New product catalogue for position sensors

Sensors for distance, angle and inclination – with application examples

With its new product catalogue ASM provides engineers with a practical decision-making tool for selecting the right position sensor.

Whether distance, angle or inclination, ASM offers with six innovative product lines sensor solutions for a wide variety of applications requiring feedback position sensors. The company is known for three decades for the production of high-quality sensors.

With this new catalog it provides not only an overview of the unique product range with technical specifications. The operating principle of each sensor line is described in detail, too. Along with many application examples, design engineers receive a reference tool for the selection of the right sensor technology and therefore the most suitable model.

Automation body recognised!

100 world-class manufacturing companies and individual leaders have been announced as winners of the 2013 Manufacturing Leadership 100 Awards (ML100 Awards). These awards Recognise the world’s finest best practices in manufacturing and supply chain management. New technologies, global economic uncertainties, industry convergence, and breakthrough best practices are transforming the manufacturing ecosystem at an accelerating rate, forcing manufacturers to continuously rethink how they can maximize the value they deliver to their customers.

The 2013 ML100 Award winners, selected by Frost & Sullivan's Manufacturing Leadership Council are located in countries throughout the world, including the US, Canada, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Switzerland.

Award nominations were judged across 11 categories. The Automation Federation is one of seven award recipients in the “New Workforce” category.

The award, in particular, recognizes the significant partnership formed in 2012 between the Automation Federation and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), which is designed to expand automation instruction among community colleges in the US, and greatly increase the number of community college graduates with the technology training needed for careers in advanced manufacturing.

Through the partnership, community colleges within the AACC—particularly those located in largely industrial areas experiencing significant shortages of qualified manufacturing workers—have the opportunity to join with the Automation Federation as members of a workforce development consortium called the Automation Community College Consortium. The consortium will assess local workforce needs in creating and implementing factory and process automation curricula, technical training, and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)-recognized automation certifications as part of the National Skills Certification developed by the Manufacturing Institute.

"The Automation Federation is honoured to be recognized for its efforts to build the next generation of automation professionals and stimulate growth in advanced manufacturing through the Automation Community College Consortium,” says Michael Marlowe, Automation Federation Managing Director and Government Relations Director. “Being honored as a 2013 Leadership 100 Award recipient reflects our ongoing commitment to and the progress we’re making in workforce development for advanced manufacturing.”

The other awardees included Johnson Controls Inc., and Agilent Technologies among many others.

The winners will be honored on May 15 at a celebration that follows the ninth annual Manufacturing Leadership Summit in  Florida (USA), a gathering of manufacturing leaders from around the globe.

Analyser manufacturing

The laboratory instrument manufacturer SEAL Analytical has transferred the production of its market leading automated discrete analyzers, the AQ1 and AQ2, to the company’s facility in Mequon (WI USA). The move follows the acquisition of a block digestion business from Aim Lab Automation Technologies Pty Ltd.

SEAL’s President Stuart Smith said: “Digestion is an essential part of the sample preparation process for some of the tests that our discrete analysers perform, so it makes sense for these instruments to be manufactured at the same location for delivery to our clients worldwide.
“This will also ensure that future innovations in these product lines reflect the entire analytical process, so that we continue to provide complete bespoke monitoring solutions.”

With facilities in Europe, USA and China, SEAL Analytical is a world leader in the design, development and manufacture of laboratory instruments including automated discrete and segmented flow nutrient analysers for use in environmental and industrial laboratories. SEAL products are ideal for all types of water, seawater, soil, plant and fertilizer analysis where high reproducibility and low detection limits are required.

The AQ1 and AQ2 instruments automatically test multiple samples in discrete reaction vessels. Following internationally recognised standard methods such as USEPA, ASTM, ISO, these instruments are able to analyse a wide variety of parameters including alkalinity, ammonia, chloride, cyanides, nitrate/nitrite, nitrite, phenolics, ortho phosphate, total phosphorus, silicate, sulfate and total Kjeldahl nitrogen.

Champions!

National Instruments has inducted two British engineers into the LabVIEW Champions program for their outstanding contributions to the global LabVIEW community. Chris Roebuck and Steve Watts have been recognised as LabVIEW Champions to thank them for their time and effort in helping others in the LabVIEW community.

