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Interface Releases New ConvexBT White Paper

To meet the demand for the ever-evolving technological landscape, Interface is constantly gathers input from our customers across all industries and global network of test and measurement professionals to understand trends and sensor requirements for today and into the future. These valuable insights drive our new product introduction strategy and evaluations into how we can best solve your challenges.

In this new white paper, Ted Larson, VP Product & Project Management, and James Richardson, Mechanical Engineering Manager, highlight our recent introduction of a revolutionary load button load cell. We have captured the journey of our design story, along with detailing the innovative features, capacities, and benefits of our new ConvexBT Load Button Load Cell. Access the entire paper.

ConvexBT was introduced due to the growing trend of electronics miniaturization going on throughout nearly every hardware industry in the world. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are packing more capabilities into smaller and smaller packages, and as product size shrinks testing sensors and equipment must downsize to match. ConvexBT is engineered to fit in tight spaces to test compression force with ultimate precision. It’s well-suited for industries like medical and industrial, where product miniaturization is prevalent throughout.

You can see some of the other recent ConvexBT highlights and use cases here:

[White Paper] ConvexBT The Most Innovative Load Button Load Cell

Advancing Load Button Load Cell Capabilities with ConvexBT 

Robotic Arm Application Note

Sensor Tips Magazine Highlight of ConvexBT

ConvexBT also includes some incredibly novel design choices that helps with rejection of misaligned loads, as well as temperature compensation. This makes it not only the most accurate load button load cell on the market, but also the most flexible. To learn more about ConvexBT and the unique design, capacity ranges, technical specification and more, download the white paper here.

Faces of Interface Featuring James Richardson

Born in Arizona but growing up in the rural area of Cotton City, New Mexico, James Richardson was only exposed to the opportunity of a career in engineering after moving back to Arizona. After graduating as his high school class Salutatorian in 1995, he started college in Eastern Arizona.

He later moved to Mesa in 1999 where he took a job working for his uncle at Dewitt Equipment fixing restaurant and cooking equipment like ovens, fryers and microwaves, and along with refrigeration equipment including air conditioning units, freezers, and ice machines. It was also during this time he learned to braze, solder and TIG weld.

At Dewitt, his on the job training for fixing equipment built up his foundation for engineering. The spark that really kicked it off came on a sweltering Arizona summer day when James was repairing an A/C unit on a restaurant’s loose gravel rooftop. The temperature was so high that the gravel began to sink, melting the soles of his shoes. At this point, James realized he enjoyed working with his hands and on advanced equipment; however, it was time to finish his formal education in engineering and pursue a job that included more time inside where there was ample air conditioning.

By this time James had already completed an Associate Degree at Maricopa Community College and he was about 18 months from completing a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree at Arizona State University. Completing this degree, he later earned a Master’s in Engineering Management from Ohio University. Towards the end of his bachelor’s degree, he got an internship at Honeywell Aerospace. His first job after earning his degree was with Enertron Inc., a leading provider of thermal management solutions for the aerospace, military, medical, telecommunications, and IC fab equipment industries. In this role, he designed heat sinks for circuit boards used for lasers, lighting and computers.

After three years with Enertron, he moved to Cleveland Electric Laboratories where he served as an applications engineer working on turbine engine instrumentation. This is where James got his first hands on experience with force measurement equipment. His job was to design instrumentation for strain, temperature, and pressure measurements. At one point he even designed a load pin for a customer.

In his role, he was also introduced to Interface. The company he was working for owned several Interface products and he became familiar with their high-quality and premium accuracy. Then in 2015, a headhunter called him out of the blue to offer him a chance to work for Interface. James was excited about the prospect of working for a company that put quality first. In fact, the thing that hooked him about Interface was the declared focus of “Quality is Our Driving Force,” and the fact that each of the four interviewers reiterated the importance of this statement in their interview.

James joined Interface as a production engineer. He remained in this role for about four years before being promoted to Senior Engineer, and then to his current role as Mechanical Engineering Manager where he leads a team of five other engineers. In this leadership position, James is responsible for overseeing development efforts for some of Interface’s most important product lines including the specialized 1923 and 1925 wireless custom solutions and our downhole products for the energy markets. James was instrumental in the latest new product release, the new ConvexBT Load Button Load Cell.

