Economic Upturn?

Maybe. We're seeing signs.

After a best-ever 2008 we saw about a 25% downturn in 2009. 2010 started off equally bad, maybe even worse. Then, April & May were strong - above our 2008 average. We're cautious, though. The two months were helped by unusually large orders from four customers. So - cautiously optimistic!

Another sign - not necessarily good - component shortages and lead times are increasing rapidly - up to 20 weeks. So far we're able to cope, as most of our parts are available from multiple sources.

Such problems aside, let's hope the improvement continues.

Application Note

Detect Thermocouple Failure Without Upsetting the Process

One from the archives. Our customer needed to alarm on thermocouple failure without shutting down the process.

Thermocouple instruments commonly include upscale burnout indication. If the thermocouple breaks or fails open-circuit the instrument's output goes high, just as if the temperature had gone out of control. This often is used to insure failsafe failure, shutting the process down and sounding an alarm.

Our customer, a utility, needed an overtemperature shutdown on a monitored water temperature. They also wanted to trip an alarm upon thermocouple failure but without interrupting the process. We were able to suggest a simple dual-trip alarm setup to do this.

Our thermocouple instruments, like most others, offer a downscale burnout option. (Thermcouple failure causes the output to go low instead of high.) Using a dual-trip alarm, we set trip #1 for HI trip and trip #2 for LO. The HI trip, of course, was used to shut the process down on excessive temperature. The LO trip was set below freezing. Its relay would trip when the thermocouple failed but never under normal operation.

For the full application note, click here.

Our web site - Signal Conditioners, Process Transmitters: http://www.jhtechnology.com/

E-mail: jhtek@jhtechnology.com

Export Sales

Helping the balance of trade -

Although the majority of our sales are within the US we welcome interntional orders. In the past two weeks we've shipped:

• 25 more pieces of a custom assembly (4-input load cell amplifier) for our good OEM customer in Sweden. They buy a few hundred per year - we have an open order for 50 more right now.
• 30 more JH4380W rangeable DC transmitters - specials - with extended temperature ICs to guarantee operation to minus 40 degrees. Although shipped to a US customer, they will be using them in systems exported to Russia. A repeat order - they ordered 54 last year.
• 6 transmitters to an overseas distributor.

 We're grateful for all orders, foreign or domestic.