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Calibration of PXI-5695 RF Attenuator

NI PXI-5695 Specifications, RF Attenuator (NI document 375125C-01) indicates a calibration interval 1 year. 

1. Is there a published National Instruments calibration procedure for the PXI-5695 RF Attenuator?

2. The PXI-5695's that we have purchased did not come with calibration data or a calibration certificate.  Is there an option to purchase the PXI-5695 with calibration data?

Thanks,

Darrow Gervais

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Hello Darrow,

 

There is not a published calibration procedure for the PXI-5695 RF Attenuator. You would need to send in your PXI-5695's to be calibrated by National Instruments. Here is NI's Calibration Services page: http://www.ni.com/services/calibration.htm. If you choose to have your device calibrated, you can choose from several types of calibration reports: http://www.ni.com/services/calibration_compare.htm.

 

For new devices, NIST certificates are kept in an online searchable database here. National Instruments products are calibrated at manufacturing, so a newly purchased device will be NIST traceable. The certificates are searchable by the serial number of the device. The following link has more details on NIST Traceability Certificates: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/3459F092CEDE62C6862575A0006900F6.

 

Best regards,

 

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Is that really the best customer policy to have for this device?  Most manufacturing facilities require that their test equipment which constitutes part of the RF circuit be calibrated in 3 or 6 month intervals in-house.  You can understand how shipping the product back to NI for periodic calibrations is unreasonable.  Most other vendors provide a service manual which has a chapter detailing the process for periodic calibrations.  We have had this problem for other products provided by NI like DAQ and voltmeter cards for example.  It becomes a headache that manufacturing test engineers would rather not deal with.

 

You realize that when you stand a hard line on serviceabilty in the field, like this, that the customer will go elsewhere for test solutions.  I already see this trend happening in-house where I work.  The next generation of test stations will have a decreasing amount of NI hardware in the racks.  I hear lots of management mumblings about this.  I personally like the convenience of working with NI hardware when programming automation, but you guys don't give us a good defense to argue with a customer policy like this.

 

Mike B.

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Hi Mike,

 

Thanks for your feedback and my apologies that this is an inconvenience for you and your team. I will make sure that this feedback is passed along to both R&D and the appropriate product owners.

National Instruments
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