Load Cell Weighing solutions for conveyer belts

The views and opinions expressed in this article about load cells in weighing solutions are entirely those of the contributor and are in no way a reflection or indication of Eilersen.com.

Whenever we think of conveyer belts in industry we imagine a noisy bustling system of tracks and turns with product moving at a steady consistant rate through a huge array of strange looking devices and weighing machines. The conveyor can wind and turn throughout the industrial premises and can carry everything and anything from food, such as fruit, bottles of water to coal or other raw materials mined from the ground. In most of these cases the conveyor belt has many functions in addition to the obvious one of moving product from one part of the factory to another. An important function that is often performed at several points within the process is that of weighing.

How much something weighs can be important for several reasons including safety precautions but usually helps quantify how much of a material or product is present or being processed. The standard strain gauge load cells are a common method to achieve regular and automated measurements of weight but attract several challenges in their use. The installation of the cells is restricted by the distance allowed between the load cell and the weighing terminal. Another issue is that the strain gauge works in a contact manner, i.e measuring the strain of a material that is in direct contact with the load, and hence is subject to shock-overloads and sudden changes can damage the unit.

However if you use a digital non-capacitive load cell then your terminal can be up to 100m from the load cell measuring device and as it operates in a non-contact manner the overloads and shock tolerance levels provide much better protection.