| | | | Does anyone out there involved in RF manufacture have any experience with the KIC Slim-Kic profiler? Do you find any interference problems between the RF transmissions and the testing of your products. We build primarily high-freq stuff like point-to point type, Cellular, paging, etc. I'm not sure of the freq the KIC transmits at. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. | | | | | | | | Jason Gregory | | | | Process Tech | | | | Tadiran Microwave Networks TX USA | | | | (281)263-6671 | | | | | | | Jason, | | | | | | I don't know what freq it it transmits on, but the signal is very weak. I have my receiver on a computer cart that I can wheel from oven to oven, and if there's no clear path from the transmitter to the receiver, I lose contact. For example, baord magazines get stored near our oven (since the unlaoder is after the oven, it is a logical place), and if the mags are between the transmitter and reciever, I lose contact. You'd never think of baord mags as a real RF shiled, now would you? | | | | | | Before I made the receiver portable, I tried to transmit from an oven about 30 feet away, and no dice. | | | | | | I don't know whre your test area is located relative to your reflow ovens, or how sensitive your test equipment is, but I wouldn't anticipate a lot of interference. Have you called KIC and asked them? | | | | | | Chrys | | | | | I agree, Chrys. The nine volt battery inside is such low amp / hour rating its unlikely the transmitter has any real power. Its probably 500kHz to 30Mhz range. I have used the Side kic and slim Kic models (5 years) and the range is about 20 feet on a new 9 volt battery. Keep in mind your factory is bombarded with RF energy much greater than the KIC. Pager, cell phone, FM and AM bands broad cast on imense power levels. Obvously, much greater than the KIC. Also consider the broad band energy created by contactors switching on your wash system pumps, servo motors, etc. That in itself is much more difficult to contoll as it is broad band vs narrow band high frequency energy which can be localizedon the spectrum. Testing areas sensitive to this energy should be in a Faraday cage. | | | | If your testing involves broadcast of RF energy, I would suspect the power is very limited as you would have to be liscensed with signifficant power --greater than a couple of watts (pagers, cell phone stuff). Your broadcast test should also be in a Faraday cage. | | If in doubt, demo the KIC equipment. You can test the receiver / transmitter by logging in the temp. (use room temp) then let it data log until the battery goes dead. Next examine the text data for missing datum or wacky numbers.. Warning this would take hours. I suspect you will only see the standard variation of the room temperature. | | I live (and DIE) by my KIC. | | Dean, | | Process Tech. | | | | Jason, | | I've just been doing a comparison of the KIC, New Multicore, and now the New stuff from Datapaq. | One of the biggest prob's I had of the Kic was loosing the signal but It never actually suffered or created RF noise. I eventually just used it as a std datalogger without the RF setup..I figured I could wait the 5 or 6 mins it was gonna be in the oven to see what was happening so maybe that would be a way to go. | | JohnW | | Jason,
I work with KIC Thermal Profiling. Our SlimKIC transmits at 433mhz and 303mhz. (433 is our standard). The units are designed to operate at 100 feet open air, but once inside an oven, the signal drops significantly. As far as I know we haven't had anyone complain of interference of test equipment, but if you have equipement within 100 feet that is sensitive to the transmission frequency, you will probably have a problem. We will be glad to leave a unit with you for a little while to see if you have any issues. Thanks, PCK.
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