Strain-gauge amplifier

Pacific Instruments has released an 8-channel strain gauge and transducer signal conditioning-amplifier-digitiser for its series 6000 data acquisition system.

The 6037 automatically ranges gain according to signal level for the optimum signal-to-noise performance. It is specifically designed for large strain gauge applications such as airframe structural testing.

Automatic gain ranging dynamically scales the amplifier’s gain to the input signal level, providing the highest output without over scale.

The device’s ‘smart’ gain ranging not only reduces gain but increases it when the signal is below a specified threshold. The user can also program the signal levels at which to reduce or increase gain for each channel independently and can program a period of time which the signal must be above or below the threshold before the gain change takes place.

One of the other features prevents gain ranging on noise or transients. Gain codes for the eight channels on each 6037 are output on two 16-bit ‘phantom’ channels. By including the phantom channels, the gain employed for each data sample is known.

P1660 software automatically accounts for gain ranging in displayed and exported data and the device is programmable. Automatic zero and balance replace manual adjustments. A 16-bit ADC digitises the transducer signals at programmable sample rates up to 10 k/channel.

Individual sample and hold amplifiers provide 50 ns time correlation channel to channel. In addition to the digitised output, each channel has a high-level output for analog monitoring and recording.

A 14" high, rack-mounting enclosure holds up to 128 channels and with additional enclosures, a system can be expanded to 4096 channels. It is available with IEEE-488, ethernet or USB 2.0 interface for programming and data output.