High Speed Event Timer

Here's a nice looking one, they rarely sell for more than £20

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RACAL-DANA-9900-UNIVERSAL-COUNTER-TIMER-FREQUENCY-METER_W0QQitemZ290224242699QQcmdZViewItem

Duh!! Thanks for kicking me out of the Box I planted myself in. I was too tied up in standard event timers. A multifunction Freq counter / timer will work great.

Thanks!

Ahhh don't worry we all get stuck inside 'that' box now and again...

Glad I could help - John

NOTE!! That particular one is 220 volts only, so I would not recommend it for the US, but the concept is great. That one looks like a sweet little counter for someone on the east side of the pond.

Bill

There's a couple of links inside you just swap around and hey presto its 120 volts...

A dedicated timer for 1-9999us can be built for about $10-$20 depending on what is needed in the hardware. From timer you should use only fast LOGIC signals or transistors output to take the signal and not relays as they are very slow. Timers often have preset, run and stop buttons, time count down display.

If you have dedicated application and perhaps 100 such timers or more than it may be worth manufacturing else pick the ready made equipments as suggested by John.

Thanks!

I have in the past used a crystal derived time base and LSTTL to develop high speed timers. But alas, this project will be for only 2 to 4 units... I did see a BK precision unit, after I was pushed out of my box, that looked pretty good over here. $500.00 my initial hope was to place it inside a control panel with a display on the outside but the lab top unit may work just as well.

For $500 you can get high precision module that can fit in panel easily. If you are used to 19" rack systems then I design some in those good looking things also in 1U height and for 110V 60Hz AC use. Four numbers for US$2000 is reasonably good to put an engineer for a month to deliver four finished such modules for $500 each. Of course I also make timers that are just $10 but these are only for education. Professional designs are hardened for tough use and made somewhat fail proof.

I also manufacture 6-channel timer for 100ns to 2000s in steps of 100ns. These are used in research labs for precision timing of multiple channels. You can see ST2006 on my website.

http://www.sensorstechnology.com/

The problem in your design is that the switch pressing time is greater than the timer pulse output itself. You press switch for 100s of milliseconds and timer pulse in us. I use EEPROM to store timer parameter such that it can recall the last settings. You can have complementary pulse and also high power high voltage pulse.

It is always good to order one than make one yourself if you can afford it. However, if you are learning then there is nothing like trying our hand on things. Right now 100 engineers are learning from me and they are trying their hands under my supper vision. This year few thousands will learn from me.

Hence, it is not difficult for me to get these small things done nicely.

Timer devices I make are actually delay waveform generators and some of them are single sweep and work like normal timers. These are some what complex designs and use precision 10MHz time base and matrix based waveform re-constructor to generate very large time waveform with less than 1ns skew jitter for all signals even after 2000 seconds.