News

Is there a distributor that you feel excels in delivering exceptional customer service, an innovative product range and strong marketing initiatives? If the answer is yes, then now is the time to nominate that company for an Instrumentation Excellence Award. The Instrumentation Excellence Awards (IEAs) celebrate the very best from the world of test, measurement, sensing and control.

The 2024 awards ceremony, organised by Instrumentation Monthly publisher Datateam Business Media, will take place on 24 October at the Grand Connaught Rooms and will once again take place alongside the Electronics Industry Awards, making it the night of the year for networking.

Entering the Awards is quick, easy and completely free of charge – so there’s no need to delay! To make your entry really stand out from the crowd, it is recommended that you try to include a comprehensive overview of the product or company that you have nominated. There is even the option to include supplementary documents like data sheets and images alongside your nomination.  

Nominations close soon so visit www.instrumentationawards.co.uk to make your nomination and to find out more about the Instrumentation Excellence Awards.

Monitoring and protection systems are playing an increasingly important role in the performance of turbines and other critical rotating machinery and the FREE downloadable guides published by SENSONICS are proving to be invaluable. As a condition monitoring and protection systems specialist with over 40 years of experience, Sensonics are in an ideal position to offer the best advice on monitoring systems.

Following the publication of ‘Specifying Seismic Monitoring & Protection Systems’ and ‘The Turbine Supervisory’ guides they have just published their latest guide ‘Specifying Overspeed Protection Systems’. Overspeed protection is a key requirement in the power generation industry where failure of the machine speed control loop can lead to damaging consequences. Applicable to steam turbines, gas turbines and boiler feed pumps, the implementation of independent monitoring and shutdown protection is essential to minimise this risk.

This essential resource is a must-read for professionals involved in power generation system design as there are a multitude of equipment configurations and methodologies that can be applied, depending on the application. The guide describes the various components that make up an overspeed protection system, along with the recommended best practice.

For your FREE copy, simply log on to: https://www.sensonics.co.uk/specifying-overspeed-protection-guide 

STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronic applications, announces an advanced process based on 18nm Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FD-SOI) technology with embedded phase change memory (ePCM) to support next-generation embedded processing devices. This new process technology, co-developed by ST and Samsung Foundry, delivers a leap in performance and power consumption for embedded processing applications while allowing larger memory sizes and higher levels of integration of analog and digital peripherals. The first next-generation STM32 microcontroller based on the new technology will start sampling to selected customers in the second half of 2024, with production planned for the second half of 2025.

Remi El-Ouazzane, President of Microcontrollers, Digital ICs and RF products Group at STMicroelectronics, said: “As a leading innovator in the semiconductor industry, ST has pioneered and brought to our customers FD-SOI and PCM technologies for automotive and aerospace applications. We are now taking the next step to bring the benefits of these technologies to developers of industrial applications starting with our next-generation STM32 microcontrollers.”

Technology benefits

Compared to ST 40nm embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) technology used today, 18nm FD-SOI with ePCM vastly improves key figures of merit:

• More than 50% better performance-to-power ratio
• 2.5-times higher non-volatile memory (NVM) density enabling larger on-chip memories
• Three times higher digital density for integration of digital peripherals such as AI and graphics accelerators and state-of-the-art security and safety features
• 3dB improvement in noise figure for enhanced RF performance in wireless MCUs

The technology is capable of 3V operation to supply analog features such as power management, reset systems, clock sources and digital/analog converters. It is the only sub-20 nm technology supporting this capability.

The technology also delivers the reliability required for demanding industrial applications thanks to robust high-temperature operation, radiation hardening, and data retention capabilities already proven in automotive applications.

Additional information on FD-SOI and PCM is available on ST.com.

Is there a flow, level or control product that you think is worthy of an award at this year’s Instrumentation Excellence Awards? If the answer is yes, then now is the time to nominate that product.

The 2024 awards ceremony, organised by Instrumentation Monthly publisher Datateam Business Media, will take place on 24 October at the Grand Connaught Rooms and will once again take place alongside the Electronics Industry Awards, making it the night of the year for networking.

Entering the Awards is quick, easy and completely free of charge – so there’s no need to delay! To make your entry really stand out from the crowd, it is recommended that you try to include a comprehensive overview of the product or company that you have nominated. There is even the option to include supplementary documents like data sheets and images alongside your nomination.  

