Sensor Technology Ltd

Manufacturers and users of cranes and other lifting equipment are adopting new wireless control technologies. Tony Ingham of Sensor Technology explains the advantages and looks at how the field is developing. Most of us find it odd to look back five or ten years to when our home computers were tethered to the wall by a cable.

Ports, docks and harbours are being pressured into handling ever-increasing volumes of cargo by the increasing globalisation of the world economy, so mobile harbour equipment has to work efficiently and reliably at all times. Tony Ingham of Sensor Technology explains how monitoring the work rate of cranes, loaders and unloaders means their performance can be optimised and downtime for maintenance can be scheduled for minimum disruption to operational requirements.

A regular exhibitor at the Automation India show, Sensor Technology, has gone with the theme of new and developing technologies on their stand at this year’s show in the Bombay Convention and Exhibition Centre. Sensor Technology will be showing extensions to its LoadSense range, an updates version of its ORT 230/240 range, at the show taking place, 22-25th August 2016.

Overseas business is expected to increase for British sensor manufacturer Sensor Technology Ltd, following two ultra-successful exhibitions in Germany during the spring of 2016.

Sensor technology has set new benchmark performance standards for optical rotary torque transducers, with the launch of the digital ORT 230/240 series. These new optical rotary torque sensors are ideal for applications when the demand is for low torque and/or high bandwidth, providing precise, dynamic measurement of rotary and static torque less than 100Nm and for bandwidths of up to 50kHz.

Sensor Technology has continued to develop its product range, offering users new options for measuring power in drive shafts and other rotating machine elements.

Driveshafts deliver power as a rotary force, and in most applications there is a need to know the amount of power in the system. But getting measurements from a turning shaft requires some engineering ingenuity, so here Tony Ingham from Sensor Technology in Banbury runs through the basics.

An innovative device that simultaneously senses a helicopter’s position and weighs the load it is carrying has helped a 50-year landscape conservation project successfully reach its first five-year milestone.

The recent rise of interest in integrated motor/inverters units has led to the need for testing and mapping of their performance over a range of operating conditions. A wireless torque sense has been used as the heart of a dynamometer built for just this task.

A Bluetooth interface and Android app have been developed by Sensor Technology Ltd for its non-contact torque sensor, the TorqSense.

This past year it has been difficult to open an engineering magazine and not read about the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0 or Machine-to-Machine Communications (M2MC). But all the hype and predictions will come to naught if sensor manufacturers don’t rise to the challenges before them, says Tony Ingham of Sensor Technology Ltd in Oxfordshire.

The handling of dry bulk materials used to be a completely manual process, but it is now being increasingly automated in a drive to reduce both the costs and the risks of injury, while also increasing throughput and accuracy. We report on some of the new technologies behind these developments.

Harbour sides are busy places, with ships docking, unloading one cargo, loading another and departing again as quickly as possible. Keeping track of all this activity and of their various and valuable cargoes is demanding yet vital, so it is best to automate as much as possible. Mark Ingham of Sensor Technology Ltd in the UK explains how the drive shafts of the various machines and mobile plant can instantly generate much of the information needed.

Non-contacting torque sensing technology is delivering improved monitoring and control to materials handling applications in the coal industry, including monitoring of coal conveyors and viscosity measurement of coal slurry. In each case the technology delivers improved accuracy over alternative techniques, so improves quality, efficiency and cost- effectiveness.

Enabling the measurement of visosity wirelessly, Sensor Technology has developed a wireless technique using its TorqSense rotary torque transducers. The 'technique' does not need a physical connection to the rotating shaft, but instead uses a RF link to both send power to the sensing element on the spindle and to receive torque reading signals back from it.

Rapid loading and unloading are critical to the success of a shipping company because ships make money at sea, not in port. Dockside technology continues to develop to provide ever more speed and efficiency, with wireless, non-contact digital torque monitoring an emerging technology that is increasingly being integrated into unloaders.

Taking a small stand at a big exhibition in Las Vegas may have been the decision of the year by inveterate innovators Sensor Technology of Banbury, Oxon. Visitors to Heli-Expo in March 2013, a show focused on commercial helicopter operators, showed so much interest in Sensor Technology’s intelligent wireless helicopter load sensor that sales manager Mark Ingham expects to double turnover comfortably within the year.

Dedicated to developing innovative hydrokinetic turbines to generate “green” energy from the motion of the sea, Irish company Tidal Energy Limited recently had a pressing need for a way of accurately of measuring the power produced by its scale-model prototypes. Equipment from Sensor Technology provided a convenient and dependable solution where other methods had failed.

Sensors being integrated into ever-more products and systems will be a key driver for technology developments for the next several decades. Many consumer products are becoming more ‘intelligent’, while specialist systems are becoming more ‘capable’. In reality this means more sensors are being fitted and their signals processed automatically.

Having for many years used one of Sensor Technology’s novel TorqSense non-contact torque sensors as an aid to product development, Watson-Marlow Pumps Group has now chosen another of these versatile and dependable sensors for production-line testing of its most critical products. The TorqSense sensor was selected for this demanding application because of its ease of use and because of the reliability and accuracy that has been consistently demonstrated by the similar unit in use in the development department.