Wiegand assemblies from POSITAL operate with no external power required

POSITAL's Wiegand wire assemblies, a compact and efficient solution

As a top supplier of advanced industrial position sensors for motion-control and safety systems, POSITAL values state-of-the-art innovation in its products. This is a key advantage of one of its recent developments, its Wiegand wire assemblies, which provide a better way to harvest power for electronic circuits in electromechanical devices – and make backup batteries unnecessary.

A compact and efficient choice

First developed in the 1970s, Wiegand wire is a short piece of vanadium-iron-cobalt wire, or Vicalloy wire, which has been constructed for exposure to changing external magnetic fields: when exposed to such a field – such as a permanent magnet mounted on a rotating shaft – the wire keeps its magnetic polarity, then abruptly flips the polarity when a change to the field reaches a specific threshold. The change in the core’s magnetic state creates a short current pulse in the copper coil wound around the Vicalloy core, and energy from the magnet’s mechanical motion can activate a low-power electronic circuit.

What makes Wiegand assemblies unique is how the reversal of the magnetic polarization generates a constant level of electric power that is utterly independent of the external magnetic field’s rate of change. With Wiegand modules, manufacturers can power rotation counters reliably and efficiently in gas and water meters, multi-turn rotary encoders, and many millions of other devices.

A typical Wiegand assembly includes a 15-millimetre piece of Wiegand wire surrounded by a copper coil, all within an SMD-mountable plastic structure. While they are recommended for a variety of manufacturers, POSITAL offers these assemblies as core components in its IXARC multi-turn absolute rotary encoders, as a maintenance-free method of powering counters that record the amount of the devices’ full rotations. Wiegand assemblies are also ideal for any applications that require low-cost, no-maintenance, no-battery energy harvesting systems to energize low-power devices like electronic counters.

Wiegand assemblies are a compact and efficient choice for components that harvest energy for electromechanical applications.

About the company

A member of the FRABA group, POSITAL supplies position sensors for industrial use, with innovative design and manufacturing processes. Its North American headquarters is located in Hamilton, NJ.

To learn more, contact POSITAL.

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