Editorials

Optical Scanning of Drive Media Customer Case The customer's application is optical scanning for drive testing. The goal is to identify burnt or damaged spots on the disk. The scanning system is generally used in Quality Control, Head-Disk Interaction and Failure Analysis. There is a need for continuous acquisition during the spiral scan. The speed of the disk is 10,000 RPM and the requirement is to capture 65,000 to 80,000 samples each revolution. A single channel is needed for the acquisition at 10 MegaSamples/second or greater. High vertical resolution will aid in measuring the properties and ultimately the degradation [...]

Disk Drive Track Scanning Customer Case The customer is trying to digitize an 83 millisecond long signal coming out of a disk mounted on a rotary motor. This corresponds to one full revolution of the disk. The analog signal coming out of the Device Under Test (DUT) is of approximately 2 MHz bandwidth. Currently, the customer is sampling at 10 MSPS and would like to increase the oversampling to get better time resolution. At present, they are using a CompuScope 225 - 1M, which has sufficient memory to digitize the entire revolution in on-board memory at the 10 MSPS [...]

MEMS-Based High Throughput Screening Customer Case The customer needs to do frequency analysis to determine the resonant frequency of an oscillating micro-fabricated device. They will use a Laser Doppler Vibrometer to monitor the physical oscillation. This is an instrument that looks at the light reflected from the surface of a moving part to determine the velocity or relative position of the part. Analysis of the motion as a function of the driving frequency determines the resonant frequency. Upon excitation at the resonant frequency, the motion is at its maximum. The expected resonant frequencies are on the order of 1 [...]

Automatic Accelerometer Calibration System Customer Case The customer's Automated Accelerometer Calibration System provides NIST traceable calibration of most accelerometer types, whether self-generating piezo-electric or accelerometers requiring current or voltage excitation. The output of the accelerometer can be charge or voltage, single- ended or differential, AC or DC coupled, isolated or grounded. In building the automatic calibration system, the need is for optimum versatility with regards to the data acquisition card. LabVIEW is the desired control software, and Signal to Noise Ratio and high vertical resolution is of utmost importance for the small variations that occur in Vibration and Shock [...]

Deep PCI Capture of Fast Charge-Couple Device (CCD) Array Data Customer Case A customer wants to digitize data from a 256x256 infrared charge-couple device (CCD) array. The array data is clocked at 4 MHz through two output channels. Exactly two clock cycles occur between 12-bit line signals, and a dozen or more clock cycles occur between successive frames. The customer wants to digitize the data for a minute or more. Since light level signals from the array can vary widely in amplitude, 12-bit resolution is required. GaGe Case Solution The customer will use the CompuScope 512/PCI with the External [...]