Dear Reader,
 This is the month where we make the transition of the seasons. Warm and sunny starts to give way to cool and breezy. September is generally a fairly pleasant month to remember the warm days of summer which aren't quite gone and to anticipate the cold weather ahead which hasn't quite arrived. School has begun and the looser schedules of the last couple months give way to a more disciplined daily routine. It's time to collectively come together and get back into the rhythm of the work week. BEI Sensors can help. Give us a call and we can specify an encoder or position sensor that will help you get the job done. And with the time you save, you just might have a little more time in the day to enjoy a walk and relax.
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| Broadcast Network |
 Here's one of our more versatile electrical interfaces. If you ever find that you need to share the output from a single encoder with multiple devices, then take a look at our broadcaster module. The base unit provides four sets of optically isolated identical encoder outputs. Each of those outputs also has the option to accept one of a family of customizable I/O modules: divide by, Anti-dither or pulsed outputs, in place of the standard optical isolator interface.
What's more, each of the outputs can be configured with a different electrical interface depending on the signal receiver. Options include a multi-voltage, regulated 5V or open collector style to help match virtually all standard inputs. Any place where you need multiple machine set-ups is a candidate for the Broadcaster. Click the picture to see a PDF of this versatile interface.
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| Ring A Bell? |
 "Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise."
"But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods."
"Don't become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin."
"It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature."
These quotes, not surprisingly, come from a well known scientist. Not just any old scientist though, but one who is credited with documenting the conditioned response of digestive glands to stimulus. Yes, you guessed it, Ivan Pavlov famous for making dogs salivate at the sound of a bell.
What is not generally known is that this brilliant Russian physiologist intitiated studies of organs and nerve systems which underlay a lot of our modern understanding of how these work. He was one of the first to view organs in action in a living animal. Prior to this, animals were dissected and the actions of their organs were inferred from structure, size, composition and so forth.
To read his history and many of his fine accomplishments, just click on his picture, above. |
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| It's the Blog |
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| Have you every wondered if there might be a better way to make our economic systems work? Well look no further. Here you'll find the control theory version of economics. Just remember, when the economic theorists embrace this new way - you heard it here first! Click on the BLOG link to read more and share your thoughts. |
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| The Best of The Worst |
 Those of us that have spent time in the engineering profession know the satisfaction of having designs developed into finished products. We also know that no design is perfect - it is a balance between competing requirements. Every now and then some engineering efforts go spectacularly awry with notable results.
Hopefully we all learn something and make sure these mistakes don't happen again. Just to get a flavor for what can truly go wrong when combinations of design, costs, experience and timing add up in the wrong way, here is a compilation of "The 10 Worst Engineering Disasters". Click the picture of the broken dam, above to take the tour. |
| Can You Solve It? |
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As our Chief Engineer is fond of saying, "An encoder used badly, looks just like a bad encoder." It's a good reminder that all instruments need to be connected and operated within their design parameters in order to give good service for a long time. The good news is that most users do just that. But when they don't, well that's when we get a phone call like this one. We had a customer that needed to run the data output from an encoder on a fairly long cable run - about 500 feet. He also had a reasonably high resolution of 3000 cycles per turn and was operating at 2000 RPM. He was operating the encoder in a single-ended mode at five volts and he called to let us know that the encoder was consistently putting out fewer counts than it was rated for and wondered if perhaps we had sent him the wrong encoder or even a defective one. What was going on?
Answer: This was a case of having a marginal set-up all the way around. The 500 foot length is not a problem, per se, but it should be done in differential mode since that is better at rejecting noise and less sensitive to voltage fluctuations since those effects should be common mode. In addition a quick bandwidth calculation indicates operation at 3000 X 2000 / 60 = 100 kHz which is the maximum specified bandwidth for the data signals. Furthermore, it turns out that the cable being used was not instrument grade, meaning it had a high capacitance. This in turn overloaded the outputs, drawing excessive current and reducing the voltage levels. This combination of installation "faux pas" resulted in a margin situation. Once we got everything squared away with a good instrument grade cable installed and using the differential outputs, the problems completely went away. |
THANKS FOR READING
We've enjoyed sharing this month's newsletter with you. Keep us in mind for your motion control needs and feel free to call or write us anytime.
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| Product Spotlight |
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Not all encoders are built around the English system of measurement. Plenty of equipment has a metric base, which means metric encoders. If you need feedback with a metric interface check out the M58. And if that's not what you need, give us a call. Our European group has plenty of tricks up it's metric sleeves.
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