Balance is key to low-pressure standards
A
Sartorius Mechatronics product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
May 12, 2005
The Sartorius LA5200D balance forms an integral part of the FRS5 piston gauge from Furness Controls.
When a leading manufacturer looks for a supplier to provide vital parts for a new instrument, it wants a partner whose equipment will match its own in terms of quality, reliability and performance.
That is the reason for the successful relationship that has developed between Furness Controls and Sartorius.
In every field of industrial and scientific life, precision measurement is becoming increasingly important.
Products are manufactured to tighter tolerances, processes are being optimised to run at peak efficiency and environmental measurements have to reflect true operational conditions.
In all these situations measurement accuracy is critical and this in turn relies on accurate calibration with traceability to international standards of paramount consideration.
Furness Controls is the UK's leading manufacturer of low differential pressure measuring instruments, including micromanometers, differential pressure transducers and transmitters, and instruments for applications including leak detection, flow measurement and calibration.
The unique FRS4 and FRS5 primary pressure standards were developed because no suitable standards were available at the very low pressure levels of these instruments.
The FRS5 (Furness Rosenberg Pressure Standard) is a piston gauge for use in vacuum or gauge mode.
It has a large area piston, nonrotating, attached to an electronic balance and held centrally in the cylinder by flexure hinges.
The instrument has been designed to make calibration of pressure gauges and transfer standards easy and fast with a significant reduction in operator skill requirement.
In this instrument the bottom of the piston is evacuated to 10e-4Pa.
This provides the possibility of calibrating vacuum instruments with measurement ranges between 1Pa and 5kPa absolute.
In gauge mode the bottom of the piston is at ambient atmospheric pressure.
The FRS5 offers calibration accuracy of 0.005% of reading.
An integral part of the instrument is the balance, which had to offer simple calibration and highly repeatable results.
To ensure optimum accuracy, Furness Controls chose the Sartorius LA5200D balance, a dual range top pan balance with readability to 0.001g at 1kg, and 0.01g up to 5.2kg.
Ron Murrant, OEM Manager at Sartorius works with customers who are developing new instruments or adding a weighing application.
"We work in partnership with companies to help achieve their specifications and expectations for the weighing application in the instrument they are developing or using".
"Wherever possible we adapt the weigh cells and electronics to ensure we satisfy the customers' requirements".
The balance has been adapted for the task with the removal of the weighing pan and the addition of the piston and its mounting components.
While the internal calibration weight can normally be used, there is also the option of calibrating using a hanging weigh pan and 1kg reference weight (the isoCal function offered on all LA balances is disabled since the automatic weight mechanism is not installed).
Colin Rendle, UKAS Calibration Laboratory Manager, explained the advantages using a reliable balance as part of the FRS5.
"We chose the Sartorius balance because it gave us the best resolution with a linearity of 2mg up to 1kg, which no other manufacturer could match".
"We have continued to work with Sartorius because of the level of support which they have given us and their continuous development, including the superb aluminium monolithic transducer and the extension of the range of the balance we use from 3.2 to 5.2kg".
The instruments from Furness Controls provide exceptional accuracy for low pressure and vacuum calibration, leading them to be adopted by many notable national standards laboratories throughout the world.
Not what you're looking for? Search the site.
Contact Sartorius Mechatronics
Tel +49 551 308 0
Other Sartorius Mechatronics stories
-
Moisture meters based on microwave resonance
Sartorius is offering two moisture meter series, the PMD320 and LMA320, based on microwave-resonance technology. -
PMD500 analysers ensure 100% traceability
Sartorius has launched the PMD500 series of online process analysers, which are described by the company as being fast, reliable and accurate. -
In-line Sealtester for gas-flushed packaging
Sartorius has announced the launch of the FLI Sealtester, designed to perform in-line non-destructive seal testing of gas-flushed bags. -
Signum safeguards Supreme weighing scale
The Signum Supreme weighing scale has been developed for use in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food and chemical industries. -
Sartorius launches Dyxim X-ray inspection systems
Sartorius has launched Dyxim X-ray inspection systems designed to protect final products from contaminants and, consequently, consumers against adverse health effects.
