Cirris Testing Tips

While plastic shells don't need to be tested, metal shells and even plastic shells with conductive coatings should be included as a test point.

Testing with high voltage can make some people nervous. Getting a high voltage error can cause panic. But is high voltage testing dangerous? Truth be told, with all the safety features built into testers, high voltage testing is hardly more dangerous than low voltage testing.

Many articles on this blog and in the Cirris Learning Center focus on the benefits of hipot or high voltage testing. High voltage can be incredibly useful for finding potential shorts and problems with insulation. Sometimes, however, high voltage testing is unnecessary to your test process. Do you know when to hipot and when not to hipot?

Do you know the correct resistance settings when building a new test program? While the default settings may work in most situations, you may find tests failing because of a wrong setting—not because of a bad cable. One of the most common settings in a situation like this is the resistance setting.

If high voltage testing damaged cables, people wouldn't do it, right? How much voltage does it take to break down a cable? Is it worth it to test a cable with high voltage?

Keeping wires isolated means having good insulation. But sometimes the insulation can be the reason for a cable failing. If the insulation is damaged or insufficient, it can cause errors in the cable.

Hipot testing as a process of applying high voltage to a cable for a certain amount of time and looking for problems. When voltage is ramped up, if the charge can surpass safe levels the test will abort and report an error.

Cirris has built a virtual library of articles related to cable testing. Within the Cirris Learning Center at cirris.com, you can find articles on everything from getting started with testing to topics pertaining to high voltage.

The following is an excerpt taken from the Cirris article, “Dry Circuit Testing.” To read the full article, click the link below.

For many cable manufacturing companies, clients want reports with test information. Sometimes the report is a printed document detailing the test process. Other times it is a label attached to the cable ensuring it passed. Whichever way the report is formatted, the information it includes can be vital. Here are three tips that will help you get the most out of test reports.