Barry Craik

Ohmite Manufacturing has recently completed the acquisition of the electronic components portion of Kanthal, a part of Sandvik Group based in New York. This provides Ohmite with a new, full line of ceramic non-inductive resistors, plus Maxcap double layer capacitors.

Kanthal’s Globar ceramic resistor products will be combined with Ohmite’s existing A Series and OX/OY Series product lines to form the new Ohmite Ceramic Resistor Division. This new branch of the Heico Companies will remain headquartered in New York, and will concentrate their efforts on higher voltage, and higher current electronic solutions.

These new components will be available on a direct basis from Ohmite, as well as Ohmite’s partner distributors world-wide.

This new acquisition helps consolidate Ohmite’s position as a world leader in power resistor manufacturing, and ensures they can now supply a complete product offering across the three leading solution platforms, including ceramic/composition, thick film, and wirewound construction.

Ohmite’s Director of Sales, Kurt Devlin, issued this statement. “We are excited to have the Kanthar Globar resistor products join the greater Ohmite and ARCOL family. This acquisition rounds out our total solutions offering which is unique in the global resistor market.

EMEA & APAC Sales Director, Darrel Oliver, added, “The added capability of manufacturing ceramic and composition resistors will allow us to better support our design community, and we look forward to continuing to develop outstanding component solutions for our customers.”

American Bright’s latest product, the PLCC 5050/3528 RGB LED Chip, has been featured in the most recent edition of LEDs Magazine’s Product Newsletter. This LED has an integrated circuit that allows it to easily fit into an array, each chip carrying it’s own address, or ID. This means that you can use them to create LED displays with unprecedented control over the output.

See this video for a great example of this in action.

With a very low power consumption, the LEDs can give off red, green, or blue light to make up a 256-bit colour set, with 5-bit brightness adjustment. The integrated circuits allow for a pulse width modulation output which can maintain static screen, self-detection signal, and continuous oscillation support.

This new PLCC LED device features a water clear lens, is completely RoHS compliant, and is ideal for a multitude of applications including indoor and outdoor commercial and residential lighting, light bars, and gaming equipment.

If you’d like to find out more, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Elon Musk, billionaire tech entrepreneur, made use of Davies Molding handles in his latest device.  In response to the July crisis that saw children trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk and his engineering team invented a “kid-size” submarine designed to rescue the boys soccer team from the Thailand cave.  Musk shared pictures of the submarine featuring Davies Molding two-shot pull handles on Twitter (see above).

The two-shot pull handles provide a non-slip grip making them durable for a mission intense as this one.  These handles are molded in the Davies plant with a glass reinforced Nylon substrate and an overmold Thermoplastic Elastomer rubber.

It’s always exciting to see a Davies Molding product in use, especially with a high-profile event as this one.  To read more about Elon Musk’s submarine, please visit @elonmusk on Twitter.

Around a year ago Tangio launched its TPE-500 series FSR range. It’s true to say they joined the party a little later than some of their competitors so knew it wasn’t good enough to offer a me-too product. Mark Graham, Tangio’s Head of New Products picks up the story, “I’ve been in resistive force sensing for almost a decade and knew very well its limitations. We’d seen few tangible improvements in the core FSR technology in recent years, which precluded its use in several growth markets and applications. Our plan from the outset was to produce a demonstrably better product.”

Neil Jarvie, Tangio’s VP of Business Development continues, “the market had become fragmented into existing players seemingly unwilling to invest in improvements to the technology, and start-ups with no manufacturing experience promoting lab-scale materials that only increase risk and cost. Disturbingly, we also discovered many manufacturers products didn’t perform anything like their data-sheets. In some cases alarmingly so!”

The development team at Tangio set about dragging the FSR into the 21^st century with a clean-sheet approach tackling the key areas; a better FSR ink, state-of-the-art process control, and subtle but intelligent changes to the mechanical structure and materials.

Robin Jeffries, Tangio’s CEO adds, “as we enjoy many collaborative and strategic relationships with key materials and process vendors in the printed electronics space, we called upon them during the development of the TPE-500 series. A notable example is our collaboration with Henkel for the FSR ink, one of the most critical components in the sensor.”

Mark remembers, “when the test data came in from the first prototype builds it was clear we had realised our goals. We were seeing best-in-class performance in multiple critical parameters like humidity & temperature stability, part-to-part repeatability and drift. I also knew we could publish data sheets that our customers could trust!”

Of course, all this comes at a price, right? Actually no, due to exceptionally high manufacturing yield the TPE-500 series is priced to beat competing legacy products. We’d like to think of that as a win/win.

