Model No.ME-8236
Appendix A: Calibration
13
012-13762D
Calibration Procedure
The following steps describe how to use the “calibration wizard” in PASCO Capstone to create a compliance calibration for
the Materials Testing Machine. Please preview the steps to become familiar with the procedure
before
doing the calibration.
Step One: Choose the Type of Measurement to Calibrate
In the Capstone software, select the “Calibration” icon ( ) in the
Tools palette to open the “Calibration” window.
There are two types of calibration for the Materials Testing Machine.
One is a simple calibration of the force measured by the Load Cell. The
other, the default choice, is “Materials Testing System: Compliance
Calibration”. Use this choice to setup the program to automatically
make corrections on position data.
•
Click
Next
to show Step Two, the “Choose Calibration Action” menu.
Step Two: Choose Calibration Action
There are several choices in “Create New Calibration” that allow you to create, select, save, modify, and delete calibrations.
•
Create New Calibration:
This is the default choice. In this selec-
tion, the “calibration wizard” will take you through the steps
needed to create and save a new compliance calibration. This
includes prompting you to install the calibration rod (Step Three),
record a data run on the graph provided (Step Four), and create a
polynomial curve fit (Step Five) that will be stored as your com-
pliance calibration.
The following is a description of the other Calibration Action choices.
•
Use Calibration
: If the text window below “Use Calibration” is
blank, it means that there is no “active” calibration being used.
However, if any compliance calibrations have been saved previ-
ously in this Capstone file, they will be displayed in the pull down
menu (click the down arrow). (The previously saved compliance
calibration “7000 N cal (Tue Dec 17 11:37:30 2013)” is shown as
an example.) If you select a previously saved compliance calibra-
tion from the pull down menu, it becomes the “active” calibration.
When you click
Finish
, the selected calibration will be used to
make the compliance correction to any
future
data you collect.