The environmental test team at Fluke tries to break new products during development. Here, from this fun-loving, happy-go-luck crew, are their top-ten torture chamber favorites:
10. Let’s drop the packaged product, on all faces and corners - 24 drops - from 1 meter onto a hardwood floor.
9. What the heck, let’s do it to the unpackaged unit, too - 8 drops - at storage temperature extremes of -400C to +600C!
8. Why not subject the unit to vibration, up to 30 G’s, for 30 minutes on three perpendicular axes?
7. Bombard the unit with electromagnetic fields and radio frequency emissions per IEC 61326-1 to see if we can get the readings to change!
6. Let’s flex the outboard end of the test leads at least 10,000 times to 90 degrees, even though the standard only calls for a flex to 45 degrees.
5. While we’re at it, let’s flex the inboard end of the leads, and test the terminals, for 10,000 cycles, too!
4. Let’s run the product at temperatures down to -40oC and up to 60oC and try to get the readings to go out of spec. Add humidity, up to 92% at up to 40oC, and run the tests again!
3. Dude, let’s apply peak transients of 12 to 18 kV on the input circuits!
2. Let’s wrap the whole unit in foil and subject it to electrostatic discharge of at least 20 kV.
1. And finally, let’s push 30 kVA into the front end, while switching through the measurement functions, to make sure any failures are contained within the instrument case.
When the test team can no longer get a unit to fail, it can be released to production. Why go to all this trouble? So that when you take your Fluke meter into the hazards and hassles of the real world, the last thing you need to worry about is whether your meter still works.
Bio: Rick Pirret recently retired from Fluke following 30 years in product design and marketing. Previously, he was with Bell Labs for 10 years in product and facility design. Rick studied mechanical engineering at Cornell and Stanford, and completed an MBA at Seattle University. Over the years, hobbies have included scuba diving, white water canoeing, flying, motorcycling, and bicycling. More recently, Rick likes to be outdoors in the Cascades Mountains or on-track in a BMW