About Tangio Printed Electronics

Tangio, the Printed Electronics division of Sytek Enterprises Inc, is a global leader in the design and manufacture of a wide range of standard and custom touch sensing solutions. From simple high-performance “single point” FSR sensors, through to state-of-the-art 3D multi-touch resistive sensors, capacitive sensors, and other novel innovations in printed electronics. Tangio offers unrivalled levels of integration, enabling customers to add value and reduce costs in their supply chain and get new products to market faster. Tangio’s philosophy of “Affordable Innovation” enables OEM’s and Tiers to deploy next generation HMI solutions in their products today. Tangio is a global company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with strategically located internal and partner sites in Europe, SE Asia, and India, supporting a rapidly expanding customer base. For more information go to www.tangio.ca

Here at Steadlands, we are willing and able to answer most questions put to us about any of our products. Those few questions we do not have answers on hand for, we can easily get from the various manufacturers we work with.

But what happens when a prospective customer is interested in a product, but is still trying to decide if it is worth the investment? If you are considering a larger roll out of devices, then we would be happy to arrange a visit from one of our staff to demonstrate whichever product you are interested in. We will even bring a couple of alternatives, just to help you find exactly what you are looking for.

For smaller quantities, or also to supplement a demonstration visit, we may still be able to visit, but it often works out both easier and better for you, the customer, and for us to offer a sale-or-return unit instead. This involves us sending you an example of the product you are interested in for a fixed period of time. We would ask you to provide credit card details as surety, but in exchange would send you one of our products along with any required software so you can experiment and try the product for yourself.

We will of course, be on hand to provide any support, advice, or information you need to help you get the most out of your trials and once it is over, you can return the product to us, or you can choose to keep it. If you are interested in viewing any of our products, please get in touch by completing the enquiry form on the website, or by calling us on +44 (0) 1670 361261.

This unique brand of LEDs has a very illuminating design. The integrated circuits for the LEDs are built directly into the LED chip design, seriously cutting down on additional circuitry and removing the need for additional on-board IC and other components. This means inventory management is dramatically reduced, since there is no need for additional resistors, regulatory diodes, or bridge rectifiers. This makes EzyLED an ideal solution thanks to its simplicity and ease of use.

The 3030 series EzyLEDs connect in parallel, and are directly driven by a conventional 12V/24V DC source. This allows for a constant luminosity between the input voltage range of 10.4V – 24V, and the LED maintains around half its intensity when the input voltage drops.

The EzyLED arrays actively modulate power usage by decreasing input current to avoid overheating. This will occur when the LED reaches 120°C, and means the input current, light output, and colour temperature all stay consistent, despite exterior voltage fluctuations or changes.

EzyLEDs are available in blue, red, green, amber, and three different varieties of white – cool, neutral, and warm, and are capable of outputting from 6 to 210 lumens per LED, depending on your choice of colour, power input, and so on.

If you would like any additional information about the EzyLED, or indeed any of American Bright’s products, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Just like the dragon guarding it’s pile of gold, the EU is once again updating it’s data protection laws with GDPR to help protect your details and data.

In 1998, the EU released the Data Protection Directive, designed to help keep personal and corporate data safe in a world that is becoming more interconnected every day. Merely fifteen years later, the Data Protection Directive was already found to be lacking, and unable to keep up with the changes in technology. As a result, and after four years of deliberations, the EU announced the General Data Protection Regulation (or, GDPR, as catchy acronyms go) would be adopted in April 2016. At the time it was agreed there would be a two-year implementation period, and so the regulation actually comes into effect in May 2018.

The GDPR was designed to help bring data privacy laws from across Europe into sync with each other, to protect citizen data privacy, and to force organisations into redefining their approach to data privacy. The GDPR doesn’t just affect EU-based companies though. Any company that trades with an EU-based entity, whether personal or professional, must respect the GDPR.

If they fail to uphold the General Data Protection Regulation, then companies can be fined up to €20 Million, or 4% of their annual global turnover, as a maximum fine for the most severe breaches – not having customer consent to process their data, for example. There is a tiered plan to the fines, so something with a lesser severity might only be fined 2% of the company’s annual global turnover.

So what counts as customer consent to permit companies to process your data? While it used to be a case of a little checkbox with dubious phrasing in legalese that you checked (or not), now it has to be a bit more explicit. Consent must clear and distinguishable from other matters, and must now be provided in an intelligible and easily accessible form. Any ambiguity could leave your company open to potential fines. It must also be as easy for a customer to remove consent as it is for them to give it.

The GDPR will also introduce an age factor into processing personal data. Now, there needs to be parental consent for sites and businesses to process details of children under the age of 16. There is some proviso in the Regulation that allows member states to alter the age of consent from 16 to 13.

The other aspect of the GDPR that could directly impact your business is an expansion in the roles of Data Protection Officers (DPO). If your company falls into one of three categories, you need a DPO. Outside of these categories, a DPO is not necessary. The three categories are:

• Public authorities – Government agencies, for example.
• Organizations that take part in large scale systematic monitoring – such as online behaviour tracking.
• Organizations that take part in large scale processing of sensitive personal data – ie, credit reference agencies.