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Martin Rowe

Disposable test equipment
July 22, 2008

While visiting a company for an upcoming T&MW print article, I heard an engineer talk about high-end oscilloscope probes as being "disposable." Now, oscilloscope companies march through the T&MW offices on a regular basis, showing their latest and greatest. Often, the companies introduce probes for their oscilloscopes, especially the high-bandwidth models. These probes are expensive (in the thousands of dollars) and, according to this engineer, easily broken. "We don't treat oscilloscope probes as capital expenditures because they don't last three years," he told me. He considers probes as consumables, like pencils but more expensive.

Do you regularly break probes or other expensive items? What else do you regularly discard? WHat about low-end equipment such as multimeters, are they disposable? What can others do to prevent breakages and thus cut costs?

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Posted by Martin Rowe on July 22, 2008 | Comments (4)

Industries: Bench and Modular Instrumentation, Machine Vision and Inspection

July 28, 2008
In response to: Disposable test equipment
SHW commented:

I do not calibrate my simple multimeters, as buying a new one is more economical.

July 28, 2008
In response to: Disposable test equipment
Justme commented:

Yes nearly all test gear is becoming disposable. Try getting a schematic for anything modern - good luck. No parts list, no service manual, no software online. Anything that is a few years old is "obsolete" and an opportunity for a new sale regardless of price. Gone are the days of HP (and other) gear with complete service manuals and detailed parts listings. Sales were often based on the ability to get this info. It's a modern disposible world. Just as well folks as the stuff wasn't manufactured in North American anyway. Slowly technology is drifting away from North America as we go back to being a third world.

August 3, 2008
In response to: Disposable test equipment
basay commented:

As a product manager at a probe company, I can tell you we do not design these probes to be disposable; although we can understand your concern. Probes have become extremely complex and tips have become so small that it makes it very difficult to make them very durable. We are now probing on surface areas that are 10 - 20X smaller than what we were only ten years ago. It should be noted, that we are constantly looking at new technologies to improve the durability of our probes and have had a lot of success over the last few years. Also we have to be very careful with schematics and other probe related information as there are many manufacturers that might take advantage of these and design something similar. We still recommend purchasing an extended warranty on all probes. As that allows for a replacement of any probes that happen to break over the first three to five years of the probe at a very small cost relative to the probe.

August 14, 2008
In response to: Disposable test equipment
KK commented:

In response to buying new equipment because it is more economical that paying to have it recalibrated... It's a matter of how much risk you're willing to take with your process control. And, of course, your company quality policy. How will your process control be impacted if your DMM was out of spec when you replaced it with a new DMM? If you used the DMM for troubleshooting, no impact. If you used the DMM for final test of a critical component... It's a good practice to "close the loop" by having a calibration check run on critical equipment before it is retired or placed out of service.