Joost Korthout (R) with Ian Davies from Eskom at the recent NLA exhibition

The NLA conference is a great vehicle to stay in touch with the metrology world in South Africa and surrounding countries, according to Joost Korthout, the regional sales manager for Fluke Precision Measurement.

Hosted by the sole authorised distributor for Fluke in southern Africa, Comtest, Korthout presented two papers at the NLA conference, held recently at Emperor’s Palace in Ekurhuleni. In all, Fluke and Comtest presented four papers at the prestigious annual conference.

Korthout presented papers on the technology behind two new products from Fluke, discussing the importance of properly calibrating measurement instruments. The first paper presented by Korthout was on RF calibration and measurement, the second discussed the calibration of electrical safety testers.

The NLA conference saw the Africa launch of three Fluke instruments. The Fluke 9640A RF reference source calibrator combines the functionalities of a number of older, obsolete signal sources used in RF calibration applications in one tool. The Fluke 5320A multifunction electrical safety tester calibrator was introduced to meet the various electrical safety requirements practiced in countries around the world. This is the first instrument in the world that can calibrate such a wide variety of testers. Furthermore, the Fluke 8854A and 8846A series of 6.5 digital multimeters was introduced, providing the precision and versatility for manufacturing test and R&D engineering applications, handling the most demanding measurements on the bench or in a system.

Papers were also presented by Comtest experts on predictive maintenance in industrial environments using thermography and evaluating remote measurement problems.