Nominations close soon so visit www.instrumentationawards.co.uk to make your nomination and to find out more about the Instrumentation Excellence Awards.

ABB’s service center in Danbury, Connecticut has unveiled new capabilities that allow its service team to assess force measurement sensors such as the Pressductor® rolling mill force sensor under extremely demanding conditions. By integrating a roll force load cell hydraulic press in the center, ABB can support North American customers with load cell testing in a more time- and cost-efficient manner.

The roll force load cell press weighs 70 tons and is more than 17 feet high. The powerful machine can exert a force of 4,000,000 pounds on the tested sensors.

“Such machines are not common in the United States, and until recently we had to perform these tests overseas,” said Steve Reichert, Operations Manager, Danbury, ABB Measurement & Analytics. “With the new addition, we can keep these projects local, helping our customers save both time and money.”

The fully automated capabilities of the press enable the delivery of comprehensive condition reports to customers with significantly reduced turnaround times. The reports give quick access to in-depth evaluation results, expediting decision-making and allowing for prompt repairs or replacements when necessary.

Acknowledging the significance of precise force measurement, in conjunction with the new press, ABB has also initiated a “Strip and Advise” evaluation program. The program is designed to rigorously assess the performance of mill force sensors and, when needed, swiftly execute necessary repairs to ensure optimal operations and reliability.

The ABB Pressductor® force sensors are pivotal components in guaranteeing the precision and dependability of rolling mills. Positioned at the top, middle and bottom of the mill stack, these sensors assume the critical role of measuring the degree of reduction in steel or aluminium slabs as they undergo the transformation into thin sheets, a vital process in industries such as automotive manufacturing.

The Danbury service center offers the highest quality in testing, inspection and repair services for North American customers, including of roll force STR systems, Millmate Thickness Gauges, and strip scanners. The service center has a strong track record of using advanced technologies and follows well-established repair and fault-detection protocols, starting with visual examination, thorough cleaning, detailed electrical and thermal inspections, and now with full diagnostic load measurements.

Since 1970, ABB has maintained its leadership position in the field of rolling mill force sensor products, with more than 1,000 mill installations throughout the Americas.

Is there a company that you recognise as having embraced digital transformation to improve resilience or productivity? Or is there an organisation that you see as having made a significant impact on the market by guiding others forward on their digital transformation journey? If the answer is yes, then now is the time to nominate that company for an Instrumentation Excellence Award. The Instrumentation Excellence Awards (IEAs) celebrate the very best from the world of test, measurement, sensing and control.

The 2024 awards ceremony, organised by Instrumentation Monthly publisher Datateam Business Media, will take place on 24 October at the Grand Connaught Rooms and will once again take place alongside the Electronics Industry Awards, making it the night of the year for networking.

Entering the Awards is quick, easy and completely free of charge – so there’s no need to delay! To make your entry really stand out from the crowd, it is recommended that you try to include a comprehensive overview of the product or company that you have nominated. There is even the option to include supplementary documents like data sheets and images alongside your nomination.  

Nominations close soon so visit www.instrumentationawards.co.uk to make your nomination and to find out more about the Instrumentation Excellence Awards.

At embedded world 2024, Analog Devices will be demonstrating how the company is advancing the performance, speed of creation, and environmental impact of embedded system design. Visitors to the booth will be able to explore 16 feature-rich demos, highlighting the company’s ability to deliver system-level solutions which enable its customers to differentiate in the market. Whether it be through direct customer support, design tools, or robust technical resources, ADI is committed to providing exactly what customers need to bring their systems to life.

Attendees are invited to discover a world of intelligent solutions for a secure, connected future at ADI’s stand in Hall 4A, Booth 360.

Among the highlight demos are:

