Engineering Resources for Motion Control Systems

Newsletter Menu   |  return to News . Motion Control Round-up In This Issue On Location Make your money count Can You Solve This? Cold Enough for You Join Our Mailing List! Quick Links 1. Last month's newsletter 2. Technical Assistance 3. Product Information   Dear Reader, This may be the last time you hear these words this year, so Happy New Year for 2009! With all the news reports on the world's economy, this promises to be an interesting and challenging year for those of us in the manufacturing and automation industries.    At times like these you can rest assured, that here at BEI we will continue to do our part in supplying well-made products, delivered on time, to support all your efforts.  Whether you require one encoder or one hundred, you'll get the attention to detail that you need to be successful. On Location We were recently at the Pack Expo, a trade show for packaging equipment. While we were there, one of the magazine's staff came by to see what we had on display.  To make a long story short, our own Jay Goree, National Sales Manager, ended up narrating a 3 minute video featuring some of our most recent products in action As much as we love to see our customers and prospects at trade shows, we know it's not always convenient to attend.  So, to save you the travel, were bringing the (mini) trade show to you via video.   Simply click on the link below.   BEI Trade Show Video   Make your money count. Stretching a dollar can seem a little harder lately.  It's times like this that we can turn to the wisdom of those who have gone before us and gain some comfort from their experience: "A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it."  -Bob Hope "It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy." -George Horace Lorimer "Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary." -Julius Rosenwald "The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket." -Kin Hubbard For more smart money quotes, click this link. Can You Solve This? Well, well, did we ever have an interesting conundrum this past month.  The subject at hand was an absolute encoder output that seemed to be misbehaving.  This was a gray code encoder which was being converted to natural binary in the controller. In the customer's words, "The output seems fine and then it just jumps around". After doing all of the usual checks: voltage, output type, resolution, bandwidth, etc., we asked for the connection scheme and the make and model of the controller that they were using.  That, it turns out, was all that we needed to solve the problem.  Any ideas about what was going on?  Answer:  When using absolute encoders it's important to know the code types, logic levels and connection diagrams.  In this case, the gray code encoder had a sourcing driver and it was being connected to a sinking receiver.  To the receiver this looked like inverted logic.  In essence, when the encoder sent a "HI" bit, it was received as a "LO" bit and vice versa.  Inverted logic, converted to natural binary looks just like a code that "jumps around".  Either inverting the logic in the controller or connecting the encoder to the sourcing input on the controller would solve the problem.  With about two minutes of effort, we had a happy customer. Cold Enough for You? In the wintertime, thoughts often turn to cold weather.  Some wonder, "Where is the coldest spot on the planet today? " others brag about how cold it is: "We set a record of 20 below last night!"  No matter where you are though, we can all agree that there's a temperature that we'll almost certainly never see and that's absolute zero.  In theory, at absolute zero, all motion completely stops.  Scientists who study this realm of ultra-cold have managed to create temperatures of only one billionth of a degree above absolute zero (0.000000001 degrees K).  At those temperatures, helium is a liquid and atoms run around at a very tame 1/2 mile per hour. To learn more about the peculiarities of what goes on at these very low temperatures and how scientists can achieve this in the lab, then check out the web site, below.  You'll also find some very cool (all puns intended) interactive graphs and diagrams: Absolute Zero .       Thanks for taking the time to read through this month's newsletter.  Let us know if there is anything we can do for your automation project.  Drop us a line or give a call - we're here to help. Thanks for reading, Scott Orlosky     email: Scott Orlosky     voice: 805-968-0782      web: http://www.beiied.com Join the BEI IED mailing list  Email:

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