Look inside a 50 ghz step attenuator

[nexus]

Hi all,

Working on an E4446A i bought that had alignment failures. Naturally front end attenuators are a good place to start.

Further testing revealed a faulty 60db attenuator due to contact wear misalignment. A careful disassembly, cleaning, tweaking, and reassembly of the attenuator restored its function and that of the overall instrument which was able to successfully align afterwards. 

Video to come once I have a change to edit all the footage. Enjoy the pics of these ultra-tiny rf parts in the meantime!

[nexus]

here is the keysight parts store page for this module: https://www.keysight.com/my/partDetail/33325-60020

$2,729.00 new. You can get a used working one on ebay for half price.

[project-pegasus]

Did you ever post a video on your rebuild of this attenuator? I've been working on a couple of these myself and am having trouble getting the alignment dialed in.

[nexus]

Did you ever post a video on your rebuild of this attenuator? I've been working on a couple of these myself and am having trouble getting the alignment dialed in.

Unfortunately no vids but I have rebuilt another 10-15 of these attenuators (from PSA, PNA, PSG) since my original post.

Have you tried testing the attenuator outside of the instrument? Such as doing scalar or vector network analysis to see if one step is bad/flaky?