Browse by category
-
Capital Equipment (3,478)
- Capital Equipment (1)
- Compressors and Air Treatment (529)
- Electrical hardware (131)
- Electronics Manufacturing, Tools, Instruments (192)
- Machinery and Production Equipment (1,119)
- Manufacturing Machinery and Plant Equipment (471)
- Production line blowers and fans (73)
- Robotics, Handling and Storage (962)
- Consultancy and Services (916)
-
Control and Instrumentation (5,100)
- Cabling, Conduit, Signal Conditioning (813)
- CNC and Motion Controllers (188)
- Control and Instrumentation (2)
- HMIs/Operator Interfaces (296)
- Logic Controllers, Timers and Relays (96)
- Mid-range and Large PLCs (202)
- Plant- and Machine-Wide Communications (1,196)
- Plantwide control (1,346)
- Power Supplies, Uninterruptible Power (571)
- Smaller-Sized PLCs (390)
-
Drives, Motors and Controls (3,416)
- Drives, Motors and Controls (2)
- Industrial Drives/Controls (1,288)
- Industrial Motors (500)
- Linear Drives and Motors (118)
- Precision Motors and Gears (425)
- Stepper and Servo Drives, Motors, Controls (1,081)
-
Electrical and Electronic Equipment Design (4,265)
- Batteries, chargers and circuit protection (574)
- Connectors, Terminals, Busbars, Slip Rings (706)
- Electrical and Electronic Components (645)
- Electrical and Electronic Equipment Design (3)
- Electrical and Electronic Subassemblies (374)
- Enclosures and Equipment Cooling Fans (716)
- Knobs, Handles and Enclosure Hardware (428)
- PCs and Embedded Systems (819)
-
Engineering Design Software (6,310)
- 2D CAD software (202)
- 3D CAD software (1,175)
- CAM, CNC, production management software (576)
- Data, document management software (319)
- Electrical design software (165)
- Engineering Design Software (15)
- FEA and structural analysis software (376)
- File conversion software, data capture (358)
- Fluid, thermal, noise, vibration software (338)
- Materials design and moulding design software (152)
- Maths, charting, statistics, QA software (324)
- PLM and collaboration software (656)
- Process, instrumentation, automation software (269)
- Publishing and documentation software (234)
- Rendering, visualisation, styling software (206)
- Simulation, modelling, validation software (945)
-
Engineering Industry News, Resources (6,192)
- Electronic Resources for Engineers (278)
- Engineering Business News, Views (388)
- Engineering Conferences (435)
- Engineering Education, Resources, Standards (849)
- Engineering Exhibitions, Events (573)
- Engineering Guides, Newsletters (365)
- Engineering Industry Developments, Awards (636)
- Engineering Industry News, Resources (4)
- Engineering Industry Reports, Surveys (597)
- Engineering Recruitment, Employment (219)
- Engineering Seminars (412)
- Engineering Training Courses (455)
- Health and Safety Consultancy, Software (179)
- Health and Safety Events, Training, News (284)
- Health and Safety Legislation (403)
- Health and Safety Strategy, Risk Assessment (115)
- Machine Building (4,603)
-
Materials and Processing (3,020)
- Materials and components (2,258)
- Materials and Processing (5)
- Materials processing and testing (291)
- Rapid Prototyping (466)
-
Monitoring, Measurement and Quality (5,610)
- Data Acquisition Hardware and PC I/O Boards (484)
- Data acquisition Software and Communications (503)
- Data loggers (424)
- Electrical and Electronic Testing, PAT Equipment (640)
- Form/co-ordinate, optical, vision instruments (756)
- Gauges, Indicators and Instruments (448)
- Materials testing equipment (428)
- Monitoring, Measurement and Quality (1)
- Telecomms/network test equipment, software etc (158)
- Testing and Calibration Services and Information (516)
- Testing, analysing and monitoring equipment (1,252)
-
Powertrain Design (3,687)
- Bearings (972)
- Chains and belts (333)
- Gears, brakes, couplings and engines (1,467)
- Hydraulic Components (473)
- Lubricants (438)
- Powertrain Design (3)
-
Sensors (7,227)
- Accelerometers and Vibration Sensors (445)
- Barcode Sensors (103)
- Flowmeters and Flow Sensors (635)
- Gas, Chemical, Radiation, Magnetic Sensors (288)
- Humidity and Environmental Sensors (156)
- Level Sensors and Leak Detectors (533)
- Linear Position Sensors (412)
- Loadcells, Force Sensors, Torque Sensors (723)
- Pressure sensors (634)
- Proximity Sensors (710)
- Rotary Position, Tilt and Angular Sensors (559)
- Sensors (10)
- Temperature sensors (618)
- Vision and Colour Sensors (1,401)
- Small Mechanical Components, Joining, Tools (2,013)
- Valves, Pumps, Process Hardware (3,698)
