It is wireless, needing no physical contact with the shaft being monitored.
If you manufacture in the UK, please read to the bottom
Instead, two two surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices are attached to the shaft and are interrogated through an RF link to stationary electronics inside the body of the transducer. When torque is applied to the shaft, the SAWs react to the applied strain and change their output.
One use for the sensor is in bottling machines, checking that bottle tops are screwed on properly. “All you have to do is set up a TorqSense transducer in the capping machine and turn it on.” said Sensor Technology sales engineer Mark Ingham. “The SAW frequencies reflected back are distorted in proportion to the level of torque.”
The company has worked with OEMs to develop high speed capping machines – for use in pharmaceutical plants, amongst other applications.
“Cap Coder, an Oxfordshire neighbour of Sensor Technology, incorporates TorqSense units in its CC1440 and CC1440T bench-top machines,” according to TorqSense. “If a torque value outside the acceptable range is encountered, an alarm will trigger the capping machine to identify unacceptable product for rejection.”
Pharmaceutical and biotech company Almac Group uses standard and purpose built Cap Coder machines with the sensors for product packaging at its global headquarters in Craigavon, Northern Ireland.
“Fast and accurate torque measurement is becoming more and more important as all sectors of manufacturing automate their physical processes, and also need to improve the recording of production performance data,” said Ingham. “TorqSense is now used in industries from automotive to materials handling, test and measurement, fast-moving consumer goods production and power generation.”
Celebrating UK manufacture
Electronics Weekly aims to celebrate the thousands of companies, many of them SMEs, that manufacture electronics-based products in the UK, particularly in the printed version of Electronics Weekly.
This is straightforward for us when the products are intended to be used by design engineers or in electronics manufacturing but, as space is frequently tight in the printed Electronics Weekly, less easy when the products are intended to be used outside the electronics industry.
I am going to try to make space in the product section of each printed issue to cover at least one UK-made electronics-based products that is intended to be used by people who are not necessarily readers of Electronics Weekly, as a way of celebrating UK manufacture.
Email tech (at) electronicsweekly.com with ‘UK made’ in the subject line. Include a brief description and a product photo – a phone photo will often suffice if taken in good light.