A jet engine is the very definition of “mission-critical.” A critical failure could cause a serious accident that endangers hundreds of lives. To prevent this from happening, manufacturers perform extensive testing on jet engine components, systems, and manufacturing processes.

Jet engine tests involve subjecting the unit under test to extreme temperatures, jets of water, simulated hail, severe vibration, and other harsh conditions. Sometimes test engineers even slam chicken carcasses against engines to simulate bird strikes. These tests can be very costly and take years to develop. Engineers must measure many different parameters during these tests, including temperature, flow, pressure, rotation, strain, and vibration.

Jon Semancik, Director of Marketing, AMETEK Programmable Power

Data acquisition systems are at the core of many automatic test systems and industrial control systems. They make various types of physical measurements, such as temperature, pressure, flow, strain, position, and speed, using electronic equipment. The data collected is usually sent to a computer for analysis and display.

 What makes this data collection possible is the analog-to-digital, or A/D, converter. As shown in Figure 1, the analog-to-digital converter takes the analog voltage at its input and outputs a digital word whose value is proportional to the input voltage. The resolution of these A/D converters can be as low as eight bits (256 discrete values) or as high as 24 bits (16,777,216 values).

Jon Semancik, Director of Marketing, AMETEK Programmable Power

AMETEK VTI Instruments recently delivered an Automated Remote Functional Test System to Tata’s Power Strategic Engineering Division (SED) environmental testing lab in Bengaluru. Tata plans to use the system for environmental stress screening (ESS) of electronic modules and sub-systems. The architecture of the new test system is based on AMETEK VTI Instruments “FlexSys” Series automated test equipment (ATE).

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.

Interchangeable Virtual Instruments (IVI) is a standard for instrumentation drivers that is designed to reduce the time and effort needed to integrate measurement devices into new or existing systems. It does this by providing a standard application programming interface (API) that defines common measurement functions. This is, in turn, provided by a standard set of shared components that must be used by all compliant drivers and ancillary software. These components provide services to drivers and driver clients that need to be common to all drivers.

For multi-channel data acquisition systems, getting the correct readings in the correct timed order is crucial. System designers have two options for acquiring data in a deterministic fashion. They can use a real-time operating system (RTOS), that has a known buffer delay/ processing order or acquire data with a time-stamp for every sample and use precise hardware triggers and an accurate clock.

EXLab Express is a powerful, easy to use, plug and play data acquisition software package that allows users of the EX1401 Thermocouple/Voltage Measurement Instrument to acquire data without programming. But, not only is it powerful and easy to use, it's free!