PG9602/9607 Piston Gauge

Refined 50 mm piston-cylinder design

PG9602/9607’s piston-cylinder assembly builds upon more than 15 years of design, manufacture and calibration of 50 mm piston-cylinders. PC-9607-5 is a 5 kPa/kg piston-cylinder with a stationary piston and floating cylinder design. Improved manufacturing and testing methods are used to produce a very low distortion assembly. The 50 mm piston-cylinder provides exceptional performance up to 500 kPa with a 100 kg mass load. The PG9607 mounting post allows an independent controlled clearance pressure to be applied to the inside of the piston, thus predictably varying the size of the gap between the piston and cylinder for advanced study

Innovations to minimize uncertainty

Two decades ago, DH Instruments PG7000 family of piston gauges introduced the advantages of on-board sensing and monitoring technology, as well as other performance and ergonomic enhancements. The PG9000 platform adds several innovations to improve pressure measurements even further.

The platform consists of a PG terminal, a piston gauge base and a new remote electronics module. The terminal is the user interface. It stores metrological component data, reports operating and ambient condition status and calculates pressure.

The PG9000 piston gauge base supports automatic piston-cylinder rotation and mass handling, but all of the electronics to support the sensors and rotation control have been relocated to a remote electronics module. This architecture supports the best possible temperature stability at the base, even with prolonged vacuum operation, since any significant sources of heat are located away from the base.

The PG9602/9607 mounting post has two integrated PRTs for reduced piston-cylinder temperature uncertainty. The PRTs are easily removed for calibration. A capacitance diaphragm gauge is included in the optional vacuum reference hardware for making residual vacuum measurements in absolute mode. PG9607 can also integrate the measurement output from virtually any user-supplied vacuum sensor.

Metrology supported by automation

AMH automated mass handling technology is expanded on PG9602/9607 to provide gauge and absolute operation with up to a 100 kg mass load. Eliminating manual mass loading minimizes mechanical wear, improving mass stability. The automated mass handler operates inside the evacuated bell jar, so the time to release and draw a vacuum while changing masses between test points is eliminated. The sustained vacuum produces lower and more static residual vacuum values. Total test time and productivity are greatly improved, especially on absolute pressure tests. More importantly, full automation promotes highly consistent measurements and allows extensive tests with many test points that would be impractical to perform manually. And with the help of calibration management software like COMPASS® for Pressure, tests can be run fully unattended.