In addition to this critical role, James also loves to learn about the many ways that Interface products directly affect him and people close to him. This includes how measuring systems ensure the proper weight of food in nutritional planning and packaging, measurement of things like blood donations, and safety test systems for airplanes. The work done at Interface is incredibly important to everyday life and many people don’t even realize it.

In his free time, James can be found spending time with his wife of 21 years and their four children, two sons and two daughters. The family enjoys the outdoors together, partaking in activities like bike rides and hikes. He also brings some of his passion for engineering home. He’s intrigued by the possibilities of 3D printing and owns a printer himself. He’s designed and printed things like bowties, wallets, wall-mounts for various gadgets, and even toys for the kids. In case you missed it, the photo of James is his own 3-D printed bowtie. It was a big hit at the Interface holiday party.

Another interesting fact about James is that throughout his career he’s tried to connect with co-workers from different countries by learning their language. Throughout his life he’s learned a little bit of Polish and German, and is fluent in Spanish, which he learned while spending two years as a missionary in South America.

We asked James to describe his thoughts on his career in engineering in another language. He responded, “Un dicho o una frase que a mí me gusta pensar, cuando algo no sale buenisimo, es: “Siempre hay una manera mejor.” This translates to a saying or phrase that I like to think of when something doesn’t turn out great, “There is always a better way.”

To learn more about the ConvexBT, check out the datasheet here:

ConvexBT

Addressing Off-Axis Loads and Temperature Sensitive Applications

As technology progresses, one of the main differences we see over years and years of iteration on a wide range of consumer and commercial technology is miniaturization. There are hundreds of thousands of examples of advancing technology that went from the room-size of a mainframe decades ago, to a handheld device today. As technology grows more compact and convenient, the equipment used to design, test and manufacture these devices has to follow suit.

This is one of the driving factors for Interface to increase the product types and capabilities in our Load Button Load Cells and Interface Mini Load Cell products. Interface’s Load Button Load Cells are designed for customers who require the measurement of forces in a very confined space. They provide the most accuracy in as little space as possible. Diameters range from 1 inch to 3 inches, with heights from 0.39 inch to 1.5 inches.

For many years, load button load cells have been sensitive to off-axis, eccentric or misaligned loads. This means that if the load is not exactly perpendicular to the surface it’s resting on, the data could become skewed or inaccurate. All on-axis load generates some level, no matter how small, of off-axis extraneous components. This can cause a variety of challenges including slight inaccuracies and reduction of the load cells overload capacity.

With Interface’s family of load button load cells, we bring premium accuracy and repeatability, even under eccentric angular loading. The shaped load button has a spherical radius to help confine misaligned loads to the primary axis of the cell. Our design engineers and force measurement experts have purposefully tested applications under a wide variety of load conditions to ensure that the our load button series can continue to deliver premium performance. We have been extremely pleased with the results and continue to advance our offerings, including the soon to be released precision focused ConvexBT load button load cells.

The load button load cells’ size has in the past precluded the use of internal temperature compensation. We have redesigned our ultra precision product line of load buttons to ensure that this is no longer something the user has to account for when testing a product in certain environmental conditions.

Interface engineers have eliminated this issue by taking the technology out of the load button load cells cable and designing it back into the product. This ensures that temperature-sensitive applications do not suffer from errors caused by the load cell being exposed to different environmental conditions than the cable.

These new features open new possibilities to test compression force on a broader range of products and environments. To learn more about our ultra precision Load Cell Load Buttons and how it can make a difference in your design and testing process when dealing with tight and confined spaces, contact our Application Engineer experts here.

To see the complete line of Load Button Load Cells, visit here.  Watch for the release announcement of our new ultra precision ConvexBT product coming out this month.

Contributors:  James Richardson, Interface Mechanical Engineering Manager and Ted Larson, VP Product Management and Marketing

Source:  Interface Load Cell Field Guide