixtures sit on top of a generic bed of nails tester, though, so they don't need to build a whole new tester each time, just the board holder, pogo pin holder, and clamp setup. I know some places even have automated test equipment, that move one or more test points around. Very slow, but highly flexible. Generally used for low quantity prototyping where high reliability is more important than cost. -Adam On 10/29/06, Vasile Surducan wrote: > > Drop > > the pogo pins in the holes and they make contact with the pads on the > > bottom PCB. > Adam, I would love to see a picture. How looks the pogo pins ? > (ok I'll search on google) > > The bed of nails has a standardized positions for nails ? That means > the PCB designer should position the test points on the PCB according > on his bed of nails doccumentation, or the bed of nails could be > reconfigurable for a particular grid dimension used on PCB ? > > thx, > Vasile > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist