PXI ensures power supplies are shipped in working order
2 mins read
Power supply devices, whether applied to general use or industrial computers, play an extremely important role in ensuring operational stability of entire systems. During manufacture of power supply units, quality validation is required before shipping, such that manufacturers must conduct strict testing, targeting a variety of technical parameters, such as turn on delay, overshoot, and rise time, to ensure product compliance with necessary standards.
Conventionally, checks are conducted with a relatively sophisticated power testing platform. The disadvantage of this type of platform is physical size, requiring a relatively large space for installation. Also, in most cases, only a single unit can be tested at a time, posing an impediment to efficiency and presenting a potential production bottleneck, only resolved by further investment and increased cost of testing.
By taking advantage of the modularity of the PXI interface, power supply test systems can quickly adapt to changing measurement requirements with improvements in performance and testing speeds.
The PXI digitiser solution: ADLINK's PXI Express Digitiser, the PXIe-9848, provides up to 8 channels, 14-bit resolution, a 100 MS/s sampling rate, and PCI Express x4 bus, and supports 100MHz high-bandwidth transmission. It also features high dynamic range performance, and industry-leading speed, precision, and density, making it one of the best performing 8-CH digitisers.
Three different voltages are utilised to test each power supply device. The voltages from the power supply device are 12V, 5V and 3.3V, so it is necessary to reduce the voltage through a signal conditioning module before it reaches the PXIe-9848, after which technical parameters, such as turn on delay, overshoot, rise time, and noise, are detected and displayed.
ADLINK's PXIe-9848's performance provides a significant advantage for power supply unit testing applications. The 14-bit high-resolution instrument measures µV level noise (ripple noise), and the 100 MS/s high sampling rate and the 100 MHz high-bandwidth functions measure µs levels representing extremely rapid changes in rise time. With these features, testing of power supply parameters, such as overshoot and turn on delay time, is easily performed.
When used with the PXI Express bus interface, the PXIe-9848 can provide multi-module simultaneous sampling. The ADLINK nine-slot PXI Express chassis, PXES-2590, supports up to eight PXIe-9848 modules for 64-CH simultaneous sampling, meeting the demands of power supply unit testing. Eight channels of analogue input easily measure multiple units at the same time, significantly conserving costs. The PXIe-9848's multi-channel design can reduce time and cost, and enhance the QC testing efficiency in production, delivering a cost and feature-optimised digitiser solution.
ADLINK's PXES-2590 9-slot PXIe chassis provides all-hybrid peripheral slots for high data throughput up to 8 GB/s and offers a flexible solution by allowing engineers to take advantage of both PXI and PXIe modules. The chassis is efficient and low-maintenance, protecting the system with cooling and alarms that reduce power consumption and increase the life of the chassis.
The PXES-2590 fan has a special placement particularly helpful for components that are sensitive to noise.
Catherine Wu is senior product director at ADLINK Technology.
