Summary
Dominion Global, a major distributor of Fluke products, works with a range of clients to develop custom technology solutions for operations and maintenance (O&M). At their service facility in Mexico City, metrologists wanted to find a faster, more affordable way to calibrate Fluke 55XX-series calibrators in-house.
The team set up a new protocol combining the Fluke Reference Multimeter, Fluke 5540A Multi-Product Calibrator, and Fluke calibration software that cut calibration time, cost, and risk of error. With this suite of Fluke products working together, Dominion:
- Made calibrations 14 times faster, slicing time to complete from two weeks to six hours
- Enabled more thorough calibration by increasing from four test points to eight test points per test
- Boosted test repeatability and cut error rates with automation
- Seamlessly generated calibration certificates for laboratory customers
Background
Dominion Global provides comprehensive and sustainable technology services to support operations and maintenance for a wide variety of clients. The company serves industries such as energy, manufacturing, telecommunications,healthcare, and finance. With offices on every continent, Dominion works with more than 1,000 clients in 35 countries.
Dominion is also the third-largest global distributor of Fluke products and has been a customer since 1985. The company sells calibration solutions to its clients, and some of its facilities provide calibration services as well.
At the Dominion service center in Mexico City, customers can send in a wide range of measurement and calibration devices for metrologists to calibrate. By utilizing the connective capabilities of Fluke software and tools to augment the lab's capabilities, the team has found new, innovative ways to offer their customers a broader range of calibration services.
"At the beginning, we only had electrical calibration," explained Rafael Gomez, who has been a service center manager for the Mexico City facility for 20 years. "Nowadays, we have electrical, pressure, temperature, and radiation calibration."
Gomez plays an instrumental role in designing calibration procedures for the entire facility and has been a driving force behind developing the facility's range of services. In 2022, he and his team began the process of building a protocol to calibrate calibrators in their laboratory. Soon after, they realized some major pain points for customers.
Challenges
Historically, customers looking to calibrate 55XX-series calibrators had to ship them all the way to the Fluke calibration laboratory in Everett, Washington. For labs located in Latin America, sending equipment to be calibrated in the U.S. often resulted in long waiting times for tools to return.
55XX-series calibrators can also take a while to calibrate by hand. "If you want to calibrate a 5540A manually, it can take almost a week or two weeks because there are a lot of intervals and a lot of calibration points," said Gomez. So, he aimed to find a way to decrease calibration times and to affordably calibrate his own team's calibrators in-house, with the ultimate goal to offer the service to Dominion clients in Latin America. With his team, Gomez set out to explore how automation could help.
Using Fluke calibration software and an 8588A Reference Multimeter, they figured out a better, faster way to calibrate 5540A Multi-Product Calibrators at their laboratory in Mexico City.
Implementation
Building a new software protocol for the 8588A was the Dominion team's main challenge for automating calibration. This set of instructions would show the 8588A how to calibrate each test point on the 5540A. But drafting the protocol was no easy feat, given that the rules had to be written from scratch.
As a trained MET/CAL instructor, Gomez leaned on his extensive knowledge of Fluke calibration software to automate testing with the 8588A. It took two years, and a lot of trial and error, to complete the protocol. In the process, the team had to configure the software, run installation, and set up a server. At times the project got frustrating, but "I learned a lot," Gomez said.
Despite the challenges, the project highlighted the high configurability and adaptability of Fluke calibration software. Programs are designed for self-management, allowing clients to learn programming and implement solutions tailored to their lab's needs. This approach can easily be adopted by other laboratories with similar requirements, especially those located far from primary labs.
Results
The 8588A/5540A setup, combined with Fluke calibration software, made calibration 14 times faster than if the same procedure were done manually.
Since the process is automated, "you can run a calibration of almost 80% of all the magnitudes in six hours," Gomez said. Manually, the same process would have taken up to two weeks.
The calibration software also enabled more thorough testing. "Normally, laboratories use only four points per test," explained Gomez. "But with MET/CAL, you can upgrade this to do eight points per test. So, you can increase the quality of the calibration."
The repeatability of calibrations is better, too, according to Gomez. Because his team's process relies on automation, "you can run a calibration the same today and tomorrow or next year," he said. This reduces human error, since Fluke calibration software will run calibrations exactly the same way every time, leaving no room for manual mistakes.
Plus, the software automatically generates a calibration report that complies with accredited standards, making it easy for metrologists to produce these critical documents for the laboratory's customers.
And with such a simple and affordable setup, these tools can even be purchased by customers with large operations to give them a cost-effective way to calibrate in-house. The 8588A, 5540A, and Fluke calibration software integrate seamlessly, unlocking customizable abilities for a range of applications.
At the Mexico City service center, the team plans to increase the number of calibrators they have in-house to broaden the range of automated calibrations they can perform. Next, they want to acquire a 5730A High Performance Multifunction Calibrator and integrate Fluke calibration software with a 5790B AC Measurement Standard, Gomez said.
They're also working to optimize fiber optic calibration by developing new software programs for automated calibration. Combined, these initiatives will probably take another two years.
"There's a lot of work to do," Gomez said.
Conclusion
The Fluke Calibration 8588A Reference Multimeter and 8558A Digital Multimeter are suitable replacements for analog null detectors, as was the previous generation 8508A Reference Multimeter. Appropriate corrections must be made for current emanating from the meter input terminals. Before any other digital multimeter is used as a null detector, the input bias current and other current sources must be considered to determine the significance of error generation to the circuit.