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Motion Control Round-up |
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| Dear Reader, |
 Welcome to BEI's February newsletter. It's the month of Valentines Day, Groundhog Day (six more weeks of winter) and a whole host of regional holidays and celebrations. By contrast, with all the financial market news, the manufacturing industry slowdown and oil sitting around $40 a barrel, we're a far cry from where we were a year ago.
This turmoil in the marketplace will eventually settle out, but until it does I know a lot of our customers are hunkering down during this economic storm. We're here to help you where we can. BEI has been around a long time and by providing reliable, high value products, delivered on time we'll continue to give you the support you need. Call or email us anytime. |
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Well Connected |
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 Those of you that design control systems know that it involves assembling the right sensors and actuators, making sure they have the right performance characteristics and that the inputs and outputs are well characterized. The whole system gets block diagrammed and simulations are run to ensure that the signals all behave as planned.
But any control system is only as good as it's weakest links and often that means the connectors and cables that hold it all together. Not only do they have to carry power and signals, commonly in the same bundle, but they need to resist the environmental attacks, electromagnetic interference and physical abuse of handling and operation.
We're always looking at ways to simplify complex processes so to help you in connecting up our encoders into your control system, we've put together a convenient selection table. Depending on the model and type of output, our selection guide helps you choose the appropriate connector and/or cable assembly. A convenient link to our e-commerce website is also provided for easy purchasing. Just click on the picture below and you can take a look.
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| One Woman's View |
 The author shown on the left is best know for her portrayals of strong, opinionated and motivated protagonists. Her comments and novels have been at the heart of a philosophical movement and political controversy. She's also had a lot to say about an abiding belief in the power and strength of individual effort. For example:
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
"Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death."
"Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice."
"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."
"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision."
"When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized."
If you think you know who this Russian-born author was, then click on her picture above to link to her biography. |
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Can You Solve This? |
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 Every now and then we get an applications call that isn't so much about troubleshooting, but more about giving some advice or recommendations for a system design. In this case the customer needed to move some control cabinets around and rearrange the shop floor for better work flow. For this installation it meant some longer cable runs for the encoder connections. He was using another supplier's encoder and was concerned about whether or not he would have a reliable installation when he finished. His current installation required only about 50 feet of cable and had been operating for about 3 years. Recently he had been having occasional shut-downs especially during long production runs and on hot days. His encoder was a fairly high resolution >5000 cycles per turn and had a typical speed of 1800 RPM. It was operating at 5 volts, though 24 volts was available in the cabinet. His new installation would require a 150 foot cable run. What would you recommend?
Answer: Several things are indicating a marginal operating condition. First, the intermittent shutdowns, especially at hot conditions imply that either the LED in his encoder may be prematurely aging (it may have suffered an ESD event at some point, since LED's typically last for 20 years or more) or that the encoder design doesn't have much design margin to accommodate aging or temperature effects. In addition, higher resolutions can be more sensitive to temperature effects. Second, the five volt operation, combined with his cable (a general purpose instrument cable - not low capacitance) plus the high operating bandwidth (150 kHz) imply that he may be experiencing some signal "droop" and/or excessive capacitive loading of the output - another potential cause of intermittents. A check of his encoder specifications also revealed that it was only rated for 100 kHz operation - definitely a marginal condition. We recommended that he replace the encoder with one rated for higher bandwidth and higher voltage, 24 Volts with a line driver output. Secondly, he should use a low capacitance encoder cable with twisted pairs and an overall shield. Finally, to get a 5 volt signal at his controller (it was not being replaced) he should use an optical isolator with a multi-voltage line driver output powered at 5 volts. This combination should give him a very reliable installation for years to come. |
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I Can See Clearly Now |
 Whenever the chaos of our own lives starts to overwhelm us, it's good to focus outward on the natural beauty and wonder that surrounds our world. If you look far enough outward with a big enough lens, you'll see some amazing things.
When the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the orbiting observatory sent some awe inspiring images back to Earth; incredible snapshots of the world of our galaxy and beyond. Recently, astronauts voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, so far. Click on the image of the Space Telescope and you too can see the wonder of the universe and pick your personal favorite.
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| We appreciate your time and your business. Feel free to forward this email to any of your colleagues or friends using the links at the bottom. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help with your projects, we're just a phone call away. |
Thanks for reading,
Scott Orlosky
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