Fluke!

[Ric_]

I'm considering purchasing a Fluke DTX-1800 CableAnalyzer because I need to check the quality of some of the cabling at my school.

 

These things are rather pricey (read rather pricey as over £5K) so I was wondering if any other schools would find it useful to be able to loan it off us - for a small donation to school funds obviously.

 

The tool can certify cables and produce pretty reports detailing all manner of stuff.

[beast_gts]

My local cablemonkeys used to let me borrow theirs... havn't asked in a while.

[CyberNerd]

Sounds pricy !

we have one of these for £300:

http://www.test-um.com/product_detail.asp?itemno=NT700

and a separate tool for fibre. If suspect cables aren't detected with the test-um a couple of laptops point to point do the trick. Nice to have the pretty reports though.

[plexer]

Cybernerd thats the same kit as what I've got. What do you have for the fibre as I'm looking at adding a fibre checker to my tool kit next year.

 

Ric_ bear in mind that there is also costs for having them checked and recalibrated every so often. They give you a visual pass result but interpereting the rest of the data to see how good a cable actually is probably needs a bit of learning.

 

Sounds like a good idea though for schools local to you and I suppose courier costs are not prohibitive for others so maybe edugeek could provide this type of specialist equipment in the future.

 

What about the validator range of test equipment from test um instead?

 

Thanks,

 

Ben

[CyberNerd]

@plexer

we use a power meter http://www.techoptics.com/pages/AVS%20kit.html and light source to test for decibel loss in the fibre. - no TDR etc, but IMHO this is overkill if you only have a few kM of fibre.

I 100% recommend talking to http://www.techoptics.com for all fibre related equipment. They are very helpful and will steer you in the right direction.

[paul]

@Ric_would certainly make use of the equipment if ever required. My last set of contractors could do with one to! (last time they came to lay a new fibre cable they checked for continuarity in the fibre by shining a torch down the cable!!!! Needless to say they haven't been back since!)

[plexer]

Just had a quote for power meter from techoptics: OLK51-MM

 

£642.00 ouch.

 

Ben

[Ric_]

Just had a look at the Test-Um Validator and Validator-NT and got a couple of prices (£795 and £970 respectively). There's not as many features and there is no upgradability but at that price it is definately worth considering.

 

Anybody use one of these?

[plexer]

I think disease bought one of those.

 

Ben

[john]

If I did more cabling hiring one of them to certify / sign off a few sites at once would be a good idea.