High voltage insulation test eqipment...so expensive?

[treez]

Hello,
We need an end-of-line tester for our offline led lamps production line. (40 to 150W)
All it does is take the impedance between Mains Live/Neutral and Earth.
-And yet it costs £6000.
Why are they so expensive?
Do you know of a cheaper one?
Our production staff are having to share one and they are almost having fights with each other over it.
We desperately need another one.
Do you know of a cheap one?

 

[dick_freebird]

"Why?" I expect goes to three things
- Danger and responsibility - lethal voltages and lawyers
- Acceptance - probably this is an instrument used for
gaining lab cert or type acceptance, so calibration will
be tight, stable, and more expensive
- Small market - no mass market amortization of development
costs, no driving-down of material and assembly cost etc.

None of which matters.

Now, maybe you could get to a much cheaper solution if
(say) you did not need traceability ("indication only") or
the ultimate accuracy (like, a guardbanded go/no-go test
can tolerate some slop). Then maybe it becomes a HV
PSU, a limiting resistor / clamps and a multimeter or two.

If you want a first class seat you buy a first class ticket.
But there's no shame in going Greyhound if you have the
time and nobody sees you do it.

 

[marce]

Instead of whinging look online, you can get Mega testers from Screwfix for £600 that will do the test.

 

[treez]

Thanks...
..indeed, we are using the Seaward ClareHal 104 production tester to do earth bonding, hipot, and output power measurements. The product costs £6k and we need another one but cannot afford it.
So, we are currently using the Seaward ClareHal 104 end-of-line electrical tester...we need another, but the "104" is way too expensive and massively over-spec'd for our purpose....there dont seem to be any with our lesser requirements..do you know of any..

Seaward ClareHal 104 production electrical tester...
http://www.seaward.co.uk/products/i...asurement-equipment/safety-testing/hal-series


The Seaward ClareHal 104 product is massively over-spec'd for our products, because we only need to measure output power up to 200W, and the Seaward ClareHal 104 measures output power up to 5kW.
Also, we do not need a power factor measurement from the production tester.
Also, we only need to measure up to 1A of output current, and don’t need the measurement up to 20A as the Seaward ClareHal 104 provides.
May I ask do you know of a similar product, but suitably down-spec’d, for our humble purpose?