Steve Watts and Chris Roebuck

Chris Roebuck specialises in test and measurement for RF devices, spacecraft command and control, and data management. His passion for visual programming began with LabVIEW 3.1 in 1996 and he has continued to use LabVIEW throughout his career at Filtronic Broadband and EADS Astrium.

National Instruments online community is a resource for its 200,000 members to discover and collaborate on the latest example code, tutorials, textbooks and more. Engineers and scientists around the globe share development techniques, learn about cutting-edge technologies, and connect with LabVIEW and other NI product experts working on similar applications.

Last year he joined NI Alliance Partner, SSBV, as the Software Technical Specialist, responsible for the architectural design and implementation of large scale test and measurement solutions for the space industry. Roebuck has regularly presented at NI UK events and conferences including NIDays, Automated Test Summits and customer advisory boards. He is an active member of the NI community and will chair the 2013 Certified LabVIEW Architect Summit in Paris, alongside Jeff Kodosky, the “Father of LabVIEW”.

“As an enthusiastic LabVIEW developer of many years I am thrilled that NI has bestowed upon me the honour of being inducted into the LabVIEW Champions program” said Chris Roebuck. “I look forward to continuing to support the worldwide LabVIEW community and increasing proficiency levels, along with promoting wider adoption of LabVIEW.”

Steve Watts has been writing industrial software for more than 25 years and began programming with LabVIEW in 1998. He is the co-owner of SSDC Ltd (Structured Software Design Consultants) a supplier of custom designed functional test, laboratory management, industrial control, logging and database systems to aerospace, military, academic research, automotive and manufacturing industries. As well as playing a significant role in the UK LabVIEW Community, Watts chaired the inaugural European CLA Summit and runs the LabVIEW User Group CSLUG (Central South LabVIEW User Group). His book, entitled “A Software Engineering Approach to LabVIEW” has achieved worldwide success and is highly regarded as a seminal text for serious LabVIEW developers.

“I’m delighted to receive this award” said Watts. “I'm very keen on understanding how design decisions impact the final deliverable code, and this can only be done by open discussion with peers. The input of the LabVIEW community is central to this.”

With just 55 LabVIEW Champions around the world and 15 in Europe, Britain now boasts 3 members of this exclusive club, with Roebuck and Watts joining Dr Richard Thomas from Product Technology Partners, who was inducted last year.

“The prestigious LabVIEW Champion title exists as a way to validate and thank outstanding advocates for their participation and willingness to help others in our user community as well as provide them with the technical resources to help others in the future” said Mike Bailey, LabVIEW Marketing Manager, NI UK & Ireland. “Both Chris and Steve have been consistently exceptional participants in the global LabVIEW community. They are known worldwide for their technical expertise and approachability and are truly shining examples to our community.”

Calibrator communicates

The 709H Precision HART Loop Calibrator from Fluke, is an easy-to-use tool with a user-friendly interface and HART capabilities that reduces the time it takes to measure or source, voltage or current, and power up a loop. With its best-in-class accuracy at 0.01% of reading, the Fluke 709H is ideal for process technicians who need a precise loop calibrator and powerful HART communicator in one compact, rugged, reliable tool.

This calibrator supports a select set of HART universal and common practice commands. In the communicator mode, technicians can read basic device information, perform diagnostic tests, and trim the calibration on most HART-enabled transmitters. In the past, this could only be done with a dedicated communicator, a high-end multifunction calibrator, or a laptop computer with a HART modem. The 709H also features a built-in, selectable 250-ohm resistor to tune the loop for HART communications.

The Fluke 709H and non-HART 709 models feature an intuitive interface with dedicated buttons, a Quick-Set rotary encoder knob, and simple two wire connection for quick, easy measurements. The dedicated 0-100% span and 25% step buttons make for quick and easy testing. Ramping and auto-stepping enables technicians to perform tests remotely and be in ‘two places at once’.

The optional 709H/TRACK software with communication cable can document milliamp measurements and HART transmitter parameters and enable upload of data to a PC.

