Universal Synaptics’ Portable IFD technology was featured in an article by Barfield, Inc. entitled How to Troubleshoot No Fault Founds in Complex Wire Harnesses. The article states:
Finding a[n] [intermittent] problem in a bundle or wire harness is a complex challenge. Sporadic intermittences that appear in mid-air are detected and reported by pilots. Once the aircraft is back on the ground these intermittences are difficult, if not impossible for technicians to replicate. Aircraft vibration can not easily be replicated, and many times the intermittences happen in fractions of milliseconds.
Therefore, problems observed in mid-air can not easily be replicated on the ground. Technicians rely on ohmmeters to run conductivity testing, selecting line by line, looking for the problem. The tool of choice, a multimeter, is set up to find transient [faults] with millisecond accuracy. There are two challenges with this approach:
- Harnesses are interconnected systems of multiple wire, and a multimeter is only capable of testing one wire at a time.
- It is possible that the transient [faults] occur in less that a millisecond, undetectable by the multimeter.
The Portable IFD detects and isolates intermittent, transient faults as short a duration as 50 nanoseconds on all circuits, simultaneously and continuously, of a complex wiring harness bundle or cable set.
To read the complete article, click here.