What are an engineer's most common concerns when selecting instrumentation?

[JacobCheng]

Hi everyone, I'm Jacob Cheng from China, working in an electronic instrument manufacturer, and this is not a promotion content, I'm here asking for help.
As a freshman of marketing promotion in the electronic instrument, I have no idea about what topic will engineers interested in. So, I'm here today to ask for a little favor from an expert like you guys, sincerely.
We manufacturing digital DC power supply, frequency converter, all kind of power testing equipment the most. For example, the frequency converter, use to simulate power network for product testing. Then you wanna know about this machine, what you want to ask? Here is some of my thinking:
What's the feature of this machine? (compare with general model?
Compare with XXX brand, what' the result?
What's the power core? What's the capability between different core?
What material made of? That decided how long I could use it.
Anything else comes up?
I know I maybe ask a stupid question, but I really need help, please leave your comment, thank you, guys.
Here is a sample page: https://www.octatronics.com/products/fc118kva

[lem_ix]

Hi Jacob,
Comparison videos/texts are usually set up in a way that makes me feel like they're trying to insult my intelligence. I like seeing what your instrument can do on a specific measurement, test setup clearly explained. Special/Unique features should also be promoted in a relevant way, show how they can help me save time. Your engineers should know how to apply your instruments to some real world problems.

[retrolefty]

Well my vote for most importance is documentation including schematic drawing. In my younger days we wouldn't even consider buying a nice piece of test equipment that didn't include these. Now a days I guess it's not as important as many details of operation is buried in the firmware/software and nobody is going to document and release their source code.   

[Smokey]

Well my vote for most importance is documentation including schematic drawing. In my younger days we wouldn't even consider buying a nice piece of test equipment that didn't include these. Now a days I guess it's not as important as many details of operation is buried in the firmware/software and nobody is going to document and release their source code.   

Schematics are damn near useless on modern stuff where 90% of the chips are custom anyway... Do you really care where the pin of the black box chip you can't buy goes?  The only repairable parts are caps, which you can easily replace without a schematic.

For the OP...
*Have clear specs in a table.  Don't lie or exaggerate... 
*Spell everything on your web page correctly with correct grammar for each language.  Get a native speaker to do translations.. please... pretty please...
*Have clear operating instructions/user manual.  Again, with correct grammar and spelling... pretty pretty please...
*Have good customer support, with local support in whatever markets you are targeting.  If you at all want to break free from only selling to hobby people, businesses need some sort of confidence that if your thing stops working that it will be fixed/replaced quickly and reliably.
*Don't try to compete with Keysight.... It's mostly just embarrassing.

When buying a piece of equipment, the main issue is getting a job done, and having confidence in the end result.  It's a tool.  Show the engineer what your thing can do in a way that they can be confident it will do the job that needs doing and they can trust the results.

[tggzzz]

Simple.

The equipment should exceed all the specifications after 3 years use, with no surprises when using it. That's what made HP's reputation.

[JacobCheng]

I like seeing what your instrument can do on a specific measurement, test setup clearly explained. Special/Unique features should also be promoted in a relevant way, show how they can help me save time.

Is this still need to using a video to show how it perform? By the way, what kind of test will be better? Full loading running?

[JacobCheng]

For the OP...
*Have clear specs in a table.  Don't lie or exaggerate... 
*Spell everything on your web page correctly with correct grammar for each language.  Get a native speaker to do translations.. please... pretty please...
*Have clear operating instructions/user manual.  Again, with correct grammar and spelling... pretty pretty please...
*Have good customer support, with local support in whatever markets you are targeting.  If you at all want to break free from only selling to hobby people, businesses need some sort of confidence that if your thing stops working that it will be fixed/replaced quickly and reliably.
*Don't try to compete with Keysight.... It's mostly just embarrassing.

We have get that a lot, and will take it seriously, it needs to be done step by step. Hoping someday you will trust our brand.

[Messtechniker]

Full documented compliance with the relevant standards DIN, ISO, EN, CE, UL applicable in the relevant markets etc. This is mandatory. Without such compliance you are immediately out. Especially Chinese manufacturers have been known to take this too lightly.

[AndyC_772]

Before launch, give samples of the product to engineers in various markets, who will use the product in different ways, and who will have different expectations of how it should work and what is important to them. Get their feedback, treat it seriously, and make changes as necessary.

For example, today I'm using a Rigol DG4000 series function generator, which has a frequency counter feature. I'm using that feature to measure the output from a board I'm testing. I want the measurement to be as accurate as possible, so I'm using a 10 second gate time and an accurate external 10 MHz reference clock.

There's no denying that the Rigol "works", but several features have already annoyed me today:

- If the external clock source fails, the Rigol switches back to using an internal reference. When the external clock comes back, it keeps using the internal reference. Result: any minor interruption in the external clock means all subsequent measurements are made using the internal clock instead, unless I happen to notice the tiny "Ext" indicator has gone out, and I manually change settings to re-enable the external clock. This is a pain.

- With a gate time of 10 seconds, the display is only updated every 20 seconds. There is no need for this; it's perfectly possible to update the display after every gate interval.

