Automation: New HARTING current sensors powerful and rectangular

Ready for extreme temperatures / Reliably protected against interference

Thanks to their measurement capabilities, current sensors improve the monitoring and quality of the use of electrical equipment in automated production scenarios. The sensors e.g. precisely illustrate the current consumption of a drive. From the comparison of the data with other process parameters, the control can posit information regarding possible malfunctions. System monitoring intervenes before errors occur. HARTING was presenting the sensors of the HCME series for the first time at the SPS IPC Drives Fair in Nuremberg .

Current sensors and transducers therefore play an important role in the predictive maintenance of plants. HARTING transducers can:

• accelerate diagnosis by mapping the current consumption of all types of motors in industrial plants
• monitor the current flow of battery storage devices and plating systems
• help monitor temperature-critical processes in which electrical equipment plays a role
• trigger the use of grid replacement systems with their measuring results.

Performance and miniaturisation have made tremendous progress even in the more simple types of current sensors. As a result, the effort it takes to increase sensor density in production machinery has decreased.

With HCME, HARTING has developed a series of devices that work according to the principle of direct imaging – open loop – and use rectangular cores. The devices achieve a precision which in many installations can only be obtained with the accuracy offered by considerably more expensive compensating current transformers (+ – 0.5%). The rectangular shape saves space for the sensors. They also speed up installation and assembly since they can easily be mounted on a power rail.

Current sensors offer a simple and compact solution when monitoring frequency inverters. What has already proven itself over many years in power transmission and conversion in the energy sector can also bear fruit in the area of automation and mechanical engineering.

There are parallels: to supply operating equipment with power, mechanical engineering also increasingly relies on power rails, which are often made of aluminium and which can be monitored using sensors. With the HCME series, HARTING has optimised the open-loop sensor for the installation situation on busbars. The result is devices with very compact dimensions: 6 cm high and 14.5 cm wide. The feedthroughs for the rails are up to 64 mm wide and 21 mm high (special formats possible). In addition, mounting lugs are let into the housing, by means of which the sensors can be applied directly to the current rail with two screws.

Ready for extreme temperatures

The wide temperature range from -40° C to + 85° C permits use even under extreme environmental conditions. Due to their high reliability, the sensors are ideally suited for use in frequency inverters and in the supply of power to high-performance loads. In addition, the HCME current transformers are reliably protected against interference, e.g. such as that caused by the magnetic fields of external current carrying lines.