Pepperl+Fuchs Blog

The speed of sound depends on ambient temperature. As temperature rises, the speed of sound increases. As it gets colder, the speed of sound decreases. For ultrasonic sensors, this variance can affect accuracy, since a faster or slower echo return will make a stationary target appear closer or farther away.

Nowadays it is hard to deny that many workers around the world have disengaged themselves from the shackles of their desktop computers and are able to use their mobile smartphone or tablet.

The PosiTrack Shield is an accessory upgrade for our PosiTrack absolute position linear encoder. You can use the PosiTrack read head for absolute positioning of conveyor vehicles, vertical lifts, or indoor cranes. By adding the PosiTrack Shield, applications in harsh outdoor environments like offshore installations (ships, ports, harbors) or outdoor cranes are no problem.

The Shield's IP69 rating also serves to shelter the read head in high-pressure washdown areas. With integrated heating, temperatures as low as -40 °C keep the read head operating efficiently. The Shield is also downward compatible with current PosiTrack installations.

On Friday, August 25th, Hurricane Harvey hit the South Texas coast. Consequently, the storm front struck our new manufacturing and warehouse building in Katy, Texas. High wind from a hurricane tornado damaged our roof structure, pulling air handling units from the roof and allowing water to enter the building.

NAMUR sensors solve the same applications that standard inductive and capacitive sensors or rotary encoders would—but they are safe to use in hazardous areas. NAMUR output sensors are ideal for applications where the presence of a volatile gas, vapor, dust, or fiber creates a possible hazard.


To prevent an explosion in hazardous areas, these sensors protect the circuit by operating at 8.2 V and less than 5 mA. These levels prevent the device from storing sufficient energy to initiate an explosion. NAMUR sensors are connected to an isolating amplifier, which limits the current and voltage to the sensor and amplifies the signal upon return.

Our UC-F77 ultrasonic sensor is easy to set up and program using PACTware Connection Wizard software. In the video below, I'll show you how to configure the sensor and also demonstrate some of its unique features. One of my favorite new features is that it solves a common problem for ultrasonic sensors: It allows suppression of echoes from false targets.

ecom's Smart-Ex® 01 and Ex-Handy 09 ensure safe and clear communication with industrial-strength noise cancellation

We’ve all experienced the frustration of trying to make a phone call in a noisy environment—at a sporting event, concert, restaurant, or bar. You struggle to hear what the person on the other end is saying and find yourself yelling “what!?” or “can you repeat that!?” into the phone.

What do you need to get started?

• You will need the AS-Interface Toolkit for Rockwell Automation PLCs—it's a Zip file you can download from our website.
• This toolkit is intended to help a PLC programmer by providing ALL the necessary tools for integrating AS-Interface into a Rockwell Automation PLC.

Before we get into the advantages of radio frequency identification (RFID) over traditional barcode technology, let’s do a quick overview of both:

Barcodes are a series of machine-readable, parallel black bars that represent identification information. The information is encoded by varying the widths of the bars and the distances of the spaces between each bar. An optical barcode scanner then translates the information for further interpretation.


RFID products use unique radio waves to communicate information. Typical industrial RFID systems consist of an RFID reader (head), RFID interface (controller), and RFID tags (transponders).

AS-Interface gateways control the AS-Interface system and make the process data available to all higher-level networks of the PLC in a defined configuration. Pepperl+Fuchs offers AS-Interface gateways for all standard buses such as EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, PROFIBUS, DeviceNet and CC-Link. When considering EtherNet/IP or MODBUS/TCP gateways for AS-Interface networks, keep these benefits in mind: