Hi just a quick video to uh show you what I'm playing around with at the moment I Just scored this Uh, very nice advantest uh R 6142 programmable DC voltage current generator in fact, it's it's almost like a voltage in current. uh standard. it specs are a pretty darn uh good as we'll take a look at it I Scored this on eBay for about uh, 300 bucks. and if you're not aware of uh advantes they are a huge Japanese who primarily make automated test gear for like the semiconductor uh, you know, fabrication industry and stuff like that.

You know they're a multi-billion dollar company make real high-end highs spec gear but they also make some you know some reasonably well for them. uh, sort of low-end gear like this and they do Spectrum analyzers and a whole bunch of other stuff and uh, this is a real nice bit of Kit and we'll take a quick look at it and I'll show you what I'm doing here cuz I've just done some uh a couple of days worth of uh, data loging on this thing and you would have seen the a couple of updates on my Twitter uh feed for this if you following along at home and I just wanted to see like how accurate and stable it was for generating in this case a 1 milliamp Uh current over time not only for absolute accuracy but for drift as well. And you may have just heard that my airon just uh turned off here and I've been doing some uh, that's where I turned the air con on this morning when I came in and it ramped up. So I've sort of like had the airon off and on.

and we'll take a look at what this data actually uh means and see how um, you know, see how good this is for uh, calibrating my microcurrent for example, because there's not too many really precise current generators on the market and this is, uh, certainly one of them. and uh, yeah, so is it good enough to um program in microcurrent normally up 05% so it's got to be better than that. You notice my battery letter is flashing there. That's a feature of course, the the battery is um, of course, low.

So what it does, that's just the ESR of the battery. uh there. When it turns on the lead, of course, it draws more current, which then drops under the voltage threshold of the uh comparator there. really? uh, quite a neat little um, you know, unintended uh side effect there.

But I like that feature. So take a quick look at the data sheet and uh, this is basically the data sheets all I can find at the moment. I Haven't been able to find a uh user, a full user manual for the thing, let alone a service manual. So if you do have those, uh, please leave a link in the comments: uh, large capacity up to 32 Vol 160 milliamps I Would have liked it to go up to an amp and on the low side as well, but ah well, you can't have everything.

High Accuracy: 0.03% High Stability Low noise: 3 MTS Peak 50 millisecond settl in time and uh, here it is the Um unit. Uh Precision Voltage and current generators Ideal for evaluation of precision circuits and parts as well as Cal calibration of temperature controls unit. Use a time sharing D2a conversion circuit which provides excellent linearity and stability. There you go.

So it's Um and it does. Um, it's also got uh, you can, it's programable as well. Hence, you know, because they're really into automated, uh, test functionality and things like that. So so it's got 160 uh step memory and uh, it's 6mth uh, guaranteed accuracy 03 per for voltage and 0.035% for current and that 3 molt noise is 1/5 of their previous model I Don't know what the previous model is and there's probably another model after this as well I'm not sure the age of this thing.

it might have a date code on the back I Forget off the top of my head, we'll check it out. But anyway, um, the advantest stuff you know, like a lot of the high-end manufacturers over engineered so that 0.03% is going to be very conservative so we're going to get I think well with inside that sort of accuracy. In fact, if we go over here and have a look at uh, some of the specs we're looking at voltage generation there, the ranges. um, it's only got three current ranges as I said.

I'm a bit disappointed that it's only got 10 milliamps um and 100 milliamp uh ranges. So you know I would have liked to, you know, generate microamps or something like that, but this isn't designed for low current. You know you'd have to get like a Keithly current Source or something. although I'm sure advantest if you pay big dollars will sell you a low current Source uh generator most likely.

but you know, overall accuracy. We're talking. you know, 03 uh% there? plus you know, five plus a small uh percent plus a small range error there. um in 0 35% But if you're talking you know 24hour stability.

It goes down to 01 uh% which is pretty darn good. So these specs are essentially, and because it's likely over engineered, good enough for calibrating a 05% microcurrent and the temperature coefficient here I.E The parts per million per degree C is in the order of uh 20 odd uh, PPM per degree c Not bad. although my Hp3 461a here I'm using has a nominal Uh 5 PPM per degre C so it's like at least four times better than that. Um, and we won't worry about the Plus offsets on the end.

will'll just you know, keep things a bit simple for today. And on DC current though, my uh, Agilant Meter, which we're using actually does go up to about 20 on the Current so it's going to be for so for the current measurement here, um, the drift of my agilant meter is, you know, about roughly equivalent to this, uh, advantest unit or at least, uh, these are going to be, uh, worst case figures. Now let's have a look at what, uh, the data up here means that I've been getting. you'll notice I've been uh, logging for almost, you know, one day and uh, 20 hours and 11 minutes.

So I've been going for quite some time and I've been here I've turned the air con. This is where I Like came in and turned the air con on and I turned the air con on again this morning. it's you know, ramp back up so the temperature in the lab does change by. you know, like uh, maybe up to 5.

uh C variation depends on whether or not I've got the uh airon when I leave the airon on or off or not when I've got the airon on I've actually measured the air con in the the temperature in the room to be stable within plus -5 C So that's what the airon cycle. So there's about a 5 minute, uh, cycle time um, between when it switches on and off to maintain the temperature here in the room anyway. um, this looks like a oh, you can probably see some of the multiplexing on the display there. You can probably see a bit of bit of flicker there at least I can on my LCD screen.

Now, if we have a look at the data here on my Agilant meter and I'm going to assume that my agilant meter is like spot on. You know it is my reference standard and I have actually confirm that with my other reference gear. It is pretty darn good. It's way better than Uh spec.

It's you know, way better than its uh, calibrated spec. Even it's 24hour spec. It's actually, uh, better than that absolute. So I'm pretty, uh damn confident in this.

um, agilant meter. It really is kickass. Now you can see that there's a lot of noise in here, and this looks like a huge variation, right? But it's not really. And I'll show you that in a second.

And now this. So this is the total data over that almost 2day period there. And um, because we got it set to all. Now if I set it to recent, you can actually see the little tiny amount of noise.

You can actually see the individual bit changes almost within that, uh, you know, within the sampling limit there. And as I've said in the review for this Agilant meter, its resolution is actually better than its nominal 6 and2 digits when you're in this uh Trend display mode. So I I forget the exact figure, but it's like at least like seven and a half digits or something like that, so it's pretty darn good. that's why I Love the login mode on this thing.

CU You can get some excellent resolution better than what you get if you actually go into the you know pure number display like that and that's how far we're off. Um, in terms of I can actually jump between these things Tren chart There it is. So we'll go back to all here. but that's like I've autoscaled that.

So there're the figures up there and that's the real time display up the top here. So let's look at what these figures here actually represent. So what I'm going to do is actually go into the Uh vertical range and I'm going to change the scale here to represent the Uh 05% accuracy around the nominal 1 volt that I would expect for my microcurrent. So I can go in here.

so point 05% of 1 volt is 999 5 Zer and I'll do that for the high side as well and you'll see how it's going to change. So what we'll want to do is 1 * 05% there and then we want to add that on of course and 1.05 So we want to get in here and change this scale to 1.05 Oh triple O 5 Bingo 1.05 milliamps. So that range there now from 99.5 to Uh 1.5 That represents the nominal 05% range of my microcurrent here and you can see how it's well within that window. Not in terms of Uh.

Not only in terms of absolute accuracy, it's only you know, smidgen like, you know, half a be's dick under the nominal uh, one microamp. but it's you know, in terms of drift as well, you can see that the drift is actually pretty insignificant. Uh, it's well within that. So I'm very happy with that.

This um Advent test unit on the 1 milliamp range More than accurate enough. Better than its spec. And if you remember back here at the data sheet, it's one day stability St Spec: That's just its stability, let alone its absolute overall accuracy, which is up here. If we program in the 0.01% into their bingo, this is what we get: 0 plus minus .01% around the nominal, so it's still with inside the 0.01% including the absolute value and the drift with uh, in this case, probably a 5 C three, four, or five, maybe uh, degreesc.

overall change here in the lab, so that's brilliant. So I'm really stoked with this unit. Absolute bargain I Think for for 300 bucks, a Precision voltage and current generator that's good enough to calibrate any you know, at least any 4 and a half digit uh meter. so you know it really is awesome.

and it specs are better than the data sheet. you know it's me. Performance is measuring better than the data sheet. So anyway I finished my data loging I don't really need to, uh, you know, save it.

Not a huge deal. I Got a video record here that's good enough for me and so let's go back to the um, oh sorry, let's go back to the Uh number display here and let's uh, play around with it. So I'm going to screw up my data login here and uh, let's see what happens. Like you can switch the polarity of the output.

So let's see what happens when I go to positive or negative. Uh, it's 9994. You know, let's say 4 Z there. Look at that.

it's not far off. it's just change by well, bugger. all really? Um, you know, well, within, well within the spec. So that's pretty darn good.

And let's see what happens when we go up one digit at a time. It's only a five-digit uh display, but it's still very good now. when I First, uh, got this thing I thought oh, you type in the number cuz it's got like a number keypad here and you type in the number but it doesn't actually work like that. The these two uh, are up down buttons for this digit.

these are up down buttons for that digit and so on. So it's really quite weird. So here we go: 99.4 Let's see if we go up one Uh digit here. I.E We're going up 100.1 microamp there.

Let's see if that jumps to in is still has exactly the same offset. Yeah, look at that. it jumped up and it's still 41 there and we can go up one and we're increasing that digit. Look at that.

Look at that. That is fantastic. So that offset there is stays the same, but the jumps are precisely to that least significant digit there. I Love it.

or actually beyond that. So that is really, you know. Quite impressive. I like that.

a lot. that is great and of course, uh, it's it. Goes up to 1.19 I think is its maximum uh on all ranges like that. So now let's check out the other ranges.

