Product Tip of the Month December 1999

Product Tip of the Month

December 1999

All Analyzers

Cable Care

When attempting to balance a propeller, the analyzer is generally blamed as the culprit when the attempt is unsuccessful. The odds are actually very low that this is the case. In resolving customer problems by repair, we find that cut or pinched cables cause the majority of equipment malfunctions.

The cables supplied with your ACES Systems analyzer are shielded and Teflon coated to protect them from electrical interference, weather, and petroleum. We even made them bright ACES Systems' yellow so that you would have to really try to actually misplace them. The one thing we can’t do is protect them from being closed in tightly fitting doors and windows. This action will cut or pinch the cable. which in turn either breaks the electrical connection to the analyzer or shorts it out. Burning the cable on hot exhaust stacks or bleed air ducts is also something to watch out for. In either case, the results are the same, erratic readings or no readings at all.

If the cables you are using are either shorted or cut, the following are some of the symptoms you can expect to see:

- Very low vibration amplitude. Most often background noise is all you will see which will be below the .002 IPS level when using a velocity sensor.

- Erratic or constantly shifting phase angles, especially from run to run.

- Indications at the end of a run that the propeller is NOT excessively out of balance. This may be indicated by a prompt such as "Continue to balance?" or a very low solution weight for the application.

- No tach indication.

Each time you use your equipment you should check several things as indicated in the users manual. Among those is cable condition. Make sure your cables are not cut, pinched, or kinked. Check the connectors for condition. Make sure the pins are not bent or broken. Check the point where the cable enters the connector and make sure it hasn’t been pulled loose. Make sure you are using the correct cable. Although cable connectors may be of identical size and shape, the number of pins or gender of the connector may be misidentified and therefore connected to another connector which is not the mating match for it. If you do find damage, get the damage repaired as soon as possible. If you need diagrams or pin out information for one of our cables, call or email ACES Systems.

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