Special Report: Low- to Medium-Density Switching Systems (.PDF Download)
Low- to medium-density switching systems serve applications ranging from aircraft development to automated test, according to a selection of vendors surveyed for this report. Read on to find out what else they told us.
Emerging trends
What trends have you seen develop recently or expect to develop soon in low/mid-density switching systems?
Bob Stasonis, technical product specialist, Pickering Interfaces: There really is little new in terms of trends for low/mid-density switching, although we have addressed one new market. Typically, if you exclude high-voltage (standoff issues) and high-current applications (relay size), low/mid-density switches are specified for two reasons—budget and performance. Let me explain each separately. The budget issue relates to paying for “just enough test.” In other words, I may never need a greater switching capacity for my application and my budget is tight, so why buy more switching than I need? If budget is not an issue, you go for more switching to future-proof the system.