Low temperature fluorescence spectroscopy

Liquid nitrogen and liquid helium cryostats are available as part of the range of temperature-controlled accessories for the FLS980 and FLS920 series of photoluminescence spectrometers from Edinburgh Photonics. Fully field retrofittable, these cryostats allow fluorescence measurements and temperature maps to be made over the temperature ranges 77-300K and 4.2-325K respectively. Versions with an upper temperature of 500K are also available.

Low temperature operation allows researchers to benefit from enhanced fluorescence intensities. Temperature maps can be generated by acquiring a series of emission, excitation, synchronous and anisotropy scans over a predefined temperature range. The individual measurements are automatically started when the target temperatures are reached.

All cryostats are supplied complete with controller and chamber adapter. The spectrometer software communicates with the cryostat controller to allow families of temperature dependent steady state and life- time data to be acquired under computer control.

Wireless races ahead!

Though not strictly speaking in our sphere of interest we thought this wireless application would be of interest to you. And possibly inspire you with an idea for one of your applications!

LPRS is supplying their market leading easyRadio Advanced (eRA) wireless modules to Microgate, the specialist Italian sports timing system manufacturer, for use in their new wireless athletics training timer – WITTY.

The new Microgate WITTY has been designed as a portable, practical and precise athlete timing system which meets all the requirements of the latest training methods. It can perform all the measurements typical of modern athletic preparation including sprint, shuttle, resistance and courses whilst also meeting many custom requirements. The WITTY can acquire results with accuracy higher than one thousandth 1/1000 of a second.

Significant features of this timer include an intuitive and easy to use graphical interface with a colour display, simple and fast learning process, single or double timing photocells available with unlimited extra photocells for unlimited intermediate times, calculation of speed (km/h, m/s, mph), fast data transfer to PC (for rankings, data assessment and export) via an on-board USB interface and water resistant. Operational for 10 hours from internal batteries WITTY is supplied in a backpack for complete portability.

The key to the success of the system is the use of LPRS eRA modules to transfer data from the self-configuring photocells, which are easy to set up and offer fast repositioning when moving from one exercise to another. The eRA modules offer reliable wireless transmission up to 150m range and provides selectable transmission frequencies, allowing multiple WITTY systems to be used in the same training area.

Federico Gori of Microgate srl comments; “We have a very good working relationship with LPRS and have used LPRS products for many years in our ski race timing gates. The new eRA wireless modules offer exceptional versatility and were simple to design-in to our products.”

The Microgate WITTY system may be expanded with the addition of further photocells (single or double) to record lap times. A range of accessories are available including starting pads, time displaying LED boards and direction indicators. The WITTY is compatible with the Microgate Optojump Next system, an optical measurement system which can measure flight and contact times during the performance of a series of jumps to an accuracy of 1/1000 of a second.

The recently introduced easyRadio Advanced (eRA) wireless module range of transmitters and transceivers incorporates the unique LPRS easyRadio software protocol and build on the simplicity of previous easyRadio (02) modules by remaining true to the original brief of “reducing time to market by removing the complexity associated with the radio software development interface”.

As well as many new and advanced features eRA offers a much improved transmitting range with latest field tests reporting 1.6 mile coverage owing to narrow-band operation and greater immunity from interference. Other innovative features on the easyRadio Advanced transmitters and transceivers include the ability to change the bandwidth of the radio from 150KHz down to 12.5KHz thus providing narrow-band performance on a wide-band budget. eRA modules can also interface to other raw data modules using either FSK (FM) or ASK (AM) modulation modes. Using the free flash firmware upgrade tools from LPRS new updates/features can be quickly programmed by engineers, making a truly future proof solution. Designed with a back compatible pin configuration, current easyRadio 02 users can easily upgrade to easyRadio Advanced versions with a minimum of fuss.

In addition to designing and manufacturing the highly successful easyRadio Advanced (eRA) wireless modules, the full LPRS product range now includes, Raspberry Pi and Arduino Shield wireless platforms, narrow band long range wireless modules from CDP, the IQRF range of wireless networking components, the IQVC range of visual control panels together with antenna, wireless key fobs and a wide range of sensor products.