re: lab equipment. discussing money, seeking advice
@noracodes so the main thing is, if it's set to 50 Ω load mode when you turn the output on (not if it's set to hi-Z load; you can also set it to other finite load impedances, but we don't know what happens in those cases because we never use them), the output will go high for a significant time (~10s or 100s of μs) before starting to actually output the requested waveform. it will also do this when you turn the output off.
this has blown up the IGBT in a test fixture we were using it with over a dozen times (fortunately it was a relatively cheap one at $5, we'd also trialled some $30 SiC MOSFETs in that design...) because it stayed on too long and saturated the inductor, dumping the entire contents of the capacitor bank into the FET all at once
-F
re: lab equipment. discussing money, seeking advice
@noracodes Also, the two channels aren't synchronized in certain output modes until you adjust the phase offset setting. If you turn on both channels in pulse mode, they'll be in random phase with respect to each other, until you change the phase setting
it doesn't matter what the phase parameter is set to, you have to *change* it for it to realize "oh crap those were supposed to be synchronized"
synchronization works fine for square waves, but it does not work for pulse mode. we're not sure about other modes, i suspect it wouldn't sync right in arbitrary mode, and there may be weirdness if the two channels are in different modes
-F
re: lab equipment. discussing money, seeking advice
@noracodes the software for defining the arbitrary waveforms, also, is clunky but functional. You'll have to do a lot of computations manually to figure out timings if you need precisely timed waveforms, and figuring out how to use it at all takes trial and error, but it does the job you need it to
-F