Tester keeps your cables in harness
By Bill Schweber -- EDN, March 18, 2004
Engineers spend lots of money on high-end test equipment and then often resort to jerry-built, basic ohmeter-type tests for their cables. But these crude setups are always time-consuming and often inconsistent, so a commercial cable tester, such as the Signature 1100R+ from Cirris Systems may be a wise purchase (Picture).
This $1995 unit tests as many as 1024 points (or more using optional expander units) and detects resistance of 0.001Ω to 100 kΩ, checking for opens, shorts, crossed wires, high-resistance errors, and insulation resistance up to 5 MΩ. The system learns what a good cable is from your known-good sample cable, or you can download test information via a serial port. You get your test results as fast as you can plug those cables in, on a four-line/20-character display as well as a pass/fail LED.
Cirris Systems Corp, 1-801-973-4600, www.cirris.com.
