What is a signal conditioner? and how can help us – Logicbus-Technical information about industrial equipment

A signal conditioner is a device that help us convert electronic signals to other kinds of signals.

The output signal of a load cell in a measurement system must be processed precisely. The signal in some cases can be very poor and requires you to amplify it, there could be interferences to eliminate, which is not linear and requires linearization, be analog and require turning it digital or vice versa, being a change in the value of the resistance, and converting it to a change in current; consist of a change in voltage and convert it into a change in current of suitable magnitude, and so on.

All of these modifications are generally referred to as signal conditioning.

One of its main functionalities is the signal conditioning of the load cells, being the perfect complement for your cell. In this environment, the signal conditioner of the renowned Seneca brand Z-SG stands out.

Application

A load cell is a transducer that is used to convert a force into an electrical signal. For example in digital scales, since for them, the load cell is one of the most important elements since these load cells are in charge of translating the strength of a voltage signal (analog load cell), the load cell Analog load with strain gauges is the one most used in scales.

A load cell is usually made up of 4 strain gauges that are connected in a Wheatstone bridge configuration. Wheatstone bridge is an array of four resistors to determine the value of unknown resistance and is commonly used in load cells.

The signal obtained is millivolts and has to be amplified to voltage, current 0 ~ 20m Amp or 4 ~ 20m Amp, and even to an analog signal with an instrumentation amplifier through RS232 or RS485 ports. The output of the transducer is taken to perform calculations necessary to obtain the force applied to the transducer.

The signal from the cell, gauge, or load cell is taken to an analog-digital indicator to convert it to a digital numerical value, this value is multiplied by a factor to convert it into weighing units such as kg, lb, etc.; The scales measure the force generated by an object and since the Force is equal to the mass times the acceleration (F = ma) and the acceleration is a constant (the gravity of the earth) it can be said that the Mass is directly proportional to the Strength. The factor is the one that is adjusted in a gain calibration and in this way gives us exact data.

Solution

To process the conversion of the load cell, the Logicbus company provides a load cell strain gauge signal converter with analog output from 4 to 6 wires, it is the SENECA Z-SG brand product, this product contains communication with Modbus RTU protocol, has a sensitivity of 1 to 64 mV / V, configurable by DIP switch for integer values, through software for real / integer values. Stable weight indication through the Modbus register / digital output and its input and output can be configurable through its RS-232 port.