Hipot Testing

Posts Tagged ‘High Potential’

The word Hipot is an abbreviation for ‘high potential’.  By tradition, Hipot is a term given to a group of electrical safety testing instruments used to authenticate electrical insulation in cables, finished appliances or other wired assemblies including printed circuit boards, electric motors, and transformers.

Under regular conditions, any electrical device will generate a minimal amount of leakage current due to the voltages and internal capacitance present within the product. Yet due to design flaws or other factors, the insulation in a product can break down, resulting in excessive leakage current flows which can result due to design flaws and other factors. This breaks down the insulation in the product amd anyone coming into contact with a defective product could experience shock or death.

The Dielectric Withstand test is also known as a Hipot Test.

There are three types of Hipot tests that are most commonly used and each are at variance in the amount of voltage applied and the quantity of acceptable current flow.

Dielectric breakdown Test. The test voltage is increased until the dielectric fails, or breaks down, allowing too much current to flow. The dielectric is often destroyed by this test so this test is used on a random sample basis. This test allows designers to estimate the breakdown voltage of a product’s design.

Dielectric Withstand Test. A standard test voltage is applied (below the established Breakdown Voltage) and the resulting leakage current is monitored. The leakage current must be below a preset limit or the test is considered to have failed. This test is non-destructive and is usually required by safety agencies to be performed as a 100% production line test on all products before they leave the factory.

Insulation Resistance Test: This test is used to provide a quantifiable resistance value for all of a product’s insulation. The test voltage is applied in the same fashion as a standard Hipot test, but is specified to be Direct Current (DC). The voltage and measured current value are used to calculate the resistance of the insulation.

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