Magna Projects and Instruments offers evaluation kits for Mantracourt's DSC digital strain card and D-cell digital strain puck for only £125 + carriage and VAT
These compact units allow virtually any strain gauge device such as pressure transducers and load cells as well as strain gauges to be connected to the input.
Add a 12V power supply and a computer via the built-in RS232 or RS485 port, and the strain gauge device can be programmed to provide readings directly in engineering units at speeds of up to 100Hz and resolutions up to 19 bits.
The communications ports are available in a range of fieldbus protocols: ASCII, Modbus, Mantrabus and Canopen.
The evaluation kits contain a DSC or D-cell of your choice, an RS232-RS485 converter, computer and power supply leads, a manual and an evaluation copy of the VisualLink rapid application development software package, a graphical programme designed for easy development of process control applications.
VisualLink will allow the DSC or D-cell to be configured and the output displayed in a variety of formats.
A key must be purchased to allow the application to run without a periodic message appearing, however. The manual contains instructions for communicating with the modules using other packages.
The DSC and D-cell intelligent strain gauge conditioning modules provide a cost-effective, speedy and accurate means of connecting field devices to computer monitoring and control systems.
They are extremely useful for research and development applications as well as for OEM equipment builders.
