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Motion Control Round-up |
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| Dear Reader, |
 Welcome to the BEI April newsletter. It was only a week ago that the environmental awareness movement enjoyed its 40th annual Earth Day celebration. Over a half a billion people in 175 countries participated in recognizing our need to be good stewards of our planet. A bit of Earth Day trivia: the United Nations recognizes the vernal equinox, March 21st, as Earth Day while many governments around the world use the April date. Whichever suits you, it's good to know we're all learning better ways to take care of our planet. An old rhyme promises, "April showers bring May flowers". As April comes to a close, our wish for you is that whatever "showers" you've been experiencing lately in your business should turn into "flowers" in May. Enjoy this month's newsletter and we'll see you again in May. |
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Strings Attached? |
 Long time readers of this newsletter know that from time to time we like to preview a product to our readers before we release it to the general public. This month's sneak preview is for a new Linear Cable Transducer that features a standard quadrature encoder output. Now you can use the same interface design that you have for your rotary axes for linear measurement as well.
With a range of 125 inches, an IP66 rating and a compact profile, this is the perfect solution to a variety of industrial linear measurement challenges. Whether you're involved in concrete cutting, controlling hydraulic cylinders, metal grinding or just have an awkward access area for measurement, BEI's latest product just might be the solution you are looking for.
This linear measurement system has been designed with the industrial environment in mind, so you'll spend less downtime and more productive time. To download a specification sheet, click the picture, above. |
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| Heeding Nature's Call |
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This month's words of wisdom come from someone who was born 171 years ago in Scotland, but made his life's work mostly in the US by working to enjoy and preserve the wonders of nature. Amongst this philosopher's words of wisdom and encouragement we find the following:
"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."
"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools."
"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."
"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."
"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
To read a biography of this remarkable man, click on his likeness and enjoy the tale of his adventures in his adopted land.  |
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Can You Solve This? |
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 Some problems are easier to solve than others. We had a customer that wanted to update a control system that was dedicated to an in-line inspection system. They had two product types that they were inspecting and the product was held in a specially-shaped carrier on a conveyor. At issue was the fact that Product A was a certain size that took up one carrier space and Product B was double the size and took up exactly two carrier spaces. When the smaller product was run, they needed twice the resolution on the encoder that they needed when the larger product was being run. As part of their set-up procedures they were changing out encoders as a way to change resolutions and this mounting/unmounting process was time consuming and over many changes resulted in worn mounting features (i.e. stripped screws, nicked shaft pilots, etc.) What to do?
Answer: There were several possible solutions available in this particular case. One option would be to use an HS35 hollow shaft style encoder with a dual output. Each output is optically isolated and can be provided with a different resolution allowing him to just switch the cable connection between output terminations when doing a changeover. He could also use an electronic module type Optical Isolator with a fixed divide by two option. Alternatively, using a Broadcaster module with the Divide By option, he could make the division factor user selectable, have up to four different outputs and also multiplex each of the outputs using the tri-state option. In this case, he chose the HS35 option but he appreciated that there were several ways that he could approach the solution.
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Shadow Play |
We've all seen the children's finger play game where, using a point source of light and your hands, you can make a huge array of creatures by casting hand shadows on to a flat surface. What would happen if you took this concept to a high art extreme? You might end up with a result like that shown in the picture below.
Believe it or not, the crazy squiggles at the top of the image cast their shadow on the back wall to create an image of a cup. I ran across several practitioners of this art form and created a link to one of them so you can browse a gallery of similar shadow illusions. It's some pretty amazing stuff and just might inspire you to clean out your garage and turn the resulting trash into something wonderful and visually stunning. For more examples Google "shadow art" and see what comes up on the "images" search.
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| Hope you enjoyed the newsletter and be sure to remember BEI for your automation needs. Call or email us anytime and we'll do our best to get you the answers you need. |
Thanks for reading,
Scott Orlosky
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