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Meeting the Challenges of Precision Sensing: High Acceleration Machinery

Challenge: High Acceleration Machine Movement

Fundamental application problem: Anything mounted to the moving mechanism must be low mass

  • Added mass reduces acceleration capability of a given motor & drive system
  • Added mass increases motor and drive size requirements to meet acceleration specs, driving costs higher
  • Larger motors increase energy consumption, which makes the machine less competitive in the market
  • Any space taken up by sensors reduces space available for tooling and work-in-process
  • Conventional prox sensors and brackets are much too large and heavy to address these requirements

Solution: Incredibly miniaturized, self-contained inductive proximity sensors

  • Tiny size = inherently low mass
  • Correspondingly tiny mounting brackets = inherently low mass
  • Totally self-contained electronics = zero space taken up by separate amplifier
  • Miniaturization of sensors allows no-compromise installation in compact tooling
  • Additional tooling sensors enhance the level of high-end machine automation/control that can be achieved

Stay tuned to this space for more precision sensing challenges and solutions. Miniaturized sensors are also available in photoelectric, capacitive, magnetic cylinder, ultrasonic, and magnetic encoder. Click here to see the whole mini family.

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GIZMOS

Plural of Giz-mo.  A noun.  Defined as a gadget, one whose name the speaker does not know.  Customers call us and ask for this or that “gizmo” all the time!  I think we should consider creating a product category simply called “GIZMOS”.

I like to call these things “Enablers” because these devices are very much helping hands that optimize the function of sensors.  A sensor of any brand and manufacturer performs only as well as it’s mounted, matching the fixture to the demands of the application at hand. But how often does this happen in a price-driven world?  They often end up in below-par mounting that fails with regularity, in both pristine environments as well as in hostile environments.  Some examples:

Here’s one example below. These inductive proximity sensors in plastic brackets, showing an exposed coil on one, with corroded mounts on the sensor caused by being beaten to death during parts loading and heat.

gizmo1      gizmo2

With a few “Gizmos” like an application-specific quick change mount, some care in gapping the sensor and guarding the cable/connector system, it could look much different. Check out the examples below.

gizmo4 gizmo5

Photoelectric sensors can suffer the same fate.  In this case, a plastic bodied photoelectric sensor, originally used to replace a fiber optic thru beam pair also suffered abuse. With a little extra beefy mounting, these photoelectric sensors can be expected to last a long time without failure.

gizmo6 gizmo7

There are literally hundreds of these mounting “ENABLERS”, off-the-shelf, cost-effective application specific mounts, guards, actuators and entire systems to help protect your sensor investment.  All categories of products have these “enabling” accessories for Magnetic Field (air cylinder), Inductive Proximity, Capacitive, Ultrasonic, Connectivity, Linear Transducer and Photoelectric product categories.

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Protect Your Sensors – Implement the 3-Step Process

When installing sensors into a harsh environment, for example a weld cell application, protecting the sensor is a crucial step in the installation process.  These sensors are exposed to extreme heat, weld slag and sometimes impact.  In order to reduce sensor usage, the sensor needs to be protected from the harsh area of exposure.  This can be achieved by using a complete sensor protection method that includes proper sensor selection such as sensors that have a weld slag resistant coating, proper mounting and cable protection.  If you follow these steps the end result will be longer sensor life.

  • Step 1
    • Identify form factor (size of sensor)
    • Output polarity (DC 3wire PNP, NPN etc.)
    • Identify special sensor characteristics (Slag resistant coating, SteelFace, F1 etc.)
  • Step 2
    • Select your mechanical protection system (ProxMount etc.)
  • Step 3
    • TPE cable
    • WeldRepel tubing and wrap

So, by simply implementing the three step total solution into your harsh or extreme application you can protect and lengthen the life of the sensors and cables providing less downtime. For more information on the total solution, check out this whitepaper on Increasing Sensor Life and Production Productivity.

Protect your sensors

Total Solution

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Intelligent Interfaces and IO-Link Innovation

I recently had the opportunity to attend Hannover Fair in Germany and was blown away by the experience… buildings upon buildings of automation companies doing amazing things and helping us build our products faster, smarter and cheaper.  One shining topic for me at the fair was the continued growth of new products being developed with IO-Link communications in them.

All in all, the growth of IO-Link products is being driven by the need of customers to know more about their facility, their process and their production.  IO-Link devices are intelligent and utilize a master device to communicate their specific information over an industrial network back to the controller.  To learn more about IO-Link, read my previous entry, 5 Things You Need to Know about IO-Link.

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Inductive Sensor Protection and Positioning Made Easy – Use a Prox Mount

Written by: Jeff Himes

“Downtime” is never a good word in any manufacturing facility.  It means something has malfunctioned or broken, parts are not being made, production is reduced, and money is being lost.  In some cases this downtime may be caused by a physically damaged inductive proximity sensor.  If this failure mode is happening on a regular basis to the same location, it may be time to look at the advantages a prox mount can provide.

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