It begins

[Ice Czar]

at the prodding of BillA Im starting a workblog of sorts
this was for [H]ardOCP's [H]igh Altitude Lab


Objective: Thermodynamic and Power Testing
the construction of an automated test platform and environmental test chamber

Phase One Research components (complete more or less, thanx BillA and the rest of these forums)

Phase Two Acquistion (partially complete)

To Date here is an acquired equipment list
(updated as of the last editing timestamp below)


Interface
National Instruments PCI-GPIB\LP NI-488.2 and cable
National Instruments PCI-DIO-96 w\ 2m 100 pin cable
(class status: need PIO breakout box)


Software
LABview 7.0
MATLAB & Simulink
DegreeC AccuTRAC
Keithley Runtime Environment
Autotest APG for Windows (3.0)
(class status: need to upgrade APG and like to add CFD modeling, need to get a grip on LABview and MATLAB so I can integrate all this together)


Measurment Hardware
Keithley 2700 Digital Multimeter & Data Aquisition System
Keithley 7701 32 channel Differential Multiplexer Module
Keithley 7708 40 channel Diff Mux Module w/ Automatic Cold Junction Compensation
Ametek 0-1000A Digital Recording Ammeter (AC)
Fluke 2176A 10 Channel Digital Thermometer w/ RTD
Digitec HT 5810 Thermometer
2 x Digidoc5 (hardware fan monitoring) and rheobus fan controls
(Class Status: more or less complete, need more Rheobus controls, adding another dedicated HP 34401A DMM for the UTS-325)


Sensors
10 J Type Thermocouples with shielded extention grade wire
10 T Type surface mount Thermocouples
2x 4 wire RTDs
Contact Temperature Probe (front panel of DMM) mystery tool being shipped
50x Thermistors (various makes and models)
10 calibrated J type panel connectors and plugs w\ strain relief in 2 handmade sheilded quickswap modular panels
27 x IHA-25 F.W. Bell Current Sensors
EESIFLO Sonic Low Flow, Mass flowmeter (pre-production prototype, temperature immune) being fabricated
Endress+ Hauser M-Point Massflow Meter
Setra 230 Wet/Wet Differential Pressure Transducer w/3-Valve Manifold
Keithley HA5050 50 Amp Shunt Sensor
American Aerospace Controls DC Current Sensor 913B-10-B
Micro Control Technology Calibration Module
(Class Status: need more RTDs and panel connectors, PCI\PCIe & AGP riser cards for the power consumption suite, need triple point cells (Hg \ H2O \ Ga) for in-lab calibration, need to have sensors professionally calibrated and their error curves plotted)


Electronic Enclosure Airflow and Temperature Test Suite
DegreeC Cambridge AccuSense ATM-24
24 x CAFS-220 sensors
AccuTRAC Software suite
(Class Status: Part one Complete on delivery, maybe get a dedicated RS232 card, part two build airflow resistance flowbench\wind tunnel to measure fans, as well as radiator and case resistance)


Power Supply Testing Hardware
Panasonic VP 5720A Oscilliscope (GPIB w\ digital storage)
Ithaco Lock On Amplifier
Autotest UTS-325 PSU ATE
w\ 5 x 150W programmable DC load modules (1A /uSec slew rate for transient step mode) a total of 900 Watts test capacity
2.1 KVA Programmable Variac, Differential wideband peak detector, 12 position, 4 wire switching matrix, line source measurement, load current measurement, universal timer counter and software suite.

