Position: In 1973, Bofors Electronics (as Nobel Systems was then called), produced the world's first microprocessor- controlled weight controller and terminal, the Scale-O-Scope,and Weight transmitter.
Nobel's sixth generation AST3 weight transmitter is available in a package that weighs less than the mains transformer of the original Scale-O-Scope 25 years ago
Over 25 years after this milestone in the history of electronic load cells weighing and force measurement, Nobel's sixth generation AST3 weight transmitter is available in a package that weighs less than the mains transformer of the original Scale-O-Scope.
The ground-breaking Scale-O-Scope was designed and manufactured by Bofors Electronics in conjunction with its patented KIS dual shear beam load cells for weighing and stock control in the meat processing industry.
The weight controller's ability to process input and output data, communicate with other Scale-O-Scope terminals, printers and with main frame computers led to a great increase in efficiency, and typically a doubling of profitability in the plants in which they were installed.
The Scale-O-Scope weighed 30kg, used an Intel 4040 4-bit processor with 4k memory, and featured 16-bit A/D conversion, a resolution of 1 in 30,000, and a communication speed of 300 baud.
It boasted digital scaling and set up, keyboard input and a dot matrix digital weighing display with alpha-numeric presentation of weight and data.
The trend since then has seen the extensive use of microprocessor power to give greater flexibility, higher resolution and accuracy, faster speed, easier setting up, smaller size and lower cost.
This is exemplified by Nobel's microprocessor-based weighing instruments, the E-2-TAD digital weighing controller and the most recent AST3 weight transmitter.
More than twenty-five years on from the Scale-O-Scope, E-2-TAD weighs in at 3kg, has three microprocessors, a resolution of one in half a million and communicates with RS232, 422 or 423 at 9600 baud .
It is CE EMC compliant, and has OIML (weights and measures) certification for accuracy class III for 10,000 divisions.
Now, the sixth generation AST3 goes one stage better, with an internal resolution of 1 in 8 million (23 bit) using a patented Sigma-Delta A/D conversion technique and communicates on RS485 at 115k baud using modbus protocol.
Analogue outputs of 0-10V, 0-2mA or 4-20mA are standard.
Communication speed is 380 times greater than the original Scale-O-Scope and resolution 260 times greater.
There are no potentiometer adjustments - all scaling is carried out and stored digitally and can be carried out via the front panel keypad or downloaded via the serial port using windows-based software.
Filtering can be pre-programmed to suit the dynamics of the application and is "adaptive" - that is, it has a wide bandwidth and fast response for large weight changes and shuts itself down to a narrow bandwidth for small changes.
The AST3 can also be connected via a modem to allow remote diagnostics and maintenance of the weighing system.
The unit is fully CE compliant to meet the latest EMC and low-voltage directives.
All this comes complete with a digital display in a DIN rail-mounted package that weighs less than 0.5kg.
Small is definitely beautiful - the new AST3 weighs approximately 1/60th of the original Scale-O-Scope of 1973.
