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It's said a picture is worth a thousand words. The truth of that statement is most apparent when viewing waveforms displayed on an oscilloscope, r-rom the Latin oscillare, meaning to [...]

More and more products depend on electronic smarts embedded inside. The growth of embedded systems has been spurred by computation power that lets engineers work at the module level, rather [...]

Development cycles have shortened dramatically. So much so that there is no longer enough time to devise computer-powered applications starting with a standalone computer or processor. Consequently, computer and chipmakers [...]

Right-angle LVDTs take less space Here's one way to shorten a linear-variable-differential transformer (LVDT): Put the connector on the side instead of on the end. That's the idea behind new [...]

In early manufacturing lines the only devices that could detect a product on the line were switches that actually touched the product. In contrast, sensors deliver noncontact detection--eliminating the mechanical [...]

Manufacturers across many industries increasingly emphasize sustainability. When it comes to building machines, cost is no longer king. New designs must improve safety, minimize waste, and consume less energy. Design-for-sustainability [...]

Machine tools today compete against each other on productivity and accuracy. But the rapidly changing conditions under which modern machine tools operate make it difficult to maintain productivity and accuracy. [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Joseph Iamartino C&M CORP. WAUREGAN, CONN. True plug-n-play is the holy grail manufacturers strive to attain when systems must work with each other. The ideal scenario lets users [...]

There's a growing demand for smaller linear motors. Manufacturers have developed new direct-drive linear servos in response. Standard rotary servomotors spin lead-screws or pull belt drives to produce linear motion. [...]

It used to be the case that embedded systems just had to be small enough to fit in the space available, and powerful enough to handle the processing job at [...]

Not long ago, the cost and complexity of machine vision limited its use to specialty machines and isolated inspections. Today, however, machine vision has proven itself as a practical and [...]

A standard machine-vision system consists of five basic parts: the camera, optics, illumination or lighting, the image-acquisition hardware, and the machine-vision software. While some people tend to group optics along [...]

Makers of portable electronic devices are in a continuous struggle to add innovative features while getting a long operating life from an internal power source. Nowhere is this demonstrated more [...]

The process of choosing ac/dc power supplies involves much more than checking listed ratings against load demand. Designers must consider factors such as the enclosure housing the supply, whether there [...]

Gary Stevens IMPCO Inc. East Providence, R.I. Electronic connectors are typically the points in a circuit most vulnerable to the effects of corrosion. Those effects can range from reduced current [...]

The incandescent light bulb that resulted from Thomas Edison's thousands of Menlo Park experiments might soon be a thing of the past. Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are starting to move [...]

Ethernet, once thought to be the sole province of computer networks, has found itself linked to applications and devices far beyond its original scope. Aside from the normal computer to [...]

Everyone's owned a pinwheel at one time or another. I remember riding in the back of my parents' car, sticking my pinwheel out the window as we traveled down the [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Most systems that monitor parking-lot occupancy are installed when the parking structure is built. But there are many existing structures that could benefit from an occupancy-monitoring system. However, [...]

There was a time when reconnaissance meant either multimillion-dollar satellites snapping a few shots per orbit or pilots risking their necks to fly over hostile territory. Today's reconnaissance is dominated [...]

Safety is a rapidly growing topic. New legislation along with tightened national and international safety standards focus not only on protecting humans, but material assets and the environment. This emphasis [...]

A virtual instrument (VI) at its simplest consists of a circuit board that plugs into a PC and software that makes the board perform much like traditional stand-alone test instruments [...]

You'll find them in our CD player, radio, and cell phone. Motor controllers depend on them for efficient operation. They adjust the air/fuel ratio in your car and trigger air [...]

Ultrasonic double-sheet detectors distinguish between single and double sheets of paper, plastic, or metal foils to prevent waste or machine damage. The sensor operates by beaming ultrasonic sound waves through [...]

Travelers in the green sphere, those who desire products made using green or sustainable processes, have no end of choices in standards and organizational bodies to determine if particular products [...]

