Communicator/Calibrator Achieves Intrinsically Safe Approval

The hand-held DPI 620 advanced multifunction calibrator/HART®communicator from GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies (UK) has now been approved for use in potentially explosive atmospheres by Baseefa, the British certification body. The Baseefa approval carries both ATEX and IECEx certification allowing the instrument to be employed globally in Zone 0 areas. The certification also extends to the instrument’s battery pack, permitting hot swapping within hazardous locations. The approval now further extends the range of potential applications of the powerful communicator/calibrator, especially in the oil and gas and process sectors.

As Mike Shelton, product manager at GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies, explains, “The DPI620 now offers plant engineers and technicians throughout the industrial and process sectors a single instrument which can be used for configuration, commissioning, maintenance and calibration, wherever the location.”

To comply with the IS certification, the display has been redesigned and now features a, bright, organic liquid crystal display (OLCD) which offers excellent viewability at a wide range of angles and in virtually all lighting conditions. As with all instruments in the DPI620 family, the IS version is rugged and compact and weather-proofed to IP65. It retains all the software of the existing DPI620 platform and supports Windows CE, providing standard Windows applications and file management while offering the computing power to view pdf files and jpeg images such as loop diagrams, data sheets, safety procedures, spreadsheets and to create text documents.

The introduction of the IS version follows the recent successful incorporation of HART® compatibility into the DPI620 platform. All versions of the DPI 620 now contain a complete HART library of registered HART device descriptions, making the DPI620 a true communicator/calibrator. Device description (DD) and software upgrades may be simply downloaded free-of-charge, from the GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies website and this includes updating all existing DPI 620 models. World-class pressure-generation and measurement is still an important feature of the IS version, with on-board pressure generation from vacuum to 100 bar pneumatic or 0 to 1000 bar hydraulic, with accuracies from 0.005% FS.