Bluehill – the world’s most preferred testing software

Welcome to the Bluehill User Community Blog! The goal of this site is to provide Instron's Bluehill users with a central location to search for FAQ'S, how-to's and useful tips and tricks. If you don't find what you are looking for - just ask! If you have any recommendations for how we can improve our site - let us know that too!


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Choice Inputs with Linked Values

Choice inputs is one of my favorite features in Bluehill. What makes it really powerful is the ability to link various parameters to each choice. These parameter linked choices together with Expression Builder referencing enable the user to embed logic for test control and calculations in a very a simple way.

Let us see an example where we need to test a sample that has some variety and we want to automatically vary some test parameters like a calculation, pre-load setting or the end of test criteria based on the type of specimen.

Step 1: Create specimen number inputs to represent variables to control the test parameters: param_calc for calculation setting, param_pre_load to specify the pre-load setting and param_eot for the end of test load rate threshold.

Step 2: Create a choice input and add the choices to represent the kind of variety in your sample. To keep it application agnostic let us call these Red, Green and Blue

Step 3: Now click on the Linked Values button to add the three parameters in step 1 as linked parameters and then specify the values for these parameters for the three choices (Red, Green and Blue).

Step 4: Use the three parameters in step 2 at the appropriate places in the method setup

Step 5: Finally make sure you prompt the user to make the choice when testing a specimen in the sample. To display the choice input on the main test layout page add the Choice input in Workspace->Operator Inputs. To have the choice input on a separate prompt page, add it to the "before specimen" page under Prompted Test.

With a few steps you now have the ability to change key test parameters based on a choice that the operator can easily select. I know there are testing software products that ask the user to write code to do something like this. With Bluehill's Expression Builder this kind of powerful referencing is made very intuitive.

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Three steps to capture the moment of truth...

I see a lot of videos on YouTube where our customers proudly showcase their testing applications with Instron machines. Did you know that you can actually integrate videos into the test layout in Bluehill. With the TestCam option you can even look at each frame corresponding to a point on the load-extension (or stress-strain) curve to see what the specimen or component looked like at that moment in test. You can also share the recorded video as a separate media file. Here is how you can do it. Give it a try.

1. Plug in the web cam and make sure the camera is selected in the Admin section of Bluehill

2. In the method setup under Test Control->Data check the "Record with TestCam" option

3. To see the camera output on the test layout, go to Workspace->Layout->Custom and move the TestCam option into where you want it to appear on the layout

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Thursday, February 16, 2012

New Release: 3.22

Did you know that release 3.22 is here. Check out the Latest Features page here. We also added pre-canned methods to the Composites Application Module supporting six new ASTM and ISO standards. Here is the latest composites module brochure. Apart from the features added, we fixed a lot of bugs making 3.22 an even more desirable update. And if you speak Russian you got to update now that we translated the entire Bluehill 3 documentation into Russian.

You can download this latest release using your WSA login from the WSA website.
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

End Hold Soft Key

Hope you had a great start to 2012. Today I thought I would end my silence in the last few months with the "End Hold" soft key. I was talking to a few service engineers the other day and they showed me this neat feature in Bluehill to control the test sequence in TestProfiler. 



TestProfiler allows you to setup a test control sequence. You can ramp, hold and generate a triangular waveform for extension and load channels as required by your test. A hold block for example can be used to hold the cross head motion for a specified duration. This hold can also be used as a time cushion to allow the operator change something in the test setup or record a manual measurement etc. in the middle of a test sequence. Choosing the right duration of hold could be tricky because a large hold duration may mean the operator has to wait for the hold duration to end even after he is done with his manual operation. Here is where the End Hold soft key comes handy. While setting up the method, you can choose a longer hold duration for the hold block to be on the safe side and when the operator is done with his "hold task" he can just hit the soft key to continue to the next step in the test sequence without waiting for the hold to end. 


Here is how you can select the soft key in a TestProfiler method:


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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Power of Referencing

The new expression builder in Bluehill 3 has really enabled users to embed test logic into their methods in a way that was simply not possible before (see this post that also talks about this).  For those of you who could not attend the webinar last week, here is an excerpt:



  
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Monday, September 26, 2011

Sign up for the Bluehill webinar this week

I have been talking about the power of referencing in Bluehill 3 for some time now. Learn how you can take advantage of this unique feature for your testing needs in a webinar this coming Thursday. I am planning to use examples from participants' use cases to demo the features. Log in to your WSA account and click on the Webinars link to register.

    
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