Go inside Fluke's electrical metrology lab

In a wooded area behind Boeing's aircraft assembly plant in Everett, WA is the home of test-equipment maker Fluke. Within the Fluke facility is the company's electrical metrology lab, the heart of the company's electrical calibration business and the force behind the company's many measurement instruments. Fluke's metrology lab sits atop the company's calibration chain where metrologists and technicians support primary standards, transfer standards, working standards, and calibrators for the company's entire line of electrical measurement products. Fluke's electrical-measurement products get their calibration traceability to a national laboratory through this lab.

The lab houses primary standards for DC voltage through a JJA (Josephson Junction Array) and is one of just a few metrology labs to have one. The lab also contains standards for DC and AC voltage and current and resistance. Transfer standards make the reference values from these primary standards available to calibrations stations used to calibrate Fluke multifunction calibrators and reference multimeters, which in turn calibrate Fluke's measurement instruments in the factory. Fluke's Chief Corporate Metrologist Jeff Gust led me through the lab on April 5, 2012.

Follow the jump directly to Test & Measurement World  to get a glimpse inside Fluke's metrology lab and Gust's perspective on the importance of calibration and verification.