EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: EI6JA on April 26, 2016, 06:30:39 pm
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Hello,
I have an opportunity to use a oscilloscope calibrator for a half an hour, during a lunch break, to check out my analog oscilloscope. Given the fact that I have never calibrated a oscilloscope before and have limited time what should I prioritize while I have access to this test equipment? I do not think I will have enough time to do a full performance check and adjustment. My first guess would be to check the vertical deflection followed by the horizontal time base, or should I look at the trigger, the cal output, XY mode, bandwidth etc.
Regards,
Stephen
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You will need to follow the calibration procedure in the relevant manual to the scope you have.Its not somthing to be rushed and you may do more damage than good by adjusting willy nilly .......30 minutes may be enough for an experienced tech who has done it multiple times with the same equipment . It would take that long to familiarise yourself with the equipment .
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Welcome to the forum.
Familiarity with the process as described in the Service manual is key to success as there's normally a large # of steps to do a cal properly.
Mostly you are wanting to check signal amplitude accuracy and frequency accuracy, both as sanity checks to know your scope is reasonably accurate.
Dave did a quick check on a Hameg, IIRC it was #502.
http://www.eevblog.org/video/ (http://www.eevblog.org/video/)
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I would write down and photograph the deviations between your scope and the calibrator, this will show you what signals you would need to replicate, and where to initially set them to calibrate your scope later on with other tools,
E.g. you see at 20V DC its about 0.5V low, well record it and later when you have the time you know to feed in 20V and calibrate for it, If your feeding in a 100Khz signal and you see you only measure 96Khz counting the graticules, then when you have time feed in 100Khz and calibrate it,
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Welcome to the forum.
Familiarity with the process as described in the Service manual is key to success as there's normally a large # of steps to do a cal properly.
Mostly you are wanting to check signal amplitude accuracy and frequency accuracy, both as sanity checks to know your scope is reasonably accurate.
Thanks for the response everyone. A sanity check for reasonable accuracy is what I will do. I have looked through the calibration process in service manual and it has quite a lot of steps, I think some of the steps can be accomplished with a normal signal generator for example trigger etc. I plan to just run through the vertical channels with accurate amplitude standard and the horizontal with accurate time mark generator. This oscilloscope is only for hobby use but the chance to check it against a proper standard is something I cannot turn down.
Thanks,
Stephen