KANSAS CITY, MO – DIT-MCO International announces the patent of its Fault Locator™ trouble-shooting software. While various research programs have been funded which utilize complex theoretical approaches to locating opens and shorts, this unique approach is a result of significant R&D efforts by DIT-MCO to produce this highly repeatable and uncomplicated approach.

According to Ralph Taylor, Vice President of Engineering at DIT-MCO International, “The approach is a combination of software algorithms and hardware to provide the location of shorts and opens in wiring harnesses. The uniqueness of the approach is that it uses a low frequency approach instead of higher frequencies to locate the faults. With the use of low frequencies, propagation and velocity constants for the wiring are not needed. With Fault Locator, one not only knows that a short or open exists, but where to start looking for this problem.”

Set-up for Fault Locator is also straight-forward. Fault Locator does not require knowing the lengths of wires, propagation constants, velocity information on wires, or any changes to the test system equipment. Fault Locator reports its results in the normal error log report with an indication of the location of the open or short.

In addition to the basic challenge of detecting and locating faults in a fully operational aircraft or other complex system, speed in the repair of these faults is another issue. While veteran/seasoned employees often have a feel for their products under test and adapter cabling, new or newly transferred employees do not. This trouble-shooting aid moves them up the learning curve faster and improves throughput by giving them a starting point to search for errors (opens and shorts) when they occur during automatic testing. Experienced operators can also benefit from Fault Locator by minimizing repair time when a new or unusual problem is detected.