TechArchive

Original article date: October 2001 You know you’re in Seattle when the park at the end of the street has a bandstand and the first two Sunday fixtures in the summer programme are the Boeing Employee’s Band followed a week later by the Microsoft Orchestra. No, I’m not joking. I used to work in a [...]

Original article date: March 2000 Eliminating the problems of wear and transfer resistance, Novotechnik has developed a non-contact potentiometer Some 50 years after its development, the potentiometer remains an attractive proposition for providing positional information. What other technology can match its price/performance ratio? Comparable linearity values, resolution, hysteresis, or temperature ranges are achieved by other [...]

Original article date: January 2000 As servo drives become more intelligent, their ability to take on more complex processing tasks increase. Now Lenze have taken a leap forward with the integration of PLC functionality into the drive. This allows decentralisation and cost saving machine simplification, whilst simultaneously achieving higher performance. Ease of use is enhanced [...]

This article was originally written in the period 1995-2000 This guidance from Sarel is aimed at users of electrical switchboards, but it is equally applicable to the housing for any major item of electronic equipment. Miniaturisation of components, the widespread use of electronics and the appearance of new power electronic base products make temperature management [...]

Original article date: October 1997 An important step in processing compressed air is to introduce a suitable amount of lubricant usually oil to enable the operating equipment to perform to its requirements efficiently without excessive resistance or wear. Excessive resistance to motion will result in extra power consumption and excessive wear will result in shortened [...]

This article was originally written in the period 1995-2000 Mitsubishi has produced a booklet to be issued with the FX range of PLCs that explains the EMC regulations and CE marking requirements in simple terms. This section deals with “Cable Hygiene” What can be done to minimise EMC problems at installation? There is no magic [...]

Original article date: April 1995 Very rapid acceleration can be obtained from pneumatic impact cylinders. IMI NORGREN explains how they can not only be used in place of conventional press machinery but can even improve on the results obtained. For a fraction of the capital outlay the impact cylinder provides in itself a power unit [...]

Original article date: May 1998 The stringent demands of building medical equipment need special consideration. Lemo’s range of plastic electrical connectors encompass special design features to meet these untypical requirements. The modular construction of Lemo connectors is combined with a self-latching push-pull design. This construction means that new connector specifications can often be satisfied by [...]

Original article date: November 2001 The dotcom bubble has burst. Thank God for that. I for one was getting sick of not knowing who to trust. But I guess I need to explain that a bit. I have used a service now for many years called ‘bigfoot’. It is a fiendishly simple idea, namely that [...]

Original article date: June 2000 With the amount of data being carried over the internet doubling every 100 days, what are the implications for networking enclosures, reflects APW’s MARCUS EDWARDS. Appropriate cable management is the key to any high performance network. Ever-higher bandwidths are being achieved in copper cabling with the development of Categories 5, [...]