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News and New Products
Vendor triples power available from compact dc-supply system
By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, 11/16/2005
By introducing four new modules and two mainframes, Agilent has extended the output capability of its N6700 MPS (modular-power system) to 1200W. Company officials claim that Agilent is now the industry leader in the number of outputs and amount of power that a 1U (1-75-in.-high) rack-mountable programmable dc-power system can provide.
According to a spokesperson, these products represent the next step in a series of enhancements that give test-system integrators the flexibility to optimize performance, power, and price to match test needs in such industries as aerospace/defense, consumer electronics, computers and peripherals, communications, semiconductor, and automotive.
“Our customers value the size, mix-and-match design, and performance of the N6700,” says Scott Sampl, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s System Products Division. “They have asked for more power in the same small, flexible, and fast package, and we’ve given it to them. And more enhancements are on the way.”
Offering 600 and 1200W capabilities, the two new mainframes join the currently available 400W mainframe. All mainframes accommodate one to four modules in a system-ready, 1U package. Four new one-slot-wide, 300W basic programmable-power-supply modules extend the system’s range of outputs to 20V at 15A and 100V at 3A.
The four new modules, together with the 16 others, constitute a family ranging in power from 50 to 300W at basic-, high-, and precision-performance levels. Test-system integrators can mix and match any of the 20 modules in any of the three mainframes to create dc-power systems that provide one to four outputs totaling 400, 600, or 1200W at prices from $1000 per output.
New power-management features allow users to allocate mainframe power to the outputs where it’s needed. According to Agilent, this feature is unique in the market and prevents unexpected and dangerous shutdowns that can occur when you attempt this type of operation with power systems that lack power-management features.
The 1200W N6702A mainframe automatically senses power available from the ac line and scales back the available output power accordingly, allowing you to plug the high-power mainframe into any standard outlet. N6700 units are system-ready test instruments that comply with LXI (LAN extensions for instrumentation) Class C. They provide USB 2.0, 10/100 BaseT Ethernet (LAN), and IEEE 488 interfaces as standard features. You can also operate the units remotely from any browser you connect to a unit’s built-in Web page. A free download upgrades older N6700 mainframes to support the new modules and to provide the power-management capability.
Agilent Technologies, www.agilent.com/find/N6700, www.agilent.com/find/n6700_backgrounder.
