Design and implementation of a measurement system for high-speed testing of electromechanical relays

Abstract An automatic measurement system has been developed for high-speed testing of the most important magnetic and contact properties for elementary monostable and bistable miniature electromechanical relays. The system design is based on the virtual instrumentation approach, which is a combination of software and hardware. The comprehensive test application was developed using the LabVIEW graphical programming environment, while the used hardware is based on commercial measurement equipment and a custom developed device. The presented measurement methods are based on simultaneous generation and acquisition of analog and digital waveforms with the high-speed data acquisition device. The implemented automatic relay measurement system was validated metrologically and tested successfully with all supported relay types. The results show that the developed system is capable of performing accurate measurements of the coil resistance, contact resistance, time parameters, and operate/release values in less than two seconds.