Ethernet powers our home and office networks and it is increasingly being used to automate control processes on the plant floor. Here's why.

A new generation of inductive proximity sensors are engineered to withstand the high pressures now common in fluid power applications.

Pick the Right Camera Interface Dec 1, 2006 By: Edwin Diaz

Perhaps Camera Link's biggest advantage is blazing speed—up to 3.6 Gbps. Another is deterministic communication back to the camera electronics that allows on-the-fly control of camera functions such as frame rate, zoom, etc.

UGS Corp. says its Tecnomatix Production Management portfolio, a family of manufacturing shop-floor applications, is the first software to integrate production management with overall product lifecycle management (PLM) process.

If the sensor manufacturers' products already have the software "hooks" that allow the sensor data to be accessed by the SOA, the implementation has a quicker ROI.

A Machine That Watches Dec 1, 2006 By: Bill Silver

During an automated manufacturing process, the product typically moves along a production line at either constant or variable speeds. The first task of optoelectronic inspection is to discard that motion. For example, machine vision systems use triggers and shutters and photoelectric sensors use gates to freeze the object at a particular point in time so that it can be analyzed.

When Michael Faraday introduced the concept of an electric field, little did he realize how far science would run with the idea. Today, engineers are using electric fields to sense the presence of other objects without relying on physical contact. Referred to as e-field sensors or capacitance sensors, they are becoming more and more prevalent in a wide range of inexpensive and long-lasting applications. When you take a closer look at how they work, you quickly see why their popularity is growing.

ISA publishes Independent Learning Modules (ILMs), materials designed primarily for independent self-study. This book is one of these ILMs and is intended to provide a broad understanding of sensors (in terms of what you need to measure and what devices exist to do so) coupled with information on how to choose wisely.

For decades, photoelectric sensors have been ubiquitous on packaging lines—triggering processes, counting, checking for label presence, sorting objects of different sizes, and performing dozens of other tasks. Even so, their usefulness has been limited by their single beam and lack of brain power. That's where low-cost vision sensors can help. Vision sensors are especially well suited to applications that are too complicated for photoelectrics or that require complex fixturing.