Sensor Technology Ltd. articles

Innovation, we are told, is the key to a successful manufacturing economy. Invent and patent something and you will make money on every one made - if it is mass produced you get an on-going income. Tony Ingham of Sensor Technology Ltd looks at his experience over two decades and tries to draw some general principles that may help Britain in its new ambition to rebuild the manufacturing base.

We are all familiar with the idea of the man who had a brilliant idea and got it to market

Equipment rentals are increasingly helping companies overcome the hurdle of finding investment capital to fund development and verification projects.

The current phase of the economic cycle, recovery from a slowdown, is always difficult and frustrating, as Mark Ingham of Sensor Technology identifies: "Companies are seeing their markets improve, but don`t have the reserves to finance all the activities that will kickstart their sales. What money there is has to be used carefully, wh

Most laboratory viscometers employ the well-known principle of rotational viscometers to measure viscosity by sensing the torque required to rotate a spindle at a constant speed while it is immersed in the sample fluid. This is because the torque, generally measured using the reaction torque on the motor, is proportional to the viscous drag on the immersed spindle and thus the viscosity of the fluid.

AEA Technology wished to measure the consistency of cement mixes for pressure inje

Aircraft servicing times are being reduced, enabling more flying hours, thanks to a new fully automatic generator testing station developed by MEL Aviation in Sudbury, Suffolk that incorporates a TorqSense sensor from Sensor Technology

A key element in the design of the station is Ihe use of a TorqSense non-contact torque sensor, which can be deployed instantly for high performance acceleration and deceleration tests of aircrafls` gpnera- tors. Conventional sensors would, by contra

The electrical machines laboratory at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has greatly increased in its effectiveness as a teaching resource since TorqSense non-contact torque sensors from Sensor Technology have been fitted to five machine sets. The new sensors replace an existing system of machine monitoring that had proved inaccurate.

Dry bulk handling is following many other industrial processes that have been redeveloped from a ‘black art’ to a highly accurate and controlled procedure.

A generation ago much of industry was in the hands of time-served artisans who relied on their many years experience to tweak

Mechanically degraded food fluids were modelled as Power law fluids in a pilot scale (42 l) helical ribbon agitation vessel. Effective rheological representative flow curves determined from speed/torque data proved comparable to off-line laboratory rheometer measured data. Modelling effective viscosity as a Power law function gave effective consistency coefficient K_eff which correlated strongly with K from the rheometer (R²<SUP2< sup>=0.99). Effective flow behav

The subject of torque measurement has previously been addressed extensively. Most of the existing transducers either rely on low voltage analogue systems (e.g. conventional resistive strain gauge) or complicated mechanical assemblies by physically assessing displacement, i.e. optical systems. This paper identifies a new, potentially low cost, non-contact, frequency domain strain torque sensor1 utilising SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) Technology for surface strain measurement. The sensor has a sh

The paper describes the application of a non-contact, high bandwidth, low cost, SAW-based torque measuring system for improving the dynamic performance of industrial process motor-drive systems. Background to the SAW technology and its motor integration is discussed and a resonance ratio control (RRC) technique for the coordinated motion control of multi-inertia mechanical systems, based on the measurement of shaft torque via a SAW-based torque sensor is proposed. Furthermore, a new controlle