Capacitance Probe Detects Water Contamination in Oiling Systems
Capacitance Probe Detects Water Contamination in Oiling Systems Industrial, Research & Development Capacitance Probe Detection of Water Contamination Metrology, Tolerances Description [Application Note 12218]  The adverse effects of water in oil are well known. Negative consequences include higher viscosity reduced load carrying ability hydrolysis (the formation of acids, sludge, and varnish) foam formation and air entrainment additive depletion corrosion on metal surfaces loss of lubrication film strength leading to increased wear cavitations filter plugging Problem As oil system reliability decreases, maintenance and repair activities increase. Corrective action must be taken [...]
Avionics Bus Monitoring
Avionics Bus Monitoring Customer Case The requirement is to monitor anomalies on an avionics bus that controls systems aboard spacecrafts. The customer will know typical rise times, and therefore, will look for anomalous high-voltage pulses that may occur due to sunspots or cosmic rays. An A/D card with at least 12-bits of vertical resolution is required to capture anomalous glitches for characterization. The required sampling speed is 50 KHz, on two simultaneous channels that monitor two bus lines. The input signal bandwidth is typically 4 KHz. The customer would like to write his own data acquisition application programs in [...]
Digital Capacitance Sensor Provides Closed-Loop Piezo Positioning Control
Digital Capacitance Sensor Provides Closed-Loop Piezo Positioning Control Consumer Electronics, Industrial Closed-Loop Piezo Positioning Control Positioning, Robot Guide Description [Application Note 40418] 21st century electronic manufacturing requires fast, precise positioning of miniature components. For many assembly lines, process control has moved from mm to micron, or even sub-micron, accuracy. Keeping pace with the demand for greater precision requires piezoelectric positioning actuators and/or voice coil motors with closed-loop feedback control. Challenge Traditionally, analog feedback from capacitance sensors has enabled the closed-loop control of conventional positioning stages. Harnessing the extreme accuracies achievable [...]
Signal Generator Calibrates Strain Gauge Electronics
Signal Generator Calibrates Strain Gauge Electronics Industrial, Automotive, Transportation, Research & Development, Civil Engineering Calibration of Strain Gauge Electronics Amplitude; Bending, Tensile & Compression Description [Application Note 31218] The strain gauge has been in use many years and is the fundamental sensing element for many types of sensors, including pressure sensors, load cells, torque sensors, and position sensors. The majority of strain gauges are metallic foil types, available in a wide choice of shapes and sizes to suit a variety of applications. Foil type strain gauges feature a pattern or [...]
Signal Generator Simulates Eddy Current Probe
Signal Generator Simulates Eddy Current Probe Industrial, Power Generation, Automotive, Power Generation, R& D, Solar Simulation of Eddy Current Probe Gap, Amplitude, Displacement, Positioning, Thickness Description [Application Note 31218] Non-contact eddy current probes can be used to measure the position, or position change, of conductive targets in real time. Typical monitoring applications include shaft runout and/or vibration. Probe setup requires an oscillator demodulator circuit. This circuit converts the probe’s magnetic field readings into output voltages proportional to the gap between probe and target. Portal signal conditioning electronics are then used [...]
Radar Altimeter
Radar Altimeter Customer Case In this RADAR application the customer has pulses coming in at 1660 Hz. For every pulse they need to capture 500 samples which, at that rate, will amount to 1.7 Megs of data every second. The experiment will be running for at least a few minutes. They would then like to log all the captured data to the PC host memory. The final requirement is for the system to be on the PCI bus. By having the system on the PCI bus, the customer can stream the data directly to the PC's memory, which is [...]
Capacitance Sensors Facilitate 3D IC Construction
Capacitance Sensors Facilitate 3D IC Construction Semiconductor, Research & Development 3D IC Construction Distance, Positioning, Displacement Description [Application Note 70518] To boost device performance, today's semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturers are building three-dimensional integrated circuits featuring vertically-stacked silicon wafers and dies. The rationale is simple. Exploiting the Z-axis avoids the power and footprint penalties associated with two-dimensional processes. Implementing the rationale, however, is not so simple. Going vertical requires coplanar surfaces to make contact with all pins, pads, and pillars. Problem Typically, manufacturers measure the angle and gap between two planes [...]
Adding a Digital Panel Meter to MTI Analog Output Products
Adding a Digital Panel Meter to MTI Analog Output Products Consumer Electronics Electronics Parts Profiling Thickness Description Some MTI Products with Analog outputs, Accumeasure 9000 and Microtrak 3 laser  How To Use Digital Displays with Analog Outputs MTI Microtrak 3 Lasers and some of our Accumeasure amplifiers such as the Accumeasure 9000 only have analog outputs. If you wish to add a digital display, then the Lascar Panel pilot © makes a nice cost effective (~ $110) addition - Fig 1. These Digital panel meters have both 1 & [...]
Ultra High-Speed Radar
Ultra High-Speed Radar Customer Case This application requires the acquisition of very fast analog signals at relatively slow sample rates for a long period of time. In other words, the input bandwidth requirement is very high (1 GHz), but the sampling rate needs to be no more than 5 or 6 MSPS. The most important requirement is that the acquisition must go on, without any breaks, for many hours. The customer does not need very high dynamic range. In fact, a 4-bit A/D converter will be sufficient. The customer has already identified a 4-bit A/D chip from TRW which [...]
Thickness Gauge Measurement With Conductive Wafers and Thin Films
Thickness Gauge Measurement With Conductive Wafers and Thin Films Consumer Electronics Electronics Parts Profiling Thickness Description Using MTI's capacitive thickness gauge Proforma 300i with conductive wafers and thin films G = (a+b+t1+t2 ) Where G is the fixed gap between two probes When making the thickness measurement t2 can appear as t2 (film thickness) when it is a conductor, or 0 thickness when t2 is just air. So t2 will vary between the actual film thickness t2 if it's a conductor all the way down to 0 thickness if the [...]