Load Cell Advice

[colehan]

Hello All,

New to this forum, and to load cell applications. I am working on a fatigue testing fixture which will need to be fitted with a single compression load cell. There are tons of ways to go about this but I am already over budget and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on the least expensive way to power, condition, and acquire data from a basic button load cell. Several different configurations from Omega, Futek, etc put me well into the $1000 range.

Load cell will need to have capacity of around 4000lb, accuracy to +- .25% FSO, and I will need to sample at up to 50Hz.

Is the reality that I am just going to have to spend the coin or am I missing something with making a more economical system.

Thanks

 

[MintJulep]

0.25% of 4000 is 10.

Do you really need that accuracy?

 

[burningDiesel]

he probably wants to fulfill the ISO 7500 norm for his rig

 

[kjoiner]

Hello,

Would something like this work?

http://www.transcell.com/Digital_Indicators/c10/p28/TI-500E_Digital_Indicator/product_info.html

We use a unit like this in one of our machines to power 4 shear beam load cells. Data is output from the RS-232 port to an onboard computer that logs the data and sends it to some other software. The price on the site is not what we pay - I think our price is actually around $135.

Kyle

 

[colehan]

KJoiner, thanks for the input I am looking into it now, only concern is the 5vdc exitation would cut my accuracy in half if I have a 10vdc load cell correct?

The problem with the accuracy is the force put into this rig will range from around 75lb to 2000lb in one configuration, and 150lb to 4000lb in another configuration. I would really like it to be even more accurate than 10lb but didn't think that was reasonable due to cost concerns.