AMETEK Adds LXI Compliance To California Instruments AC/DC Power Sources
November 16, 2011. AMETEK Programmable Power announced it has added LXI compliance to most of its California Instruments AC/DC power sources. Herman van Eijkelenburg, director of product marketing for AMETEK Programmable Power, notes, “This upgrade to our California Instruments products allows our customers to easily connect, configure, and control these power sources wherever they are located—benchtop, network, or in distributed or remote locations. In addition, they can be easily integrated with other LXI instruments to create multifunction automated test equipment (ATE) systems that are highly efficient and flexible. While other power-source manufacturers may offer selected products with LXI capabilities, the California Instruments product line is one of the few to offer an LXI interface option on a wide variety of models.”
The company said future AC and DC power products from its California Instruments, Elgar, and Sorensen brands will also incorporate LXI interfaces. The company also said it will continue to provide other interface options—including USB, RS-232/RS-485, and GPIB IEEE 488.2—on its California Instruments products.
Van Eijkelenburg states that AMETEK added LXI to its California Instruments product line for a variety of reasons. “The LXI standard has seen the fastest ramp-up of any data-communications protocol in the history of the test industry,” he notes, “and is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for ATE systems.”
To date, the LXI Consortium (www.lxistandard.org) has certified nearly 1600 commercially available LXI-compliant instruments from 32 different manufacturers in 197 distinct product families.
“With this many LXI products now on the market it’s easy for an engineer to create a complete LXI instrument-based test system, and most test engineers expect this level of compatibility with other instruments in their systems,” Van Eijkelenburg says.
The California Instruments product line now consists of more than a dozen different series of AC/DC power sources and power analyzers with LXI interfaces, supplying outputs from 135 VLN to 400 VLN, currents up to 1500 A(rms), and total power output up to 540k VA. These bench-top, rack, and cabinet mounted systems can supply single and three-phase AC power at output frequencies from 16 to 5,000 Hz. To support a wide range of applications, they are available with a variety of other features, including arbitrary and harmonic waveform generators, built-in digital power analyzers, scope capture capabilities, and Windows software. In addition to remote control via LXI, an operator can also use front panel control via menu selection. They also feature precision read-back and measurement capabilities and can serve in avionics, telecommunications, and commercial electronics markets. Other applications include testing under real-world power conditions using different waveforms, load susceptibility testing, power line disturbance simulation, power supply testing, and transient simulation.