(Class Status:The Autotest UTS-325 is a completely integrated automatic test system,
The test suite includes: AC Line Current, AC Inrush, DC Line Current, DC Inrush, DC Line Step, Efficiency, Vout Setpoint, Voltage, Frequency, Sequencing, Rise/Fall Time, Time Interval, Over/Under Shoot, Regulation Line, Regulation Line Frequency, Regulation Load, Cross Regulation, Regulation 2 Corner, Regulation 4 Corner, Regulation Dynamic, Dynamic Transient Response, Noise & Ripple, OverLoad Constant Current, OverLoad Constant Voltage, OverLoad Short Circuit, Short Circuit Recovery and Over Voltage Protection tests. Need to upgrade the EPROM and software, need dedicated DMM)


Sound Testing Hardware
Bruel & Kjaer 2203 Sound Level Meter with 1613 Octave Filter Set
Bruel & Kjaer 4131 condenser microphone
Manfrotto Tripod Adapter
(Class Staus: need to build sound chamber)


Environmental Test Chamber Control & Measurement
PCon Multiloop PID control software
National Instruments PCI-DIO-96 w\ 2m 100 pin cable (listed above)
Omega CN77342-C2 Autotune PID Temperature Controller RS232
Rotronic HC321A Humidity & Temperature dewpoint Computer w\ Hygrometer
Kikusui PIA3200 GPIB Power Supply Control
Aquafine SP-1 UV Water Treatment Unit
100' 3\8" Anaconda Sealtite Isolated Ground Conduit
Aluminum Insulated Refrigerator door
3 Air conditioners
various blowers, pumps, insulation, sheet metal, metal stock, hardware, lumber and plumbing
(Class Status: need solid state relays, power supplies, UV replacement bulb,
incremental improvements will be made as time allows and need dictates, increasing cooling capacity ect.
Phase2 of the chamber calls for tight humdity and temperature control based on Saturation Thermodynamics)


Infrastructure
2 computers for DAQ and Control w\ 2U rackmount Cases
Dual Opteron Workstation for MATLAB\CFD Modeling (244's\K8W\FX3000\4GB)
3 pair Heavy Duty Rackrails (had others)
Bud Industries Rackmount 30U Enclosure
5 surge proctetors
Olympus E20N
Lowel Tota halogen lights
Manfrotto 3251 heavy duty tripod and 3047 head
Welch Duo-Seal High Vacuum Pump Model 1400
CONDOR Linear DC Power Supply 5V@12A ±15V@3A 12V-15VDC
largely inaccurate mail scale (up to 75lbs)
ton of GPIB and RS232 cables
(Class Status: need centralized Online UPS approx 5KVA perferably Liebert, third computer for UTS-325,
fabricate vacumm chamber for thermal isolation, fabricate Calorimetry Tank)


Immediate Cash Expenditure.........................$8457
plus some supplies\equipment\software previously acquired
Approx List .......................................... $50,000 > $60,000


plus odds and ends

Phase Three Integration & Construction

step one
first single thermocouple logged +8 hour run on the DAQ w\7708 and attached to the Monitoring boxen
(Celeron 700MHZ some Shuttle antique in a 2U rackmount case)
Keithley runtime on W2K

[BillA]

aiiii
I'm a dinosaur, great stuff IC

[Brians256]

Excellent! Look forward to seeing this produce results and evolve.

[bigben2k]

Someone's got money...

Looking forward to see it run!

[Ice Czar]

Thank you

And Bill, if your a dinosuar your a damn smart one
Without your guidance and advise Id still be in phase one and have wasted three times the money on antiques as I did before you started to clue me in

Originally Posted by bigben2k

Someone's got money...

someone worked 3 x 16 hours back to back shifts at Conoco per week for 6 months to pay for it too
(passing up far more lucrative but irregular freelance)
only when you factor in the buying power on ebay did it make any sense whatsoever

and bigben2K thank you as well, your posts here where vary helpful

[9mmCensor]

Are you doing testing for HardOCP?

Rattle FrgMstr's coiffers.

[Brians256]

Originally Posted by Ice Czar

Thank you

And Bill, if your a dinosuar your a damn smart one
Without your guidance and advise Id still be in phase one and have wasted three times the money on antiques as I did before you started to clue me in

Bill can correct me if I'm wrong. However, I believe the reason he's so "smart" is because of practice. He's made lots of mistakes already. Smart comes from learning from when you were stupid. Even better is when you can learn from someone else that already paid for the lessons.

