An automated aging system for plasma display panels

The aging processes of the display panel are time-consuming, tedious, and laborious, but an accurate aging operation is a necessary procedure to ensure the quality of the monitors despatched from the factory. A novel PC-based automatic aging system (AAS) is proposed in this paper to identify and verify the electrical characteristics and the performance improvement of the AC plasma display panels (PDPs) automatically. An aging control circuit, according to the test commands, drives the programmable aging power generator (APG) which consists of a DC-DC converter with programmable output voltage and an energy-recovery panel driver to provide the specified power conditions for igniting and identifying the PDP under aging. The dynamic aging responses, monitored by a multifunction sensor board, are measured and transmitted to PC for automatic instrumentation and measurement. The AAS with a friendly graphical user interface (GUI) affords the user flexibility of operation and clear presentation of aging results. The GUI controls all aging procedures inside the AAS and interacts with users. Experimental tests on the PDP panels of 34 and 8 inch give satisfactory results and demonstrate that the computer-aided aging system is effective in increasing the quality, efficiency, and repeatability of the performance improvement verification operation. Furthermore, the proposed automated system is especially suitable for the production line to age the PDPs on-line.