Balluff has launched Smartlevel capacitive sensors designed for reliable and repeatable level monitoring in medical equipment.
The trend towards more sophisticated medical equipment and laboratory automation instruments that are expected to handle increasingly complex tasks requires reliable sensing technology.
Issues of potential end-product contamination, as well as safety regulations such as exposure of personnel to potential biohazards or toxic agents, must be carefully considered.
All of these factors make it especially difficult for machine/instrument builders to acquire, in a non-invasive manner, essential real-time information about the machine or instrument's state.
Balluff said its Smartlevel capacitive sensors are a reliable approach to addressing these challenges.
For example, in a heart-lung bypass machine, blood is circulated through an oxygenation canister where blood levels are constantly monitored.
It is of critical interest to the cardiovascular perfusionist to understand precisely what levels of blood are present in the oxygenator, to ensure proper instrument function and guarantee optimum peripheral oxygen saturation in the patient undergoing heart surgery.
Monitoring blood in general can be challenging as its naturally thick viscosity can cause residue accumulation on the inner wall of an oxygenator - a common point of false alarms with ordinary sensing devices.
Balluff Smartlevel capacitive sensors are designed to provide optimum performance without nuisance false alarms in the presence of difficult monitoring parameters such as foaming, froth and residue build-up, which are typically found in substances such as highly conductive, electrolytic blood and blood products.
The sensors comply with all the stringent medical standards and detect target material though vessel walls and bulkheads up to 12mm thick.
They are self-adjusting, so there is no need to worry whether or not the sensor has been properly adjusted or tuned to compensate for the vessel or bulkhead wall thickness.
Technician time and maintenance time is therefore reduced with Balluff's Smartlevel capacitive sensors.
