How to Calibrate a Pressure Gauge with the Fluke 8270A High-Pressure Controller Calibrator

Hi, this is Jeff Grossman, Sales Engineer for Fluke Calibration’s pressure and mass flow calibration solutions, here to provide you with a demonstration of one of our three modular pressure controllers. I happen to have here the 8270A which has a maximum pressure of 6000 psi complemented by the 6270A maximum pressure of 3000 psi and the 8370A with maximum pressure of 15,000 psi. The nice thing is they share a lot of commonality which makes them easy to switch between and easy to use.

Very small footprint. They all have modules, pressure measurement modules that are used to make pressure measurements at the desired pressure. Pressure measurement modules can be of various ranges and various uncertainties. They can be mixed and matched to optimize the configuration for your solution. All of our pressure controllers have very wide ranging turndown so you can just as easily do a 6000 psi calibration with the 8270A as you can a 50 psi calibration without having to make any changes.

When it’s time to calibrate these modules, the measurement module, take the thumb wheel, spin it, take out the module that you’re trying to calibrate; you can see it takes less than two or three seconds. When it comes back from calibration simply reinstall it in the same or a different slot of your choice, and wait till you hear the click and that means it’s locked in; no torque wrench necessary. And no over-tightening.

The last module over here is the pressure control module. That’s really the main difference between the three chassis. The pressure control module is what allows the controller to set the pressure. This one happens to be a 6000 psi module.

To operate, it’s all touch screen with various functions depending on where you press on the front panel. Typically we calibrate analog gauges, digital gauges, pressure transducers or other instruments that you want. What the pressure controller will do is respond to your input by automatically setting the pressure.

What we have here is an accessory called the Contamination Prevention System. It protects the pressure controller from contamination that may be in a device under test that comes from its industrial use.

Ok, in this we’re going to 3000 test points to compare the device under test to the controller reference. We simply touch the field corresponding to setpoint, enter in 3000 psi and tell the pressure controller to control. And it’s on its way. Now we want to go to 4500 psi, we can simply hit the step-up button which is already set at 1500 psi ramp up to 4500 psi.

So the next thing we’re going to do is, we’re going to go down, all the way to 30 psi to show you how well it controls over a very wide range. By the way, we’re in what’s called Auto Mode so the controller’s picking the module that has the best uncertainty for the point we’re measuring every time we take a measurement point. You do have the option to use Fixed Mode if you prefer that the same reference module is used every time you measure at a point.

Here we are at our final test point of 30 psi. We’re connected to a digital pressure gauge right now, but if you were connected and calibrating an analog gauge, what we’d want to do at all points is to align the needle so that it’s directly above the nominal pressure. So it’s much easier to read without having to interpolate. The way we would do that is, for example, right now let’s say it’s a little under 30 psi; you wanted to be at 30…we have a jog knob. What you do is reach over, watch the gauge and as you turn the knob the set pressure will continue to increase until it gets to a point where the needle is right above 30 psi. At that point you would stop and then you would record what the reference is, in this case 30 point 17. Here as an example you see 30 point 0 0 on the digital pressure gauge.

Keep learning

Introducing the 8270A / 8370A High-Pressure Controller Calibrator - video
How to avoid contamination in pressure calibration - article
Preventing Contamination in Pressure Calibrations - webinar
Calculating Uncertainty When Using a Modular Pressure Controller - webinar

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