Weighing equipment and force measurement system company Nobel Systems changed its name on 1 January 2001 to Thermo Nobel.
All other businesses in the Thermo Electron Corporation have similarly had the Thermo prefix added to their names to help present a more unified image of the $2.2 billion instrument corporation. As well as the name change, a new product for crane applications is a range of digital intelligent load cells.
First on offer is a double shear pin unit available in capacities from 10kN to 200kN. It has an onboard amplifier and digital Fieldbus output to save wiring costs and improve data availability and quality. The KOS-40-I, where the I denotes the Digi Amp option, has a two-wire RS 485 output with Modbus RTU protocol. This output is fed to the new Gate 3S translator module to interface with the rest of the Modbus network or be converted to other protocols including Profibus, CANopen and Interbus. A self diagnostic facility allows monitoring of faults such as short circuit, disconnection and communication errors.
The Digi Amp module, sealed to IP 67, can also be retrofitted to existing load cells.
