Simply put, sensors are the eyes and ears of industrial automation. Regardless of the application, without sensors automation is simply not possible in today’s manufacturing process. There are many different ways in which we measure our environment through sensors. Whether that is vibration, object detection, temperature or humidity, speed, strain, or a hundred other different sensing technologies, sensors enable the
world of industrial automation. One of the many different sensor technologies that we will be talking about here is photoelectric sensors. Photoelectric sensors are utilized in industrial applications to detect object presence. There are three types, Through-Beam, Retroreflective, and Diffused. They can be used to detect materials such as wood, plastic, metal, and glass depending on the sensor
type. Through-Beam sensors utilize a transmitter node and a receiver node. The transmitter will be on one side of the beam, the receiver on the other. These two must be in alignment without any obstruction to the beam to work. With Retroreflective, the sensor contains both the transmitter and receiver in the same unit. The sensor emitter projects the beam to a reflector. The reflector is aligned to reflect the beam back into the receiver.
we get technical
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