Video Transcript

Mike

What's up Industrial Automation world? I am Mike. I am the Marketing Manager for Scott Equipment Company. Steve Jerome from DataSensing has come up to our offices and today he's going to talk about sensors, all the different kinds of DataSensing offers to their customers, how they work, where you can use them in your application. Steve, take it away.

Steve

Thanks, Mike.

Today we are going to talk about proximity sensors. When it comes to sensing a metal target, Proximity Sensors are by far your best way of doing it. Proximity Sensors just look for metal specific. More specifically, they like steel. It does not matter if they are coated with mud, or dirt, oil, or anything else. They do not care; they just look for metal.

DataSensing has all kinds of proximity sensors of different shapes and sizes. Some very common ones out there on the market are your cylindrical style proximity sensors. Starting off with an eight-millimeter barrel, we have a 12-millimeter barrel. Here we have an 18-millimeter barrel. And we have a 30-millimeter barrel.

Why the different sizes? Because when it comes to proximity sensors, in general, the bigger the sensor, the longer the range. Something like this only has a couple millimeter range. While something like this has a 25-millimeter range or an inch.

Something like this guy, you will see also, they look like they have a cap on them, or some that are threaded all the way to the end. This is what is called flush mount. This can be buried in metal right up to the face of the sensor, it will ignore the metal around it, but we will see metal that is on its face.

This is a non-flush mount. If you get metal on the side of this sensor, you will also trigger the sensor so you cannot bury this sensor in metal like you can the flush mount.

What are the benefits? Or what do you get from doing something like that? This one in general for the same size sensor will have half the range of this one. So, this guy has about a five-millimeter range, this guy has about a 10-millimeter range. Those are some of the differences between proximity sensors.

DataSensing also offers what is called a steel face sensor. All the rest of these are plastic faces. The steel face sensor is stainless steel. It will sense through the stainless steel and sense the metal target that is in front of it. These are great for applications where they just tend to take a lot of beating. Because that is what happens with a lot of proximity sensors, they take a beating because they are close to the target, they are only five or ten millimeters away or less sometimes. And if something shifts or moves in the machine, they tend to hit the proximity sensor and beat it up and eventually break it.

So, when it comes to metal, a proximity sensor is your best option. It is going to be close range, but it is just going to look for metal. And it does not matter if it is in a muddy environment, sawdust environment, a dirty, greasy, grimy environment, it does not care, it just likes metal.

Next, we are going to talk about Photo eye sensors. Photoeyes use light to sense a target. If you have ever been in a grocery store and you have walked up to the door and the doors opened automatically on you. That is because up above the door is a photoeye that is looking down and looking for you.

Photo eyes use different types of modes of sensing. There's through-beam mode - the kind of your garage door where you have an emitter on one side and a receiver on the other side and the light travels from one to the other waiting for something to come in between.

You have retro reflective mode, where you will have this sensor, have the emitter and receiver built into it. And it will be looking at a reflector and again waiting for something to come in and block it the light will extend from the sensor to the reflector and back to the sensor again. And when something gets in the way, that sensor will go ahead and sense the object in the way.

 

There is also what is called diffuse mode, where we send a bunch of light up from the sensor. And when it bounces off something, it will come back to the sensor. Those are the ones you typically see in the grocery store that are causing the door to open. The light is being sent off from the sensor, bounces off you, comes back to the sensor and opens the door.

There are a couple of variations upon the diffuse mode, there is what is called fixed field. And there is also what is called background suppression. A fixed field sensor will only go out a certain distance and stop and background suppression will go ahead and go to a certain point and ignore what is behind it. Those are your different sensing modes.

 

When it comes to the sizes of sensors in general, a little bit bigger means a longer range where the proximity sensors had a range of just a few millimeters to twenty-five millimeters. These can have a range of several inches to several feet. There are some through beam sensors that can have a 200-foot range on them.

 

So, you can get a very long distance with a sensor with a photoelectric sensor.  But you do run into issues with dirt in the area grime, smoke haze, all those things can get on the lens and can affect the sensor and affect its range.

When it comes to different sensors, you have all different kinds of shapes and sizes, you can go ahead and have a larger square style sensor. You can have a tubular style sensor You can have small fiber optic sensors where we send the light and pipe it through little light pipes called fiber optic cables. You can have things like slot sensors where the light is traveling from here to there. And when something gets in the way, we will go ahead and get an output from the sensor.

We also offer very small sensors if you need something small. We also offer sensors with stainless steel housings so that you can put them in a washdown environment and still meet your food-grade requirements.

 

Mike

Steve, thanks for coming up to Scott Equipment Company today and giving us a great explanation of the DataSensing sensors. We appreciate you taking the time to explain the different kinds of sensors that you offer. There is a lot, it is not as easy as you think. It is a little complex sometimes. But if you are not sure, reach out to your local Scott Equipment Company Account Manager and ask him any questions you have about sensors. If they do not know the answer. They're calling Steve.

Steve

I will be happy to come out and give you a demo and take a look at your application for you with your Scott rep.

Mike

So, there is no reason not to give us a call. We appreciate you taking the time to watch today's video. Be sure to like this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more great Industrial Automation videos.

 

Thanks, Steve.

 

Steve

Thank you, Mike. It is my pleasure.

 

Mike

Awesome.