Does anyone have experience with pressure controllers for calibration?

[TRN]

I've working on an application that will calibrate a device that we manufacture during an automated test.  We are currently looking at a Druck unit (DPI 515) which has Labview drivers for GPIB but was wondering if anyone had experience with other devices.  We are having a hard time getting one of these units in, in the timeframe we need it.  It needs to have some way for Labview communication and be extremely accurate.  We are calibrating as low as 2 inH2O up to 1500 PSIG, so likely we would need to have up to 4 different ranges to get the accuracy we are looking for.   Any help would be appreciated.

[Meghan R]

Hi TRN,

What exactly are you trying to achieve with your application?  What is the DPI 515 and what does it do?  Once it's understood what you're trying to acheive with your application, we can give suggestions for different devices.

Thanks!

Meghan
Applications Engineer

[TRN]

OK, we are trying to perform pressure calibration on some instrumentation that we manufacture.  This needs to be fully automated as well, which is where the Druck DPI 515 comes in to play (or hopefully, somebody can recommend another device).  Basically, the Druck "controls" the pressure source.  The way the Druck works, you connect a regulated pressure source (say 1500 PSIG nitrogen).  The output of the druck will connect to our pressure sensor.  Labview can communicate with the Druck via GPIB to set and hold specific pressures.  For example, if I want to run a five point calibration from 0 to 1500 PSIG, I can make all my connections and let the software do the rest.  The software will tell the Druck to vent (0 PSIG), I read my instrument (in my case via Modbus) and then the software can write the "difference" between the known and measured values to the instrument for the calibrated value.  It could then tell the Druck to output 100 PSIG and so on.

[mpiety]

We use Mensor PCS-400's as standards to calibrate all of our pressure calibrators. I don't use LabView to control the Mensors, but the commands in the manual are straightforward, however.

[mike72903]

We have a similiar application using two Druck standards.  Fully automated except we used 'MetCal' from Fluke rather than LV which is what we had at the time.  The two devices cover draft ranges of a few thousands of an inch H2O up to 1000 PSI.  The Druck instruments do a good job of maintaining the pressure in the event of any leaks or other uncontrolled variable.  The nice thing about MetCal is it is specifically written for calibration purposes and makes it easy to archive your data and generate and print calibration reports.

[qing_shan61]

Could you tell me more about your calibration and Metcal?  Thank you.  qing.shan@ge.com

[qing_shan61]

PACE5000 from GE Druck will do the job.  LabVIEW drivers are available in mid August.  qing.shan@ge.com

[qing_shan61]

PACE5000 from GE Druck will do the job.  LabVIEW drivers are available in mid August.  qing.shan@ge.com

[JÞB]

The Druck is a good choice.  I've used both the druck and the mensors and frankly, druck has better support- the integration to LV is trivial for either instrument.

[tbob]

I've used the Mensor PCS-400 and have built my own Labview drivers for it.  It isn't very complicated at all.  Just sending commands to the unit.  Commands are taken right out of the Mensor manual.  Its been while since I've used it, but I think the Mensor uses GPIB communications

We also used the 6100 for reading pressure because it was very accurate.  I think this unit requires serial communications.  But building Labview drivers was very easy.  Again, just commands taken out of the manual.  Pretty much just a read command is all that we needed.  So we would set the PCS-400 to a certain pressure, and then read the 6100 to get a more accurate reading of the actual pressure.