Plenty of repetitive bench work needs no test software: hold a board at three voltages for an hour each, switch a product on and off a thousand times, step a load through a soak. A UDP5000 runs that kind of sequence by itself from a list stored in the supply.

What the list holds

Each step is a voltage setting, a current setting and a time. The supply runs the steps in order, then repeats the whole list for the number of cycles you set, from 1 to 9,999, or until you stop it. A list can hold up to 128 steps, and each step can last from 0.1 s to 99,999.9 s, a little over 27 hours.

You can build the list on the front panel, in UNI-T’s PC software, or in the supply’s built-in web page over the network. A separate Delayer function switches the output on and off on a timed schedule, with times from 0.1 s to 9,999.9 s, for cycling that needs no voltage changes.

Three jobs it covers

Voltage margins. Run the product at its nominal input, then 5 % high, then 5 % low, and watch for resets or errors. Contract manufacturers use this on boards that will see a range of adapters and batteries in the field.

On/off cycling. Alternate a step at nominal voltage with a step at 0 V. Hundreds of cold starts find the board that fails to boot one time in fifty, a fault a single power-up will not show.

Step soak. Raise the voltage in stages and hold each one, so that a weak part shows up at a known point instead of at full stress.

When to move to a script

A list runs open loop. It does not read a measurement and decide what to do next, and it does not log results. When the test has to branch, stop on a failure, or record every reading, drive the supply over USB or LAN with SCPI commands from a script. The same supply does both, so a sequence can start as a list and move to a script later.

Try this

• Voltage margins at 12 V, three steps of 60 s and 60 cycles: the run takes 3 hours.
• Press On/off cycling and set 1,000 cycles. Each cycle is 40 s, so the run lasts about 11 hours.
• Type a step voltage above 105 % of the model’s rating, for example 45 V on the UDP5040-40. The check flags it, because the setting range ends at 105 % of rated output.

UNI-T. Design. Debug. Deploy.™