The power supply may be one of the least-considered components of an electronic system. After all, how hard can it be to find the right power source for your system? You figure out how much current you need at the voltage your system will operate at, find a model that can supply that voltage and current in a catalog or on a website, then make the purchase.

By James Schada, Product Marketing Manager, AMETEK/VTI Instruments

Choosing the right power supply for your test system or application is no small task. Defining the power requirements for your application comes first, but this is only the beginning. Once you know the voltages and currents, you need to figure out how to power and control your source. There are several decisions that will need to be made.

While today’s power supplies provide many advanced features, finding them and maximizing their capabilities can be challenging. That’s why when AMETEK Programmable Power designed the Sorensen™ SGX Series programmable DC power supplies, we paid a lot of attention to the user interface. The result? The SGX Series has an intuitive, easy-to-use front panel touchscreen display that allows you to quickly access output programming parameters, measurements, sequencing, and configuration and system settings.

One feature that makes the California Instruments™ Asterion® AC Series power sources an ideal choice for sophisticated test applications is their ability to manage test waveforms. In addition to providing the three standard waveforms — sine wave, square wave, and clipped sine wave — the Asterion AC Series has an arbitrary waveform generator that allows you to create up to 200 different custom waveforms and download them into the power source memory.