Established in 1974, Electrical Research and Development Association, commonly known as ERDA,  is India’s top most organization for testing, evaluation, certification, consultancy and R&D related to electrical products and systems. With its Head Office in Vadodara, Gujarat, it has more than 300 members and is managed by Managing Committees comprising of elected members from both the government and the industry.

The Cable Testing Labs located in Vadodara and Gurgaon is equipped to perform all types of tests related to Cables including tensile strength, shrinkage, resistance, insulation thickness etc. Clients can book a test online on its website and they have an option to come to the lab to witness the test themselves.

Insulation Thickness measurements were initially done using Verniers and Micrometres and the process was very slow and prone to errors.  Moreover, reports were prepared manually which further could let to errors in reporting. In 2009, ERDA was introduced to a Sipcon’s Vision Measuring System which used video edge detection technology to automatically detect the profile of the cable cross section. It was an accurate system with a 5 micron accuracy, an average measurement time of 10-15 minutes and the Lab used it four years.  However as the number of samples to be measured grew over the years a need for a faster system was felt. Meanwhile Sipcon had launched Cable Quickie, the one click measurement system in 2011. Sipcon introduced Cable Quickie to ERDA in 2013 and the lab in charge at the time, Mr.Nilesh Pandya, instantly liked the new system primarily for its speed and accuracy. Cable Quickie , SVI-CQ-64 could measure a sample in 1-2 seconds and that too with a 5 micron accuracy and 3 micron repeatability. The system significantly improved the lab throughput. Earlier the team could measure a maximum of 20-25 samples in day and the process was tiresome as the users had to visually probe the measurement points, however with Cable Quickie, the team could measure up-to 50 samples in a day, if required, relying on its Field-of-View measurement technology and intelligent algorithms. Moreover other important parameters like ovality, eccentricity, Min and Max Thickness were automatically calculated which was earlier not possible in Vision Measuring Systems. The other major advantage which the ERDA team found very useful was the ability of the system to generate reports in any of the standards being used globally, however they mostly use EN10810 and IEC 60811-1-1 standards.

Over the years as the work-load grew further ERDA procured a second system SVI-CQ- 150 in 2016 and a third system SVI-CQ-64 in 2017 for its cable testing Lab in Vadodara. More recently, a new ERDA lab was opened in Gurgaon near New Delhi and a Cable Quickie model SVI-CQ-64 was procured in May 2020.