Until a few years ago, most relay test equipment was created by the relay manufacturers own personnel encouraged by the apparent simplicity of the circuitry required, the availability of qualified personnel, and the view that the end result was a greater control over the equipment created. The resulting test systems often relied on the integration of slow GPIB bus based measuring instruments and required software to be created which incurred unplanned and often hidden investments in both time and development. In addition, significant follow-up work was also required to implement the proper documentation for the equipment test and maintenance. Only the larger more specialised groups were able to maintain this level of design activity and yet create well integrated controller-based high-speed equipment.
With the economic developments of the last few years the skill of these personnel has become more highly valued when focused directly upon the relay product itself. The effect of this has been to reduce the size of these test equipment groups, even in some cases to entirely eliminate them, with a resulting management dilemma of how to share available resources between the creation of up-to-date test equipment and product engineering.
Applied Relay Testing Ltd realised that this had created a need for high-performance, well-engineered measuring equipment, specifically designed for the needs of relays and that as well as solving in-house problems, such equipment could assist in providing industry-wide correlation of device test results, for example to aid the sometime difficult engineering discussions that can occur between vendor and customer if their measuring methods are at variance with one another.
Recently ART has also applied it's skills in precision parametric and high voltage relay testing to set a new standard in connector test equipment. This equipment has been designed to suit the precision testing of the latest generation of connectors now being manufactured which incorporate complex combinations of filters, fuses and suppression components.
The results of all this development and close co-operation with end-Users is the product list that you see presented in these pages.