Latest Test and Measurement News

Automatic Testing of Battery Systems with integrated Charging Electronics

01 December 2010 – The German company BMZ Batterien-Montage-Zentrum presents an innovative tester for Li-Ion, Li‑FePh, Li-Titanate, Ni-Cd, Ni-MH and lead acid rechargeable batteries which allows a fully automatic test. The battery tester ATGB 1200 was designed for universal use in laboratory, production or service sectors.

In addition to typical functions such as cyclic charge and discharge, internal resistance measurement, pulse charging and reconditioning of the batteries, the ATGB 1200 also offers users the possibility of power supply simulation. Thanks to this unique feature, battery systems with integrated charging electronics can be tested fully automatically, thus significantly reducing labor costs for incoming goods inspections, reclamations, etc.

Dependent on the battery technology, the permissible voltage range of the batteries to be tested with the ATGB 1200 is 0.8 to 48 VDC and the charge/discharge current is 0 to 10 A, whereby the peak current at discharge can be 50 A. The sense lines of the voltage measurement enable an exact voltage measurement. Furthermore, the temperature of the battery can be accurately monitored with the integrated temperature sensor of the ATGB 1200.

At the rear the ATGB 1200 has a USB interface that serves as virtual RS232 interface for setting of the battery test equipment and read out of measurement values.

The ATGB 1200 software offers the following functions: Define battery, define programs; device management and export of test data report after completion of testing. A total of up to 95 different battery data sets can be stored, whereby each data set is made up from the name, type, battery technology, characteristics, connection adapter used as well as charge and discharge parameters. Furthermore, up to 25 application-specific programs can be stored, for which up to 50 program steps for each are available to the programmer. The parameters of the individual program steps are monitored automatically by the ATGB 1200 for their input limits.