Vitrek Products for Automotive & Electric Vehicle Applications

Today’s vehicles have increasingly complex electronic systems with 20 or more cable or wiring harnesses, many interfacing with digital control devices. Precise and accurate continuity and cable testing must be performed on every connection during the automobile assembly process to ensure every vehicle is safe and reliable. Vitrek’s cable/harness testing solution which consists of a hipot tester, 964i switching system and QT Enterprise software offers automobile manufacturers a cost-effective, efficient way to manage cable/harness test requirements.

In addition, Vitrek’s PA9xx series power analyzers offer measurement/power conversion testing solutions that test to specific automotive standards.

Vitrek’s team of experts looks forward to supporting your next automotive testing application.

This article presents a highly functional, automated approach to automotive cable/harness testing. It describes the features of Vitrek products that make up a cost effective and reliable cable/harness test system – a hipot tester, multi-point switching system and automated software – and shows how these products work together to create a one-stop solution that simplifies and speeds the testing process and enables unlimited data storage for analysis and backup. It also describes how a test can be easily configured and offers a real-life test example using an EV charging cable application.

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Measuring Non-Conductive Materials

This application note from MTI Instruments compares two technologies for measuring foam density: capacitance sensors and nuclear gauges. It examines the basic operating principles of each technology and explains why capacitance measurement is recommended for in-line measurement during foam manufacturing.

Illustration of Capacitance Probe above grounded conductor with air gap and insulator in between

Many applications, both in manufacturing and research, require precise material thickness measurements. This becomes especially difficult if the material is moving, is non conductive and/or translucent to clear.

The specifics of your application may make accurate measurements difficult; many circumstances prohibit contact measurement, and make laser measurements difficult or impossible, for example with thin clear materials such as glass, sapphire, plastic .

In cases such as these, capacitance measurement provides a highly accurate and cost-effective solution. While other measurement systems such as eddy current probes are incompatible with dielectric materials, the MTI Accumeasure (paired with MTI dielectric probes) provides touch-free and high-resolution thickness measurements with some simple calculations.

Capacitive vs. Eddy Current Sensors

This application note from MTI Instruments compares two types of non-contact sensors: capacitive and Eddy current. It describes their basic operating principles, includes a quick comparison table, and offers recommendations for use.

MTI Charge Amplifier

Piezoelectric-type transducers such as accelerometers used for turbine vibration measurement and pressure transducers used for combustion dynamics monitoring (CDM) produce a high-impedance charge output that must be conditioned and amplified before transmission across system cabling and into measurement instrumentation.

Battery Layers

Learn how to measure EV battery plate thickness with MTI’s Digital Accumeasure, a high-precision capacitance measurement system with nanometer accuracy and stability.

Charge amplifier connection

Today’s brake rotors are thinner and lighter than those of just a few years ago. In addition, many feature cooling vents to further improve performance. These changes, however, reduce available braking surface, forcing automotive engineers to consider alternative materials and designs.

Alternating magnetic field and eddy currents

Non-contact eddy current probes can be used to measure the position, or position change, of conductive targets in real time. Typical monitoring applications include shaft runout and/or vibration.

1510A Precision Signal Simulator

The strain gauge has been in use many years and is the fundamental sensing element for many types of sensors, including pressure sensors, load cells, torque sensors, and position sensors. The majority of strain gauges are metallic foil types, available in a wide choice of shapes and sizes to suit a variety of applications.

tire track measurement with 2d laser

To ensure customer safety and extend product life, tire manufacturers are moving to 100% tire inspection. This QTM strategy includes tread depth measurement and defect detection. Shallow tread depths shorten service life while defects such as blistering, bubbles, and overlapping belts can lead to runout, road noise, vehicle suspension vibration or worse – catastrophic failure.

Oil in liquid

A measuring system with high frequency response and small sensor size is essential to keep engine machining to a minimum while not altering the engine operating characteristics. Accumeasure™ capacitive sensors measure the minuscule capacitance change due to the oil thickness variation and convert this change into a thickness measurement.

Test & Measurement Applications

This article discusses a major electronics manufacturer who wants to find a cost effective replacement to VXI digitizers in testing automotive engine control signals.

The requirement is for several ATE stations. Each one will require 4 single-ended channels or 2 “true differential” channels, 4 MHz of input analog bandwidth (mostly single shot) with voltage ranges from 0.05 to 70 volts. The digitizers must have at least 12 bits of vertical resolution, 0.5% accuracy and ½ MegaSample per channel of acquisition memory.

Products for the Automotive Industry

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