[BillA]

yup, experience is the accumulation of errors
but a point of semantics (wonderful stuff, almost as good as philosophy)

'smart', if we use the IQ version, relates directly to the rate at which info can be 'absorbed' from written text (well documented, don't argue)
- so I am very smart; YET yesterday, having the same source data as TM, I was unable to follow simple instructions
- so I do not break my arm patting myself on the back, plenty dumb with even simple instructions

smart in my book is learning from someone else's errors; here again I'm not too sharp,
I have to make the (obvious) errors myself to 'internalize' them [also just what children do to the dismay of parents, "experience does not transfer"]

re the subject at hand - testing, I have bought SO MUCH CRAP over the last 6 years it is incredible; inadequate, obsolete, unsuited, broken, whatever
- no free lessons, particularly for the self-tutored; now I know professionals in the field I can querry, so my errors are fewer and smaller in scope

so yes Brian, for us 'smart' kind of equates to experience + comprehension
for 'stupid' examples speak more loudly than words; consider politics and religions
- but note they both are stupid only for the masses, the leaders live quite well Thank You

[TerraMex]

someone worked 3 x 16 hours back to back shifts at Conoco per week for 6 months to pay for it too
(passing up far more lucrative but irregular freelance)

now thats dedication.
looking forward for your cal runs.

side note:

- the keithley DAQ cards have a larger latency than the NI's that can limit fast aquisition. a friend of mine picked that up while trying to make a control system for an inverted pendulum. not really that relevant as the rate required is not very high, but just a heads up. given the choice, go NI.

- the Fluke (damn that's ancient) is not loggable, however, you could "hack into it" and output the signal to the display. Or use a webcam and a visual aquisition .

[Ice Czar]

well the switch speed for the 2700\7708 is 3ms which is fine for the measurements Im looking at logging,
Ive actually got the scans set at 1 sec, and its internal memory buffer will do 55,000 readings
of course with the computer I can poll it and write to disk indefinately

on the control side I was going to use the NI PCI-DIO-96

I bought that Fluke before I knew what the hell I was doing, but its reasonably useful as its own "remote" unit

step 2
wire up and log multiple thermocouples



cant seem to get the ExcelLINX plugin working properly,
its hardcoded to GPIB1 or 2 and my DMM is on GPIB0 so I keep getting a configuration error
(the above is again the Keithley runtime only from the scanning side)
scale is C with a little lighter and water bath action

Time to wade into the IVI and VISA configuration documentation for configurations....again

[Ice Czar]

update: was canned by Kyle when I couldn't get repeatable results, at issue was having the thermocouples directly wired into the the DMM, making it impossible to swap out components on the case without seriously moving the sensors, also was doing "whole room" gradient heating putting all the equipment through the same stress testing.

been working on the test chamber, and rounding out the other test suites, just landed a DegreeC ATM-24 and this time the test chamber is up as well as having a sheilded and "pluggable" interface between the DMM and DUT.

I'll be "mapping" the "test case" (likely one of many platforms I'll eventually have,this one a Chenbro XspyderIII) for a proof of concept and to solicit other case and turnkey cooling solution reviews

now aligned with TechPowerUp and W1zzard

[bigben2k]

Too bad ya'll couldn't work it out.

Let me know if you'd like to have your own forum on the WBTA, to present your testbench. Open or read-only, your choice. PM me for details.

[Ice Czar]

actually working with W1zzard has some distinct advantages
we are currently working on putting together an underwriter program for the lab.
I have to round up the sponsors, but he sees the value of that.

I would like to post a worklog over there if you don't mind thanx

[bigben2k]

You're all set:
http://wbta.us/forums/index.php?board=37.0

Yeah, I need sponsors too. NordicHardware has no budget, and they're in Sweden...

[Ice Czar]

thanx ben I'll start with mirroring my TechPowerUp worklog