Ed Nauman found that using a hydraulic press to straighten a piece of material involved guesswork. You apply the force and then gradually increase it with each successive try. You usually track the appropriate force by counting the number of pulls on the pump handle. That's not very scientific.
Nauman created a gadget that indicates the actual force being applied. The goal was to make the process of using the hydraulic press quicker and more accurate.
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The schematic was drawn in Sunstones free printed circuit board design program, PCB123. PCB123 does not allow any format other than theirs. The only way to transmit the schematic to design news was via a screen capture and a JPG conversion. If you want an electronic version, I will be happy to email anyone a copy. But PCB123 does not allow any format other than theirs, so you will have to download PCB123 to be able to open it. If you are interested, email me and I will send you a schematic and the code for the PIC. If you plan to build one, I would be happy to program the PIC for you if you don't have the means to do so.
The force is simply the hydraulic pressure times the surface area of the cross section of the ram. The pressure transducer was calibrated in the laboratory and the instrumentation amp gain is set to allow maximum range for the A/D converter in the PIC. The PIC does the simple E.U. conversion to provide the LCD display with actual pounds force exerted by the ram.
I agree. Seems like a very practical idea. I'm curious, though. In hydraulic ram press applications in the past, how was the force calculated? Mr. Nauman mentions counting the number of pumps on a handle. Was the calulation really that crude?
This is very clever. Although I don't normally work in forces applied this way, I can see the utility of the design. I am sure this project is much cheaper than off the self indicators.
Care to share the schematics? Open source that is...
Now, that's a really practical device a lot of shops can actually use. I'd love to see the source code but I can understand it not being there. You could actually market the device. What transducer did you use? I like the fact that you made it look good by putting the lettering on the front panel. It shows you didn't just make it for yourself. Good work.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
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