One milliamp of course is its uh, maximum uh, range or minimum range there? I Mean you know I can actually go down and generate you know, 100 microamps or even one microamp or even 0.1 microamps. But then we're right down. You know we're really quite right down in the noise. so I'm not going to really, you know, So it's not the best for generating low value currents like that.

I Mean look, you know we we. we're just around there, right? We're down at the least significant digit. Your accuracy is way out the window cuz you're not near the full scale there. So let's go down and let's go upper range.

let's go to 10 milliamps. Look at that still well within spec. Calculated that 0.02% Absolute Fantastic. I Mean that's with inside the spec of this agilant unit and on the 100 milliamp range? Well, well look at, you know it's Well, within spec Again, in this case cuz it's 100 is going to be uh, this is going to be 005 or you know, 004 uh%, Basically off from absolute once again assuming that our agilant unit here is absolutely bang on.

But hey, these two units being like, you know, almost, uh uh, bang on together gives you really good confidence that you know both units are working. you know, and are well within specification. that's for sure. sure.

And of course, as I said, I've got other Um transfer standards which I can use to actually test Precision voltage sources Precision resistors and stuff that I can use to verify uh and sort of you know, calibrate in quote marks. my Um Agilant 34 61a here and I know it's uh, well within specification as I said. So very very confident about this puppy. So I'm sure I'd bet money that if I took this to a standards Scal lab, it' be well within exactly what I'm measuring here and we go negative on that.

Look at that. Fantastic. All right, let's uh, play around with the voltage mode, shall we? I'm still in that current mode. so we're getting a maximum output voltage of uh, 13.4 volts there.

but let's switch on over to Volts. So we're in. We're generating uh one volt. Oh I Got to press the operate button.

That's the you know that's the output onoff button and check that out. Oh, look at that bang on of course because we've got our four decimal plate there, so not a problem. Let's go up one digit. Look at that.

once again, completely spot on with the jumps. There's only that offset at the end. the point? you know the 072 offset there, so that is incredible. So what does that work out to in percentage? Well, let's do a quick calculation: 1.74 Uh, minus one is that times 100 equals bang? Look at that.

0.74% Awesome. And 10 volts? Not a problem. And it's lowest range of course. Oh no, it's lowest.

R there's 100. Sorry, it's lowest range is 10 m volts. so that one is a little bit out there. We go.

Least significant digit there. Oh no. Oh no, we were four least significant digits. but even right down on the 10 Molt range, we're still under 05% Beauty And it's got a 4 wire input sense too.

although I haven't actually been able to get that to work cuz I put it on four wire and I don't attach anything to here and it's still uh, displaying the current just fine. so you know I'm not sure what's actually going on there, whether or not it's got a measure I Don't think it's got a true measurement mode to read back. it's just. you know, it's just actually a generator.

Um, but anyway. um, probably need to use a manual for that. It's got adjustable Uh current limit set so you don't damage anything. There's just a pot in there.

you can just turn it so you know the operator can't come around and you know, bang a few buttons and and blow up your uh, you know, real expensive semiconductor under test or something like that and they're very likely, uh, very high quality torium copper contacts. No doubt. they sort of have that sort of tinge to them that you probably can't see it on camera. but you know you can sort of tell those high quality tum copper contacts when you see them.

And if we take a random, uh, microcurrent here, whack in our 1 milliamp assuming it spot on, we knew it was actually a bit, uh, low. Anyway, it's uh, still 0.012% out from that nominal well within spec and the milliamps range there. at 100 milliamps test current, we're only uh 03 % out. That's better than its nominal spec of .1% And there's the back of the unit's got Gpib interface, trigger and ready trigger input ready output operator hold I Guess you can, uh, turn that off so the operator can't do anything stupid.

calibration? uh button which I'm not going to mess with of course. uh, selectable Mains voltage so you can safely, uh, buy this gear um anywhere in the world like here in Australia and just switch it over and uh, some. looks like some BCD um inputs as well for uh, test systems and stuff like that and a voltage limit pot on the back manufactured by Advantest in Tokyo in Japan Brilliant Japanese made unfortunately no date code. We'll have to crack it open and have a look and I can confirm after popping off the lid that this is about 94 vintage.

So there you go, about 20 years old but still very nice little bit of Kit And no I'm not going to show you inside because I said this would be a quick video and won't be if I do a tear down and I can't just blow my W on one video can I So yes, if you want me to, if you want to see a tear down inside this thing, uh, please let me know in the comments although I probably will anyway eventually. So there you go I Hope you enjoyed uh that little uh look at this advantest R4 6142 programmable DC voltage current generator and I reckon advantest is a nice little search term to whack into eBay to uh, try and find some good Bargains but the stuff usually goes for a price premium. but I got this at quite a decent price I think so if you like the video, please give it a big thumbs up and if you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Eev blog. Forum Catch you next time.

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