• Secure Industrial Network Connectivity: See how ADI’s intelligent building security demo incorporates our latest security solutions over a 10BASE-T1L network to enable a modern industrial IoT infrastructure. Discover how a security coprocessor can be used with ADI microcontrollers to counter man in the middle attacks in the context of building sensing and control.
• Industrial Network of the Future: ADI’s solutions help facilitate the next generation of industrial capabilities required to increase efficiency and productivity. Our leading technologies provide the sensing, connectivity, power, and processing solutions required to capture and act on new operational insights.
• Cybersecurity for Medical IoT: This demo showcases how ADI’s secure authentication products provide robust protection in medical IoT devices to ensure patient health and safety. It highlights the security risks and vulnerabilities in key components and illustrates the critical role of security in a healthcare environment.
• Visual Servoing Using Edge AI: As processing moves rapidly to the edge, robots need to sense and interpret data quickly and reliably while simultaneously becoming more localized and self-contained. This demo shows vision-based object manipulation for a robotic arm enabled by a microcontroller.
• Modernized Emergency Lighting System: A scalable, adaptive emergency lighting system, where reliability is guaranteed through high performance supervisors and backup power solutions. This demo showcases an emergency lighting system that would route foot traffic to available exits in real time.
• Prototyping for Advanced SDR Apps: The Jupiter RF Agile SDR-in-a-Box platform supports SDR applications from early concept to real-world use cases. Learn how it provides flexibility in evaluating and prototyping across different environments and how multiple systems can be synchronized for large MIMO applications.

Presentations by ADI experts in the technical conference program:

ADI’s presence at embedded world 2024 will be complemented by seven expert presentations during the embedded world Conference and the electronic displays Conference, which will take place in the adjacent NCC East Convention Centre.

embedded world Keynote Speech on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, Room Istanbul

• 10:00 – 10:15am:
  Opening and Welcome Remarks by Prof. Dr. Axel Sikora, Chairman of the embedded world Conference
• 10:15 – 10:45am:
  “How the Intelligent Edge May Help Enable the Sustainable Factory of the Future”
  presented by Fiona Treacy, Managing Director of Industrial Automation at Analog Devices

• The keynote speeches at the embedded world Conference are open to all trade show visitors.

embedded world Conference Technical Presentations:

• Tuesday, April 9, 2024, from 11:00 – 11:30am: “Revolutionizing Industrial IoT: Enabling Real-Time Secure Connectivity to the Edge”, presented by Jason Murphy, Senior Software Systems Engineer, Analog Devices
• Tuesday, April 9, 2024, from 05:00 – 05:30pm: “Solve Design Challenges for High Performance Isolated 1080p HDMI® and USB High Speed Connectivity”, presented by Dr. Riccardo Privitera, Engineer, Product Applications, Analog Devices
• Wednesday, April 10, 2024, from 12:00 – 12:30pm: “Using Software to Reduce Complexity in Modern Embedded Systems”, presented by Dr. Rob Oshana, Senior Vice President, Software & Security, Analog Devices
• Wednesday, April 10, 2024, from 05:00 – 05:30pm: “Industrial EMC Challenges: Strategies for Success”, presented by James Scanlon, Principal Manager, Strategic Marketing Industrial Converters at Analog Devices

electronic displays Conference Technical Presentations:

• Wednesday, April 10, 2024, from 01:25 – 01:45pm: “Total Power Solution for Automotive Local Dimming Displays”, presented by Szukang Hsien, Senior Director, Business Management Automotive Power at Analog Devices
• Thursday, April 11, 2024, from 01:25 – 01:50pm:
  electronic Displays Conference Session Keynote: “Driving Visual Innovation – GMSL™ Contribution to State-of-the-Art Automotive Displays”, presented by Geir Ostrem, Analog Devices Fellow

For more information on conference presentations and demo details, visit ADI’s embedded world 2024 website.

Several M12 connector series from binder are available in versions for surface mount technology (SMT). On the one hand, they are advantageous for integration into space-critical designs, on the other hand, the good automation capability in further processing offers enormous savings potential.

binder, a leading supplier of industrial circular connectors, offers products from several M12 series as surface mount devices (SMDs). They are suitable for further processing in fully automated processes, such as for the particularly dense, double-sided assembly of PCBs. These are used in automation technology devices, sensors and actuators as well as in robotics.

SMDs: Space-saving and economical to process

In the course of miniaturizing electronic assemblies, surface mounting has proven itself in component assembly with high component density. In contrast to the classic through-hole technology (THT) or through-hole reflow (THR) process, the SMD contact pins are placed directly on the surface in the SMT process and connected using solder paste instead of being inserted through the PCB and then soldered. This allows significant space savings to be made: for example, many connectors can be mounted with very small distances in one plane, as is required for passive/active sensor distributors in automation technology.

