Advantages of the ALF 300 Load Cell
The ALF300 Load Cell with side load suppression has been developed from a special version. A few years ago, we had an application with a customer in which the weight of the bottles was to be measured in a bottling plant with rotating bottles. In such an application, up to 300 PET bottles are hung in a carousel and filled during a rotation. The rotation is so fast that the centrifugal force directs the bottles out of the vertical.
This force acting on the side disturbs when one wants to determine the weight, that is, the force that acts downward. With most Load Cells, this measurement is not feasible. Because if a force transducer does not like one, it is lateral forces. He would like to have his power introduced axially and is therefore usually designed so that it repeatedly aligns axially.
When we thought about the application of the customer, we found out that there are double-sided Biegebalken aufnehmer that are side load insensitive due to their parallelogram shape and have a very good output signal and extremely good accuracy, but are much more expensive than normal annular force transducer.
So we said to ourselves: Why can not we combine the advantages of the bending beam with those of the annular transducer? Basically, we packed the ring-shaped receiver in a sleeve and attached eight bending beams. The resulting ALF300 system can now compensate for very high side loads and can be used, for example, in junk test machines that test the durability of bolts and bearings, for example.
The pickup would also be very suitable for cars in high-bay warehouses, as they are found in many of my customers. Legislation provides for a safety shutdown for those systems in which people also ride when a certain load is exceeded. Since the leverage ratios for the detection of this load are often unfavorable, the side load compensated load cell would offer.
The transducer is priced in an area that does not make it affordable for every application. Due to its dimensions you can not use it in very limited space. So you have to think carefully about where its use makes sense.