-50C
to +250C Passive Compensation now available on most Load Cells from
Novatech Measurements.
Novatech are delighted to announce that we can now offer Load Cells
that maintain their very high accuracy figures right up to an incredible
250°C ! This new technology opens up a whole new area of applications
that require higher than normal temperatures eg - hot presses, engine
test beds, chemical/food/pharmaceutical processes, Hi Temp research
etc.
Technical Overview
All loadcells have output spans that change with temperature. This causes
significant measurement errors particularly if the loadcell is required
to operate over a wide temperature range. The currently used method
for compensating for this error in strain gauged loadcells is to use
nickel or Balco foil resistors in series with the sensor excitation
connections. The method is limited in accuracy by the non-linearity
of the resistance change of the foil resistors with temperature. This
non-linearity increases at temperatures above 100C and foil resistors
are not suitable for use at temperatures above 200C.
Novatech's new invention compensates for loadcell output span changes
with temperature by using passive temperature sensitive elements in
the bridge circuit. The temperature coefficient of the temperature sensitive
elements is adjusted to be the inverse of the sensor's uncompensated
span change with temperature. Accurate linear compensation can be achieved
over a temperature range of -50 to 250C.
This method is inherently more linear than traditional methods that
employ nickel or Balco resistors in series with the sensor excitation
connections, giving performance specification several times better on
span (typically 0.0025% output/C) than most other load cells currently
available for high temperature use. With additional trimming over a
range of temperatures of particular interest we would expect to achieve
<0.001% output/°C. Novatech has an international patent application
pending for this novel approach to high temperature modulus compensation,
currently available on 70% of Novatech products. We are currently capable
of calibrating up to two tonnes, but higher calibration levels will
be available soon.
Further
information on Novatech