Dear Reader,
 It's hard to ignore the recent volcanic activity in Iceland. Coupled with the major devastation caused by earthquakes so far this year one can't help but wonder if those "end-of-the-world" people know something the rest of us don't. But rest assured, I checked a few web sites and the level of seismic and volcanic activity we are seeing is not unusual compared to the historical record. It just seems that way because it has affected major population centers. No need to pack your parachute just yet!
Speaking of tough conditions, here at BEI Sensors we live for the rugged applications. Give is a call and challenge us to help solve your measurement or control problems - no matter how hard the environment - it's what we do.
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| Living in a Hazardous World |
 Years ago we made a commitment to serve the industries that work with potentially explosive environments. Primarily this means the oil & gas industries, but mining and chemical processing industries work there as well. Starting with our Explosion Proof H38 encoder - built around the industry standard H25 encoder platform - we later added our heavy duty H40 Model. We made sure to get our ratings for explosive dust groups in addition to the gas groups.
Next came intrinsically safe versions of our encoder models with the highest international ratings for continuously hazardous areas. We were the first to recognize the need for and develop an HS35 drawworks encoder and we invented a dedicated intrinsically safe barrier for use with encoders so that we could supply an entire Zone 0 rated system. Designers no longer had to put together a system piecemeal and get their own UL/ATEX ratings. We also have the only MSHA rated encoder on the market specifically for the coal mining industry in the US. So when you need a hazardous area product, trust your business to BEI Sensors. We know where you work, because that's where we work, too.
To see our hazardous area rated products, including our latest wireless data transmitter, just click on the picture, above.
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| At Your Best |
 "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself."
"If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up."
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
"If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life."
"One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king."
All of these quotes originated with one man - Abraham Maslow. You may have heard of "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" in which he postulates that we must have our basic needs (food, shelter) satisfied before we can start to address higher needs (safety, security).
Born in Brooklyn, NY the first of seven children to Jewish emigrants from Russia, Abraham had a lonely childhood. He followed his parents wishes to study law, but eventually psychology won out. Building on the work of Freud, Jung, Pavlov and others, he was the first to study and codify the concept of "self actualizing". Unlike his predecessors who specialized in studying the "ill" mind, he was interested in what makes someone mentally healthy and he built his concepts on some of the best minds of the day including Einstein, Roosevelt, Jefferson and others.
To read more about this fascinating person and his theories of self actualization click on his picture above.
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| Can You Solve This?
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Sometimes our applications engineers don't rely as much on product knowledge as they do on an understanding of human nature. Read on to see if you too can read between the lines to solve this one.
A customer had been buying linear pots with a pigtail termination for many years and had no problems with their operation. This customer redesigned their equipment, keeping exactly the same pot configuration but shrinking the overall profile of their equipment in response to market demand for a slightly smaller profile. Shortly thereafter they began experiencing intermittent operation of their pots and wanted to know what we had done to our manufacturing processes to create this problem. We reviewed the work instructions and materials and verified that there had been no changes to the manufacturing processes. We asked if we could see versions of their "older style" assembly and the new redesigned one. Once we received them the issue was obvious. What could it be?
Answer: The smaller case size meant that the pigtail routing on the pot was tighter in the new design than it was in the old. As part of the assembly process, the operators had been instructed to "preform" the wire routing by tugging the wires at 90 degrees to the case so that they would route easier. Occasional excess force meant that wires were being pulled loose leading to intermittent operation. Once the customer was informed the problem went away. |
| Big Deal |
 You may not have seen it in the news much lately but it is one of the largest machines ever built by humans. Not only is it big, but it is capable of producing a vacuum more profound than that of interstellar space and temperatures that are 100,000 times hotter than our sun. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm talking about the LHC or Large Hadron Collider.
After some initial start-up problems and over a year to do the repairs, it's back up and running and starting to operate. Whether you follow the world of high energy physics or not, the machine itself is a marvel of engineering: it uses 9,300 large magnets which are supercooled to only 1.9 degrees K; it can accelerate particles to 99.9999991% of the speed of light and the energy in each particle beam is the equivalent of a 400 ton train travelling at 150 k/h. Now that's impressive.
If you want the definitive description on this amazing feat of engineering, then click on the picture to go to their web site. If that's not enough for you then download their 27MB PDF called LHC the Guide which gives an in depth description of some of the science behind this effort. It's enough to make your head spin!
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I hope you all enjoyed reading our newsletter and that you found something of interest. Feel free to contact us if there is anything that we can do to help with your measurement or control needs.
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| Product Spotlight |
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BEI Sensor's wireless interface is the world's first wireless encoder interface designed to handle the demands of real-time control. Utilizing point-to-point communication and frequency hopping on the 2.4GHz band, it also uses one of the most secure data communications methods available for the factory floor. To read more, just click on the picture above.
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