SMDs are usually supplied on so-called blister tapes (tape & reel) – a type of packaging that is suitable for automated further processing by the customer. In addition to space-saving PCB assembly, this ability to automate production is a significant advantage of surface mounting. It is characterized by its cost-effectiveness, especially for large quantities or when several connectors are to be processed on one PCB. Furthermore, advantages can be achieved in terms of heat dissipation and signal integrity as well as a reduced susceptibility to errors during assembly.

SMT product variety from binder

The binder SMT products are available in versions with 4, 6 and 8 contacts and with different codings. They are available in both shielded and unshielded versions. The M12 connectors are also available in different versions – for example as a set with different flange housings, as a built-in part in blister packaging or tape & reel packaging for automated processing.

In detail, these are A-coded M12 connectors from the 713/763 series, B-coded components from the 715/766 series and connectors from the 825/876 series with D-coding and the 876 series with X-coding.

Depending on the coding, the M12-SMT variants are suitable for different applications: A-coded for sensors and DC power, B-coded for Profibus and D- and X-coded for 100 Mbit and 10 Gbit Ethernet respectively.

All M12 products from binder provide industry-relevant protection acc. to IP67 against the ingress of dust and water. The binder variants are based on the current market standards with regard to the PCB drilling pattern, which means that switching to binder products requires little effort.

About binder

binder is a family business characterized by traditional values and is one of the leading specialists for circular connectors with headquarters in Neckarsulm. Since 1960, binder has stood for the highest quality. The binder Group includes the binder headquarters, nine sales offices, seven production facilities, two system service providers and an innovation and technology center.

The company works with other distribution partners on six continents and employs around 2,000 people worldwide. In addition to Germany, binder has sites in China, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Hungary and the USA.

An upgrade project for a platform lift used in a materials handling installation had its old mechanical limit switches swapped-out for 2-Wire inductive sensors to verify that loads are properly positioned before allowing the lift to move.

CUSTOMER APPLICATION

Cartons or pallets stacked on a lift platform in the down position may become unstable when the lift position changes. Also, if a load has any protruding parts, they may snag the edge of a floor as the lift rises or descends. This causes tipping, which can result in damage to both the load and the installation, with a risk of injury to persons nearby.

A metal bar is fitted on the lift to ensure the correct load position. Unless this bar has been pivoted into its cradle, the lift will not start. Also, any subsequent movement of the safety bar caused by an unstable load will stop the platform. Generally, this is a very simple electrical scheme with only AC power available on site.

Mechanical limit switches were proving to be unreliable because the frequent switching was wearing out the mechanical contacts, whilst dust and moisture also adversely affected reliability. The customer therefore wanted an equally simple, non-contact solution.

CUSTOMER SOLUTION

A Contrinex inductive sensor from it’s 600 Series family fulfils the customer’s requirements. To verify that the bar has cleared the load and lodged in the cradle, a 2-wire AC/DC sensor with a 4 mm operating distance is embedded in the cradle itself. The sub-flush mounting position protects the sensing face from any mechanical contact.

With a wide voltage range and short-circuit protection, these sensors also meet the customer’s on-site electrical requirements. Since the safety bar can become deformed with prolonged use, a sensor is chosen with an increased operating distance. This allows compensation for gradual target drift by simple range adjustment, rather than by repositioning the sensor itself.

The sensor closes an enabling circuit for the start button, which in turn latches a relay controlling the lift motor. Any movement of the safety bar caused by an unstable load will open the circuit and unlatch the relay, stopping unsafe movement of the platform.

Software solutions can, among other things, help solve problems or improve operational efficiency. This award recognises the most innovative software solutions and services in the instrumentation sector. Is there a software solution you think deserves recognition? If the answer is yes, then now is the time it for an Instrumentation Excellence Award. The Instrumentation Excellence Awards (IEAs) celebrate the very best from the world of test, measurement, sensing and control.

The 2024 awards ceremony, organised by Instrumentation Monthly publisher Datateam Business Media, will take place on 24 October at the Grand Connaught Rooms and will once again take place alongside the Electronics Industry Awards, making it the night of the year for networking.

Entering the Awards is quick, easy and completely free of charge – so there’s no need to delay! To make your entry really stand out from the crowd, it is recommended that you try to include a comprehensive overview of the product or company that you have nominated. There is even the option to include supplementary documents like data sheets and images alongside your nomination.  

Nominations close soon so visit www.instrumentationawards.co.uk to make your nomination and to find out more about the Instrumentation Excellence Awards.