MeasurementBlog

One my major consistent interests in 30+ years of experience in Industry & Science has been education on measurement devices and their uses. Many engineers & scientists have limited resources in the area of measurement. Most are concerned with getting a process running and under control.

Now the Web and its many educational and training features there are some very useful tutorials on them in written, audio and visual forms. YouTube in particular, provides some great video learning aids.

Here’s one that I think is especially well done in the area of flow measurement: the Principle underlying Thermal Mass Flowmeters (there’s a brief commercial at the end, but it’s a far cry from other similar presentations available at this time).

Original Article dated: Dec 17, 2008 By: G. Raymond Peacock, Temperatures.com Inc.

During the past year, I’ve been discussing some of the best practices required to successfully add a new sensor to your operations. This month, I’ll examine the next to the last step in the process: commissioning the sensor. In this phase, you’re simply ensuring the sensing device is functioning and will continue to do so for an appropriate length of time.

Covering All the Bases
All too often, this step is overlooked, even though it is a key part of the installation process. The challenge here is that there are no universally accepted guidelines to follow.

So I’ll review seven steps that have served me well over the years. The essential tasks involved in commissioning a sensor can be summarized as follows:
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New solar-powered water purification method shown during the G20 meetings in Pittsburgh
“Inexpensive solar-powered water purification promoted”

A solar-powered water purification system demonstrated on Wednesday by a New Castle (PA) company on the eve of the Group of 20 summit could combat a growing world health crisis: access to clean water.

“Our vision is to have these in place all over the world,” said Tom Joseph, the founder and president of Epiphany Solar Water Systems Inc.

The model shown yesterday near the Carnegie Science Center can purify about 30 gallons of water a day. But the system can be scaled up to “hundreds of gallons a day or larger,” said Joseph.

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In this sixth essay of my series on selecting sensors (expanding on an article I wrote for Sensors (Sensorsmag.com) titled “A Twelve-Step Sensor Selection Checklist.” .), we get to the real meat and potatoes of the job—writing a workable specification. If you’ve been following each step of the process outlined in the series, you realize you can’t just pick a product out of a catalog.

It may seem as if it’s been a long and tedious task to reach this point, but you are now better prepared to write a spec that will get you the measurement you need. Whether the price tag is high or low, in the end you will sustain the lowest cost because you won’t have to start over as a result of a poorly selected sensor that fails to meet measurement requirements.
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