Time electronics 5051 calibrator

[PTR_1275]

Does anyone have any experience with the Time Electronics range of calibrators? Just curious to get peoples opinions on them if they’ve used them / looked at them.

I have a 5051 on my bench at the moment that was having issues with the internal PC that runs the whole thing. Customer service from Time has been pretty good, but unfortunately they won’t do repairs or upgrades on units more than 10 years old.

Internally the thing is a frankenstein of power supplies and cards. Definitely the sort of thing that is hand assembled in their factory. The documentation (connections on the back of the unit etc...) done match what the unit actually has.

Quick sanity checks I ran yesterday look ok. Need to let it warm up for a bit and put it through some real tests.

[TiN]

Do post teardown pictures and your results. First thing to do - replace all electrolytic caps. Perhaps bad power is what cause digital brains to go whack?
I only have 9823 and posted my experience here. I'd say they are overly optimistic in specifications.

Okay for portable DMM and alike calibrations, but no match to industry standards like Fluke 55xx/57xx or Datron's.

[PTR_1275]

Some of the problems was user not remembering how bad windows 2000 is.

The internal pc has windows 2000 and only 2 USB ports. The keyboard was recognized by bios but as soon as windows started to load the numlock lights went out and the keyboard stopped responding. Talking to a few people they suggested try a ps2 keyboard. The pc manual I found shows a ps2 header so I made up an adaptor and that got the keyboard working.

Next issue was the password, but that turned out to be password

Then the controller software was loading, would error saying the HV and current boards had issues and the program would close. Those 2 boards connect to the backplane through a ribbon cable that was loose. Plugged it in and all is working.


I have a feeling that this was offloaded because things weren’t working, but there were lots of loose connectors inside and it appears that’s all that was wrong with it.

The 5051 looks to have a lot of functionality and I can tell it’s worlds apart from fluke. I’ll have a read of your page on the 9823 and see how the 5051 goes once warm. Unfortunately it will be a bit of time before I will get to do real tests because the Christmas’s period then we are going on holidays.

I couldn’t find any information from users or internals when I was looking, so it would be good to start something about it. In case anyone is looking, list price is £20,000