- If the output from my board stops switching, the frequency measurement doesn't ever go to zero; instead, it holds whatever the previous displayed value was. This is just plain wrong.

- The displayed frequency has a ridiculous number of figures. Right now, for example, it says the output from my board is 250.000 252 737 kHz, but over 10 seconds there are only 2,500,000 pulses to count. The last 5 digits cannot be meaningful, so why are they shown?

I've discovered all these quirks in just a few hours' worth of use. None of them would be hard to fix, but they weren't. Someone at Rigol decided the instrument worked well enough, and released it this way.

I understand that products can have bugs in them, but I only ever expect to see them if I'm doing something unusual. Anything I can find in the first few hours' worth of use should have been picked up, and fixed, before launch. More obscure bugs should be fully documented in the change log associated with the firmware update that fixes them.

Ask yourself, "would a Keysight product work this way?". If not, consider a fix.

[HAL-42b]

Big manufacturers rely on corporate lock-in to extract maximum revenue from customers. For example you need to purchase licenses in order to unlock features that are already there.

You could compete by doing the exact opposite. Sell your product with all features unlocked right from the start. Make your device easy to hack and modify.  Have a site that hosts all code in a version control system.

[tszaboo]

It is quite simple. It should work under all conditions as expected, no glitches, no fimware errors, no dubious operation. Basically, it has to be a constant in a ever changing environment, it has to work. Under no circumstances, should i doubt that the testing equipment is faulty, not the DUT, or the testing methodology.
If it fails to do that, you can still aim the product at clueless idiots or people who have no money to buy proper tools.

[AndyC_772]

If it fails to do that, you can still aim the product at clueless idiots or people who have no money to buy proper tools.

But please, don't!

I generally work on the rule that any piece of test equipment needs to be at least 10 times as reliable as the thing being tested. If I see a problem, it needs to be overwhelmingly likely that the problem is with the thing being tested, not the test equipment itself.

[tggzzz]

It is quite simple. It should work under all conditions as expected, no glitches, no fimware errors, no dubious operation. Basically, it has to be a constant in a ever changing environment, it has to work. Under no circumstances, should i doubt that the testing equipment is faulty, not the DUT, or the testing methodology.
If it fails to do that, you can still aim the product at clueless idiots or people who have no money to buy proper tools.

My summary:

• you want to investigate/debug your problem
• you are prepared to investigate/debug your measurement technique
• you do not want to have to investigate/debug your test equipment; if you do then that manufacturer never gets in the door again

[SeanB]

If it is going into an industrial plant environment it must absolutely survive undamaged having 400VAC shoved up the inputs, outputs and across it without damage, at least surviving longer than it takes for an external fuse to blow to remove the connection.

Was doing that today, replacing a short length of silicone cored cable that connects a heater and thermostat arrangement. As the controller is a Fenwel thermoswitch, driving an industrial time delay relay, and the insulation at the inlet side failed from flexing, shorting a few of the power and sensing leads together and to ground. Of the 7 cores 5 still were intact enough to pull out, the other 2 ( PE and the one side of the heater) arced open circuit, and the others were all bare in that area as the insulation had crumbled.

100m rolls of that silicone sheathed cable are easy to get, but I only needed 2m, and had to find a part roll at the cable suppliers as they reeally do not want to keep part rolls. I was contemplating having to buy a roll, and then sitting with 98.5m of it forever more around, but at $2 per meter that would have been expensive.

Also your sensors and whatnot should survive me using an insulation tester at 1000V to find the fault as well. Other 12 heater units were fine, just this bank of 4 in a block. fun is these are run off 400VAC in startup, to get a quick leg up, and then are switched to 230VAC ( they are 230VAC 500W units) to hold setpoint. They survive well though, but shut down for a month over Xmas and the lot adsorb water so need a little preheat with a paint stripper before power on to get them dry enough not to trip the RCD unit.

[bson]

I think the greatest concern is that the manufacturer provides firmware updates in a timely manner.

Other than that, sensible channel management, with resellers that can provide clear price quotes.  An engineer needs a quote they can take to the proper manager depending on size and who owns the lab budget, for approval.  Once approved it goes to purchasing, which needs to be able to use the quote to place an order based on it.  Purchasing also needs to be able to call around to other resellers (especially those the company has a pre-negotiated discount with) for additional quotes, and they need to be for the same item.  So consistent SKUs are important, with independent SKUs for bundles.  Otherwise the engineer may have intended to purchase a bundle with important bits they need, but end up with a bare instrument.

Edit: also, special promotions like Buy X Get Y For Free are difficult.  Both X and Y may be essential, but this can be hard to communicate between departments, and purchasing goes and obtains X only at a better price from their preferred vendor, then when it arrives a week later has to go buy Y as well because it wasn't clear this was more than the equivalent of frequent flier miles (something they don't care about per se).  Then a week later Y arrives - time is wasted (engineers are too expensive to use as warm bodies) and no money is saved.  If there's a promotion, it should be a mfg one not a reseller, and it should have a different SKU.