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What's the difference between trimming and calibration? (Read 4178 times)
chmf
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What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Dec 29th, 2009, 12:50am
 
What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Thanks.
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solidstate
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Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Reply #1 - Dec 29th, 2009, 2:12am
 
Hi chmf,

The way I see it, trimming is adjusting something inside a device or circuit so that the difference between the device output and a reference becomes (ideally) zero. Think of adjusting a resistor in a bandgap to get a certain output voltage. Trimming = changing something in the circuit.

Calibration, on the other hand, is to measure the difference between a device output and a reference, store it, and then compensate for it, e.g. storing the offset of an ADC in a microcontroller and subtracting it there... this leaves the circuit untouched.
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Mayank
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Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Reply #2 - Dec 29th, 2009, 3:32am
 
In one Line,
                Trimming is done through Calibration.

If you talk circuitwise [ & not much different from solid-state's explanation ],  
  Calibration ckt refers to the cktry used to measure the variation in actual o/p from desired/reference o/p of the DUT.

  Trimming refers to placing programmable/tunable components in your ckt which can be calibrated through a calibration ckt.

--
Mayank.
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sheldon
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Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Reply #3 - Dec 29th, 2009, 7:51am
 
CHMF,

   Not sure that there are any standard definitions. I would lean
more towards trimming as being a "hard" change to the system,
for example, laser trimming or blowing fuses. The traditional
analog types of circuit tuning. While calibration is a "soft" change
to the system, for example, digitally selecting a combination of
varactors that give the correct oscillation frequency for a VCO.
So the digital techniques used for digitally-assisted analog design
would count as calibration.

                                                         Best Regards,

                                                             Sheldon
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HdrChopper
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Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Reply #4 - Dec 29th, 2009, 4:22pm
 
I'm mostly with Mayank in this one...

In my opinion, calibration involves a dedicated circuit for measuring the variation of the circuit's parameter to be tuned; such circuit included in the system + the compensation means
Trimming is just the compensation means.

Best
Tosei
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Keep it simple
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