I wish to purchase a complete 24 channel vibration data collection system with software for rotating equipment

[ClementMac]

I wish to purchase a complete 24 channel vibration data collection system with software for rotating equipment, motors, pumps etc.

Should I purchase IOTech or NI? Looks like IOtech and eZ software are losing the battle !

The IOtech ZonicBook and eZ software meets the requirements for vibration analysis. 

However, I cannot find the part numbers for several items on the webpage e.g. WBK30/128 Memory, DBK34A UPS and eZ-RotatePlus software.

Is eZ-Rotate still available?

[djmcfate]

Greetings,

IOtech Vibration products are still sold and supported through National Instruments, altough some items have been discontinued.  The WBK30 Memory Expansion option for the ZonicBook has indeed been dropped from the product line.  The utility of the option was rather limited, as it only provided additional buffer memory for Ethernet communications, not any form of on-board waveform memory.  When Ethernet standards were at 10T speeds, this buffer was useful to prevent communication errors, however advances to 100T and GIG Ethernet have pretty neatly handled any requirement for the additional buffer.  The ZonicBook still chugs along at 10T rates!

The DBK34A was not one of the products migrated to National Instruments.  The standard IOtech Data Acquisition products were picked up by Measurement Computing Corporation (http://www.mccdaq.com) and they still sell and support the DBK34A.

IOtech acted as a re-seller for eZ-Rotate software for a number of years.  Rotate was always a product of ATA Engineering (http://www.ata-e.com/software/rotate) and this software is still available through their sales channels. Rotate is a post processing application and it was utilized primarily for Torsional Vibration problems.

Your choice between IOtech and National Instuments offerings can indeed be a thorny decision.  IOtech products, while still offered, are considered to be mature and no further development or enhancement is underway.  There are no current plans for discontinuing sales or support for the products as there is still substantial demand, but the product line is static and will not see additional development. The advantage with IOtech is that there is great industry acceptance for the products, and no software application development of programming is required to bring the systems on-line and start collecting useful data.  Training and learning curves are extremely short, a typical class being only one or possibly two days.  Many users are successful bringing the systems on-line without any formal training whatsoever, they are that intuative.

National Instruments tools and systems can do anything that the IOtech products can do, and much more, but the user will need to invest in development of the LabVIEW application. 

Very Best Regards,

Dave McFate