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Setting up a Home Test System

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February 2, 2021 - Vista, California - Axiom Test Equipment, an electronic test equipment rental and sales company has published a new blog post entitled "Setting up a Home Test System," that discusses the most important equipment you will need when creating your home's test studio either for hobby endeavors or for the need to outfit a work-from-home environment due COVID-19 conditions. Cost of equipment is a significant factor when building your home test studio. However, keeping costs reasonable is possible by either renting equipment or purchasing quality used equipment at a fraction of the price which can be found through Axiom's extensive inventory.

Setting up a Home Test System

Social distancing has become a new way of life due to the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Instead of daily trips to a test lab or electronic manufacturing facility, many engineers are being asked to work remotely to minimize contact with others and the potential spread of the virus. For many, home is the new office and workplace and for electronic circuit designers, testing is a helpful if not essential part of working on electronic designs at home. Most engineers would hardly turn down the opportunity to have one or more racks of their favorite test instruments within arms reach at home. Beyond dealing with the costs of acquiring test instruments for a home system, engineers should consider many factors before creating the home test studio of their dreams.

Cost, of course, is related to capabilities and the types of measurements needed from a home test system. Some measurements are better left to a full-featured test system within a manufacturer's facilities, such as on-wafer S-parameter measurements of semiconductor devices. The measurement equipment needed for such test applications includes wafer probes and RF/microwave vector network analyzers (VNAs) representing major capital expenses. The cost of each measurement and the equipment needed for it should be considered as part of the preparation for setting up a home test system. In contrast to the purchase of new test equipment, cost can be reduced by renting equipment, purchasing used equipment, or acquiring factory-reconditioned test instruments, such as Tektronix Encore and Keithley equipment, that has been calibrated to original factory specifications.

Combing Through Capabilities

Building a home test station usually starts from the ground up, with something as basic as a portable, battery-powered voltmeter or multimeter, and adds measurement capabilities as needed. Measuring voltage, current, inductance, capacitance, and resistance are essential requirements for any circuit designer and a well-equipped digital multimeter (DMM), once known as an inductance-capacitance-resistance (LCR) meter, can provide useful test data, if it is specified for accurate, repeatable measurements. Low-cost units are available, although providing levels of accuracy that are typically proportional to price. More meaningful basic electrical measurements, especially when required as inputs for computer-aided-design (CAD) circuit design software, are worth the investment in a higher-performance digital multimeter or LCR meter. In terms of sensitivity and accuracy, the Keithley 6517B DMM measures current, voltage, and resistance at rates to 425 readings/s in a compact, half-rack enclosure.

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Whatever your project requires testing of, rent or buy quality test equipment from Axiom Test Equipment. For over 15 years Axiom Test Equipment has rented, sold, repaired and accepted trade-in of test equipment to support your test & measurement needs. If you would like help selecting any type of test equipment for your next project, contact Axiom Test Equipment's sales department at sales@axiomtest.com, call 760-806-6600, or browse Axiom Test Equipment's inventory online at www.axiomtest.com.

About Axiom Test Equipment

Get Exactly What You Need. Rent - Buy - Repair - Trade-In

Established in 2005, Axiom Test Equipment strives to continually improve itself and offer the best value for its customers. We offer our customers several practical, efficient and cost effective solutions for their business or projects' test equipment needs. Whether you need to rent & buy test equipment, repair test equipment, sell or trade equipment, we are committed to providing superior customer service and high quality electronic test equipment.

At Axiom Test Equipment we provide several services. We rent electronic test and measurement equipment. We also sell test equipment. If you have a piece of malfunctioning or broken test equipment we also have an in-house repair lab. For anyone seeking a way to offload their surplus or obsolete equipment, we offer a trade-in program or we can buy the equipment from you.

We stock a comprehensive inventory of equipment and can use our extensive network to find you those hard to get items. We believe in getting equipment to you quickly and at a competitive price.

Contacts

Axiom Test Equipment

2610 Commerce Way 

Vista, CA  92081

Phone: (760) 806-6600

Web: www.axiomtest.com

Posted February 9, 2021