Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Useful And Essential Facts About Insulation Tester

By Barbara Morgan


Full current is expected to reach the desired destination when sent along a conductive wire under perfect conditions. However, some current is usually lost during the transmission, making this to be impossible in the real world. Several factors make some current to be lost during the transmission. However, this loss of current can be managed by insulating conductive wires using resistant sheath. This is what Insulation tester is all about.

In some cases, imperfections in cladding material allow current to leak and get lost to the surrounding. The leaking current can cause a lot of problems to the machinery and electrical circuits. That is why in order to maintain safety, the cladding needs to be tested on a regular basis. Doing this helps to identify problems before they cause equipment failure or harm people who handle the equipment through electrocution.

A cladding tester is the piece of equipment that is used to accomplish the testing. The equipment works by measuring the resistance of the cladding to flow of current. This indicates the integrity of the cladding in turn. Cladding that is of high quality allows very little current to escape through it. However, low-quality cladding allow huge amounts of current to escape through.

When measuring the quality of cladding, testers measure different types of currents. Absorption, capacitive, and leakage current are the three kinds of current that are measured. When voltage is first applied to a conductor, there is an initial burst of current that flows. This initial burst of current is referred to as capacitive current.

Capacitive current is similar to the first burst of water from a hose. The initial burst is usually very high, but it then reduces very fast. The drop is caused by the fact that the hose becomes filled with water after a sort while and the flow of water becomes steady. In the case of electricity, the conductor becomes fully charged, hence the drop in current flow.

Absorption current starts out very high and drops just in the same way capacitive current does. However, what differentiates the two kinds of current is the fact that absorption current drops much slowly. The storage of potential energy within the cladding is responsible for the gradual drop in absorption current. In cladding testing using time resistance method, absorption current is a very important part.

The third type of current tested is leakage current, which is also called conduction current. Unlike the other currents which drop over time, this type of current is small and steady. The current occurs both over and through the insulating sheath. Sheath that deteriorates in quality over time causes the leakage current to increase as time passes. The increase in leakage current as resistance decreases is indicated by an insulation test meter.

The market today is filled with a wide variety of cladding testers. Manufacturers are located in various countries worldwide. Different manufacturers make products that have different levels of quality. Similarly, the applications that different products are used for vary. One should be careful with their choice because there are residential, commercial, and industrial testers in existence.




About the Author:



No comments: