Cirris Testing Tips

Has your cable ever failed and the tester reports and IR or HV leakage error? Maybe you found the cause of this error, but maybe you are still speculating.

How many tpying mitsakes do you make? How much time is lost entering data by hand? How much space does a keyboard take up? All these problems could be eliminated by one simple tool: The barcode scanner.

Have you ever been jewelry shopping? Maybe you were shopping for a ring. The salesman takes several rings out from under the counter and begins describing the quality of each ring. Some of them are very expensive and made of 24K gold. Others are less expensive because they are only gold plated. Quality and price seem to be polarizing factors when jewelry shopping. You can either pay more and get a better ring, or save your money but the ring isn’t as nice of quality.

The same principle appears elsewhere in the world, including in the wire processing industry. Solid copper wire is expensive, but pay less and you might end up with copper-clad aluminum.

In most cases, the cables you test won’t attach directly to your tester. Depending on the tester you are using, you may have to build fixturing.

Many of the products that use the cables and harnesses don’t sit still. They are moved around, plugged in, unplugged, shaken, and the cables and harnesses are put through a ride. Are the pins going to hold? Are the wires going stay intact? Is there a way to know beforehand?

Safety is the top priority for cable and harness shops. Practices are put in place to protect workers from all sorts of hazards. Whether being injured from improper use of tools or materials to being safe around electricity, cable and harness shops want to make sure no one is hurt in any way.

Cirris has several ways of helping you determine how much wire is still on the spool.

Capacitance is the charge held by two conductors separated by a non-conductive barrier. The barrier divides the conductors and causes them to hold opposite charges (like a battery). Your cable may have capacitance you didn’t know about. Two wires separated by insulation can act as the conductors and barrier that create capacitance. As current flows through the wires, the charge is trapped in the unaccounted capacitance of the wires.

Rarely are cables built with connectors that can attach directly to the tester. For this reason, fixturing must be built to provide a way to connect the cable to the tester.