San Francisco Muni Metro chooses electronic repair systems from ABI

As part of an ongoing modernisation of the company’s electronics support shop, the SFMTA has awarded ABI Electronics a contract for the supply of multiple equipment for repair, maintenance and schematic generation.

The SFMTA or San Francisco Municipal Railway is the public transit system for the city and county of San Francisco. Its network include 7 light rail lines that operate above ground and in the city's subway tube (called Muni Metro), 3 cable car lines, and 2 heritage streetcar lines.

Following the acquisition of 260 new Siemens’ S200 SF Light Rail Vehicles, the SFMTA was faced with the challenge to restructure the electronic support shop in order to continue to repair and maintain the modern electronic rail systems installed within the new trains. The test solutions and simulators developed over the years to support the existing Breda LVR2/3 series would no longer be suitable. Furthermore, the lack of essential maintenance documentation for the new trains made it impossible for the team of experts at the SFMTA to develop custom test solutions. This situation prompted the management to procure alternative solutions.

ABI Electronics specialises in the design and manufacturing of electronic test, fault-finding and maintenance equipment in the United Kingdom. The company was approached by the SFMTA in September, 2016 and requested to configure a suitable solution for the electronic repair centre in San Francisco.

ABI’s recommended solution included the company's own products currently in use by over 35 leading rail organisations around the world.

The BoardMaster Rack Solution, a universal PCB and component level tester. Delivering over 25 different test types through an state-of-the art, easy to use hardware and software platform, the BoardMaster is the industry’s most versatile and cost effective solution used for rail electronics repair and maintenance.

RevEng, a powerful and unique schematic learner system capable of generating circuit diagrams from an existing PCB. The equipment’s 2048 channels allow technicians to quickly and precisely learn how components are interconnected, generate a netlist through a software guided process and export it to a professional CAD software.

The package also included the JTAGMaster, a boundary scan tester and in-system programmer delivering the means to learn pin status and test FPGA devices found on most modern PCB designs.

Following a public tender process completed in March 2017, ABI emerged as the winner and received a contract worth US$200,000 for the supply of multiple packages featuring the solutions above.

ABI’s master distributor in the USA, Saelig Company Inc., handled the procurement process and will deliver advanced training to a group of 18, level 3 repair engineers working at SFMTA. The training is planned to take place upon the delivery of the goods scheduled for June, 2017.

To learn more about ABI’s solutions for electronic test and maintenance watch the video below, visit www.abielectronics.co.uk or send an email to [email protected]

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