Presence Detection Crosses Industry Borders
Dick Johnson

 

At a glance

·            New features

·            Discrete applications

·            Many uses

·            Ruggedness

·            Not

always networked

·            Self-teach characteristics

Advances in sensor technology have been a driving force in factory automation, most would agree. Interfacing the real world and analog/digital input to control processes has never been more applicable to a wider range of automation functions than it is today. Automating discrete manufacturing applications has, arguably, lagged behind process industries. Improvements in discrete sensing, particularly in proximity senor technology, have expanded automation in these industries.

According to a recent online survey of control engineers conducted by Control Engineering magazine and the Reed Research Group, proximity sensors have found their way into a wide variety of automated industries. When asked about the primary application for proximity switches in their operations, 36% of those responding cited both continuous and batch processing. Discrete manufacturing accounted for 29% of the applications, continuous processing only accounted for 16.7%, and utilities for 7.2%. Batch processing only claimed 4.3% of respondents. Other operations came in at 6.5%.

Applications abound

Applications for proximity sensors are long and varied. Most common, regardless of industry type, were machinery applications. They accounted for 79.7% of the total, more than twice that of liquid fill-level (32.6%), packaging/palletizing (31.2%), solids/powders fill-level (26.1%), and raw materia