Dear Reader,
 The holiday season is upon us and for a lot of this newsletter's readership this is the week of Thanksgiving. Many countries have their version of this holiday which is basically a harvest festival to celebrate the results of hard work and a bountiful growing season. At BEI Sensors our wish for you is that despite the financial troubles of late around the world, that you find the means and the reasons to celebrate your own good fortune with friends and family, wherever you may live. Our plant will be closed this Thursday and Friday so that we too, can share the time with our loved ones. Stay safe and enjoy this month's newsletter. No tricks, just our treat.
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| Inside Swiftcomm |
It's always interesting to get into the detail and inner workings of a design development effort. After all that's how a lot of our readers make their living. As in all product challenges there are a lot of technical issues to overcome in addition to the market driven requirements.
This month we thought we'd take you behind the scenes and share with our readers the process behind the design of our Swiftcomm wireless encoder interface. From the initial "what if?" discussions all the way through deciding the tradename for the product. This article takes you through the two year design cycle which culminated in this award-winning product.
Click on this article link to read the development story. And if you want a PDF specification of the product, then click on the picture, above. |
| A Voice for the Ages |
 "The difference between the men and the boys in politics is, and always has been, that the boys want to be something, while the men want to do something,"
"Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks."
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."
"Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt."
This month's feature spokesperson was at one time a household name for listeners on the CBS radio network. His storied life included a 2000+ mile canoe journey to Canada's Hudson Bay as a teenager, a news correspondent in Paris just prior to it's fall to Germany in World War II, and an emergency bailout behind Japanese lines into the headhunter-populated jungles of Burma.
This fascinating newscaster successfully made the transition from Radio to Television where he worked until seven months before his death in 1992. You may not be familiar with Eric Sevareid, but his life story makes for fascinating reading and his insight into the workings of politics is still true today. To read more, click on his picture above and you will be connected to his biography.
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| Can You Solve It? |
 You will recall that last month we started a list of common installation issues that can crop up between the test bench and the production environment. Test bench or engineering lab type installations are a good way to ensure that the basic system design is sound and workable. But often times it's some little things about the detail of the installation that can cause trip-ups. So here we go.
1) Examine the failure modes of the surrounding area. This is a subtle design issue, but one that crops up often enough that it is worth mentioning. When equipment is brand new, everything runs pretty smoothly. However you want to be aware if your installation has any process liquids that could migrate if their seals happened to fail and where they are in relationship to the sensor. We've seen more than our share of installations where an encoder is mounted in a cavity, receptacle or tray that is virtually guaranteed to fill up with oil, or some other liquid at some time. Unless you have selected a product which is designed to be run submerged in oil - then sadly, you will be buying a replacement.
2) Improper Termination of data lines. It's fairly common to have more data lines coming from your sensor than you plan to use in a particular installation. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but regardless of the particulars, it is good practice to check with the manufacturer to see what is the correct termination strategy for those unused signals. In a lot of cases allowing them to float is the preferred method for dealing with extra data signals, but not always. Improper termination can cause shorting, intermittent operation, damage to output signal integrity or a whole host of hard-to-diagnose symptoms. Be sure and make the call.
I hope these suggestions have given you some hints about what to look for when designing and installing a motion control system. At BEI Sensors we want you to be successful so give us a call if you have any questions. No matter where you are in the process, were happy to help. |
| Say What? |
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 Have I got a fun new word for you. It's paraprosdokian. I'll save you the trouble of a Google search and let you know right off the bat that it is a figure of speech in which the latter part of the sentence is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader to reframe or reinterpret the first part.
That's a bit of a mouthful as definitions go, but I think a simple example will give you the idea.
"I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness." - See how that works? Here's another one: "If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong."
If those examples have you smiling to yourself, and you want more, then just click on the picture above and you will be linked to a whole page of paraprosdokian examples. Enjoy!
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THANK-YOU
We always appreciate your continued readership and hope you continue to find this newsletter informative and entertaining. Keep BEI Sensors in mind for your motion control needs and have a great Holiday.
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| Product Spotlight |
Sometimes you need a little sensor to handle a big job. That's when you turn to the 9600 series spring-return linear potentiometer. Rated to 135 C and capable of withstanding 15 g's of vibration, this little workhorse sits tall in the saddle. To learn more, just click on the picture to see the specification sheet. |
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