01.11.19
'Control never leaves the engineer'
Source: RTM Oct/Nov 2019
David Brazier, area sales manager and site manager at OMICRON, spoke with Rail Technology Magazine’s Matt Roberts to find out more about their latest product, the CMC 430, and supporting engineers utilising the device.
OMICRON Electronics is a market-leader in relay transmission testing across industry sectors, and has recently expanded its product portfolio with the new, highly accurate CMC 430 protection test set and calibrator.
This ultra-portable device is the preferred choice in environments where numerical and communication-based protection prevails, through offering extraordinarily high precision and its ability to operate as a source-based calibrator for all kinds of measurement devices.
As David Brazier, area sales manager at OMICRON, explained: “I think the portability of a testing device is crucial, as often engineers don’t have road access to rural sites, and have to walk in. The low weight of the CMC 430 gives the engineer the opportunity to carry it in an OMICRON rucksack, making it easy to get to the workplace.”
Weighing just 8.7kg, the CMC 430 is one of the lightest multiple phase secondary test sets in the world. The CMC 430 allows you to carry out testing of all types of relays (solid state numerical or IEC 61850). It comes with 6 voltage outputs, so it’s ready for testing synchro-check and bay control systems with six voltage inputs. With the addition of RelaySimTest, the device performs distributed testing by simultaneously controlling multiple CMCs.
The CMC 430 generates highly precise test signals for measurement device calibration such as energy meters, transducers or PQ devices. With two Ethernet parts and six analogue/binary input channels, along with its software option Enerlyzer Live, it supports hybrid measurements of analog and binary.
It’s not just support for the purchased device itself which is important to OMICRON, either, as Mr. Brazier explains: “As a business, we rely on trust. When you go into a face-to-face meeting, I’d rather walk out with trust than an order, because as long as you’ve got a relationship, you’re moving forwards.”
That company ethos and a real belief in knowledge sharing is a big reason why OMICRON has invested in its training academy at its UK base in Stafford – a facility which is in fact being utilised by engineers from across Europe, and beyond. Mr. Brazier said: “We’ve seen 300 delegates through our doors this year for training alone. We are taking people through not just how to use the equipment, but how to use it on their applications, not only using the CMCs, but also focusing on transformer and rotating machines technology as well.
“OMICRON values what we call ‘Awareness Sessions’, where we sit down with engineers to get a better understanding of how they use our products and what we can do to improve.. It’s all very well being told something is really good, but we are also listening to why they want something slightly different. To ensure we meet industry trends, more than 15% of our profit goes straight back onto R&D.”
Similarly, along with online materials and the continually-accessible support infrastructure, OMICRON believes it can ensure that engineers are more thoroughly trained and given “the ability to actually see and understand what is happening whilst doing the testing, so that the control never leaves the engineer.”