Application Summary
A nationally known supplier of commercial air conditioning systems needed to study the performance of fans used in their products. Engineers at the company’s Research and Development Center had been struggling with a way to record vibration and pressure data induced by the rotating fans in the systems. Blade imbalances cause vibrations that can be felt in the customers’ buildings and create audible noise that customers can find objectionable.

Potential Solution
The engineers first evaluated a four-channel digital storage oscilloscope (DSO). Unfortunately, the instrument offered only 8-bit resolution, had a limited number of channels, and lacked sufficient memory to complete their test.

IOtech’s Solution
The WaveBook data acquisition system from IOtech provided the aggregate speed and resolution required to capture and display the acquired waveforms. As a portable PC-based system, the WaveBook could be easily carried to customer sites.

Because the WaveBook can store data directly to the PC’s hard disk, the WaveBook was able to store large amounts of data, allowing longer acquisition time than was possible with the DSO. Also, the system’s multichannel trigger allowed the capture of only the data of interest.

Unlike the DSO, the IOtech system required no programming, and enabled the company to address customer issues quickly. Included WaveView Out-of-the-Box software allowed them to set up their application quickly, easily, with no programming or training required. In fact, because the engineers did not have programming experience, they saved weeks of time in test development by using WaveView software.