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Hey everybody,

I have a slight problem I thought maybe some of you guys could help me with. I am looking for a small led display counter and frankly what I am finding on the web confuses me. I think most of what I am looking at is overkill for what I want to do. I need a counter that will increment once every time it receives a 110vac input. I also need it to reset to zero from another 110vac input. You think someone can point me in the right direction?
P.S.
I only need to display up to 2 didgets I.E. 0-99
Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks.

I like Red Lion Controls
Cub

I am currently looking at totalizers for counting the length of paper.

Here is one on ebay that may do what you want since it sounds like you do not need to scale your input.

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Cutler-Hammer-Totalizer-Add-or-Subtract-Self-Power_W0QQitemZ7583324813QQcategoryZ4678QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Grainger has several also for around $50 for electronic.
http://www.grainger.com/ search for electronic counter.

I've been using the red lion CUB counters, and several of their other process indicators. The red lion products are excellent and have been consistently available for long periods. They don't seem to re-vamp their product line as frequently as some other companies which is a very good thing for me. I believe they have a model that will suit you without having to use interposing relays. You'll have to look.

Durant makes a good one also that handles high speed very well with a very flexible choice of inputs.

Glenn: Have you already got a feedback device? I have a non-contact encoder application. I am using a Canon laser doppler velocimeter with quadrature encoder ouput signals. It isn't great for this application, but would be good for a high speed application, so I'm looking for a better and cheaper method still. The Canon system is about $7k and tech support in the US is nil. I need 0.1mm precision at up to 100 fpm.

Know of any other non-contact solutions with quad output and specs like this? I have had several vendors looking, but nothing promising has turned up yet.

Thanks
OkiePC

For my application I do not need that type of resolution. The plan is to put an inductive prox to sense a flag or flags on the side of a 6" dia roll that is in the thread path of the paper. I will then scale this value to feet to display.

OkiePC: You say noncontact. Can you contact not the product, but a roller or conveyor or something on the machine. Maybe with an encoder and gear drive to get multiple turns of the encoder per revolution of your roll you could achieve the resolution you a working towards.

My product is rubber coated fabric measured from 0.020" to .060" thick. It stretches, slips etc.

We started with a roller driven encoder but could not get accuracy of our final measurement better than 0.5mm due to the nature of the product.

Some honcho at corporate is pushing this dead end project, and they're funding it all. It's been installed since '99 and still doesn't work. Since I took this job in '04, we've gotten close, but it's still not useful. Tests have shown the accuracy of the laser doppler is just good enough for the final result to meet specs.

The next thing that happened was the cable on the laser head got cut in half by a ticked off operator who slammed a guide open all the way. Canon has a four month lead time on this item since the cable length is 10m (special order).

We had the cable repaired and tests are being done this week to see if the damaged one will work. Some who've dealt directly with Canon are skeptical and say that calibration of the readings from the laser may be severely affected by the damaged cable. We've nothing to lose, so we're gonna try it anyway.

RANT: 4 month lead time for a $7000 laser head no bigger than a cigarette pack? It's ridiculous and rubs my garage-sailin', cheap skate, redneck, okie attitude the wrong way!

Someone in the optical mouse business needs to investigate opportuinities in the non contact industrial measurement business. END RANT

OkiePC

I've got some applications use the "cog-wheel prox" encoder approach. It works just fine if the input and sensor are fast enough and stopping and direction changing is infrequent. I have some applications that control guide rollers on ballscrews. I use an STI routine on this machine to ensure that I don't miss pulses, and off delays in the PLC to continue counting for a limited time after motion is commanded to stop to handle "coast counts".

They still accumulate error over time since they may double bounce an input occasionally and there is no way to know the direction for sure, so we home them once a week and all is well.

That sounds like the material that some of our tape measures in the plant are made of. Three different people can pull, push, twist to make the same part read what ever size they want.

If you actually could measure that accurately it sounds like a stiff breeze would change it before you could record the data.

Good luck,

Glenn