Analysers, which one, how much?

[TestDriver]

Hello all,

My company is interested in buying a new noise/vibration analyser and I was asked for my input. Having read Mr. Greg Locock's opinions on the subject (faq384-646,644) and being a little familiar with some of the systems available (Spectralab, H&K Pulse, Larson Davis), I thought I'd ask for further input from this group.

We need a portable system that can do FFT, spectrum analysis, watterfall plots, narrow band, 1/8th octave, order tracking etc. There seem to be plenty of systems out there that can do this plus a miriad of things that I've not listed. However, we also want to be able to use at least 4 accelerometers along with 4 mics as well as a tach.

I attended a H&k presentation where I saw that the Pulse system will do this. I imagine there are lots of others out there that I've not heard about but more importantly, I don't know how much those other systems sell for. This is what I'm trying to find out.

If someone out there has experience with such a system as well as knowledge of the cost and training/support offered, I'd appreciate your help. Thank you.

Ramon Mendoza

 

[GregLocock]

1/8 octave is a bit odd, do you mean 1/3, or 1/12?

Costs are about $US 20000 -40000 for a basic standalone four channel, I'd guess you are describing a system that will be 40-80k.

At that level of complexity I would start to be wary of the single-box solutions, a laptop PC based one will be easier to use and will have better database functions. Don't worry about the lack of FFT processing cards, the speed of modern processors is enough that they blitz through FFT analysis. It will be easy to expand a PC based system to 16 or 32 channels.

If you regularly work with anyone else, get the same system as them.

Support contracts run 10-15% per year.

Training is about 3 days, typically, assuming you have experienced people who have not used a particular machine before. I'd expect to be able to use different machines from the same manufacturer without a training course, by playing around and reading the manual. The cost of the training varies wildly, we get cheap training from salesmen, or sometimes we fly the machine's designer out and get serious.



Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[TestDriver]

Hello Greg,

Thanks for the info. Yes, 1/8th octave seems odd. It might be stricktly a tire thing but we do look at that once in a while. Mostly we want to see 1/3 octave stuff but somewhere sometime there will be a request for more.

At those prices someone is going to have to bump their projected budget up somewhat.

Regards.

Ramon Mendoza