Rocket launches are noisy. So much so that the noise produced during a shuttle launch has considerable detrimental effect on the safety of spacecraft, ground facilities, and support equipment. The [...]

Designed for use in smart power-management systems, this digital point-of-load (POL) chipset provides a configurable PWM controller for nonisolated dc/dc POL supplies. Point-of-load supplies place the power management of electronic [...]

The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) could provide Che sharpest views ever taken of the sun's surface. Scheduled to be operational in 20f7, the ATST should help scientists learn how [...]

Whether in electronics, mechanical engineering, or biology, miniaturization brings demands for dimensional accuracy. Simply adopting a downsized standard method from the big world won't work. The conventional way of getting [...]

Energy costs rise an average of 6 to 8% each year. It's no wonder manufacturers now specify that the machines they purchase from OEMs be as efficient as possible. One [...]

Almost 3,000 hardy souls braved the sweltering temperatures of Austin, Tex., during the first week in August to attend the National Instruments Corp. NIWeek '08 conference. Most seemed to think [...]

The article on linear motors ('How to apply direct-drive servomotors,' May 8) has a dangerously incorrect equation for RMS force (on page 96). There is an extra '2' in the [...]

Modern manufacturing techniques demand that the raw materials fed to production lines be consistent. This is particularly true with rolled sheet steel where a variation in steel thickness could damage [...]

When the semiconductor industry moved to 300-mm wafers a few years ago, it changed the whole manner of working within chip fabs. In earlier times, it was not uncommon to [...]

Laser-based distance measurement often serves as a way of positioning parts, navigating automated vehicles like stacker cranes, and measuring the dimensions of objects like boxes. There are three common technologies [...]

In quick review, an inductive sensor generates an electromagnetic wave at a specific tuned frequency. The tuned circuit inside the sensor has a high impedance at that frequency, creating a [...]

Automation light grids take many forms and cover applications from simple to complex. Sizes range from a few inches to several feet, and resolutions from 2 to 100 mm. Nearly [...]

Anemometers simply measure wind speed. Many designs use the wind to spin a fan or other mechanical device. The speed at which the fan turns is then calibrated to the [...]

An inclination or tilt sensor provides angular-tilt information relative to gravitational force. This information can then be used to change the characteristics of the device. For example, tilt sensors inside [...]

Or more precisely, the IceCube Detector, part of the South Pole Neutrino Observatory that searches for one of the most elusive of the low-mass subatomic particles: the neutrino. Neutrinos are [...]

Inductive position-measuring systems (IPMSs] operate on the same principle as an inductive proximity sensor. But instead of a single sensing coil, position measuring uses a multiple-coil system. The outputs from [...]

Multipixel-array (MPA) sensing for target detection within specific distances combines the benefits of background suppression, sharply defined sensing, and insensitivity to object color with the distance-based detection of a distance-measurement [...]

Just-in-time manufacturing and a demand for reduced inventory have pushed the adoption of automated storage-and-retrieval systems (ASRSs) These complex systems contain a series of bays for product storage that can [...]

The options when specifying sensors for long-range object detection or positioning usually boil down to two alternatives: optical sensors using either infrared or visible-red light and ultrasonic. Optical sensing is [...]

A flexible and resilient alternative to Wi-Fi, RF, or hard-wired data transfer is optical data transmission (ODT). Wi-Fi and RF are vulnerable to noise interference and can exhibit varying transfer [...]

Vision sensors can be as simple as an inductive proximity device or can include multiple circuit boards connected to a PC. A vision system combines the two technologies to reduce [...]

Most people know that light travels in a straight line unless something acts upon it to change its direction. The three most common methods of changing the direction of light [...]

Robots used in assembly and testing applications typically give high degrees of operational reliability and repeatability. But fitting a car door precisely into an automotive body has not been one [...]

In most applications, radio-frequency-identification (RFID) systems are used to store product and process data on, or retrieve it from, a special RFID tag using wireless technologies. Power to operate the [...]

Data-matrix codes in industrial environments are quite common. Their small size, large data capacity, and readability when large segments of the symbol have been lost or destroyed provide secure and [...]