In order to follow the tradition, another round of rotary encoder experts from SPS-Magazin took place in 2020 at the TeDo publishing house in Marburg, moderated by Dr. Johann Pohany. At the beginning of 2020, seven encoder manufacturers were interviewed on the subject of heavy-duty encoders. TWK-ELEKTRONIK GmbH was represented by Ulf Stark, head of the technical office.
In the first round of the discussion the following key question was addressed: What defines a heavy-duty encoder and what trends are there? It becomes apparent that manufacturers of heavy-duty encoders have to take many decisive factors into account, since these encoders are used under extreme ambient conditions. Mechanical robustness, reliability and availability were some of the important distinguishing features of the heavy-duty encoder from a normal encoder, which were mentioned by the experts.
In the second part, it was discussed whether magnetic technology could represent a technology for heavy-duty encoders in the future and what the interfaces of the future would look like at all. Stark pointed out that TWK has been making bearingless systems for 20 years and that these will also come for heavy-duty encoders.
Other questions that were answered in the full article in the SPS magazine included What changes can we expect to see in the field of encoder development? What information is needed to find the right encoder for the customer and what evaluated data plays an important role in making reasonable statements about the lifetime of a system?
Further information about encoder expert panel can be found at: https://www.sps-magazin.de/antriebstechnik/hart-im-nehmen/