EEVblog #1039 - Keysight Metrology Standards Lab

[HighVoltage]

Very nice video!
Dave, you should go back there and make a similar video about each of the calibration divisions in the lab.

Well they have actually invited me back to bring a bit of kit and film the whole (likely boring to most!) process of having it calibrated.
I'm not sure how exciting a video that would be?

Ohh, please take your 34470A and have them check the values and then perform and spot on calibration.
I think lots of people in the metrology section would be very much interested to see how Keysight actually does this procedure.

 

[joeqsmith]

Thanks

[Andrey_irk]

Very nice video!
Dave, you should go back there and make a similar video about each of the calibration divisions in the lab.

Well they have actually invited me back to bring a bit of kit and film the whole (likely boring to most!) process of having it calibrated.
I'm not sure how exciting a video that would be?

It won't be for the majority of people. In fact, they aren't interested in anything but arduino, raspberry etc.
But it will be perhaps the only video on youtube ob how metrology labs calibrate electronic equipment. How about calibrating 50GHz PNA or something like that? They calibrate mostly RF equipment, don't they?

It's a pity when you see that guys like Shahriar have in order of several magnitudes less views than someone playing computer games. But that is what the majority wants.

[LA7SJA]

I promise to watch every second of a calibration video if you decide to make it. I maybe even push the thumb up.

Johan-Fredrik

[PA4TIM]

Doing a calibration is not a very exiting thing. There is often not much to see. In one of the later video's they tell an automated SA calibration takes a few hours and doing it by hand 7 to 8 hours. 

A lot of time in doing it by hand is setting up all the gear needed for every step and a lot of waiting. And if it is gear you do not do every week it takes a lot of time to look up specs and procedures.

And for Retrolefty, this is a typical hobby reaction. You do not have a clue what the whole thing about calibration is about.  I repair calibration gear and often customers tell me not to adjust a thing unless there is no other option. And if I need do that, they are not happy and want to know that.

[narfson]

When I was a kid, I had no clue about calibration. For sure, it held some dark fascination.

First Computer of mine was VIC-20 that I got on Christmas '83-- my first own photo camera was, same year I think, one Kodak Disk 4000 series.

First time that my dad let me drive on my own in his car was on a sunday morning at the Hewlett-Packard employee parking lot in Böblingen (Germany, I was around 12 or 13). My first calculator that I bought with my own money, quite expensive, was a HP 48G.

So -- I wonder, whatever happened to clock 5061A #3 -- has it ever been used to calibrate HP house clock in Boeblingen plant? Which I read has been the plant, at which HP introduced flex time around '67 first for their employees (I just learned). (IBM, HP, Mercedes had major operations in the town I grew up.)

I never really knew what HP was about, what they were doing at this plant, I have to admit-- I bet though, one still today would be able to calculate the influence of those flying HP clocks on world time. Not exciting enough?

[PA4TIM]

I never really knew what HP was about, what they were doing at this plant, I have to admit-- I bet though, one still today would be able to calculate the influence of those flying HP clocks on world time. Not exciting enough?

Nice story, calibration as a concept is very interesting and the gear needed can be exiting. I only wrote about doing a calibration.  I quote the words of the owner of a cal-lab about doing a calibration, "you can teach a monkey to do it"  F.i a DMM, set the meter calibrator at 5V, connect it wait until it stabilizes, note the value and dial in the next value. But aligning a high end analog scope is something else 

[narfson]

Well, I'm still wating for my copy of "Metrology for Philosophers" I would reply.