These pulses were typically sent to a counter that interpreted each pulse as a distance and displayed the resulting value to the operator.Įven with all of these initial challenges, the electromechanical plumb bob device was perceived to be an invaluable tool in the field of inventory management, and as technology improved in electronics and materials, so did the plumb bob. Measurements were conducted using a counting wheel that generated an electronic pulse with every turn of the wheel relating to a predetermined distance of cable fed out of the unit during the plumbing. Failures included cables breaking or tangling, fouling of the electronics due to material being drawn up into the housing, motors burning up, and weights being caught under material as it fed into the bin. Early systems utilized several pulleys and large motors that resulted in bulky, complex machines that, without proper preventative maintenance applied, tended to fail due to a number of reasons. It is this issue that drove the development of the electromechanical plumb bob level system several decades ago. The only downside is that someone has to climb to the top of a bin or silo to conduct this measurement, which requires valuable resources and introduces a possible safety hazard. This manual method of bin level measurement is still by far the most used today in modern plants by operators who have tied a rock to a tape measuring device and lower the apparatus into a bin while looking at how much tape has paid out when the rock hits something in the bin. Assuming human error is controlled, this method has proved to be reliable and repeatable, inexpensive, and easy to execute. There is evidence of the plumb bob being used for vertical alignment as early as ancient Egyptian times, and somewhere along the way someone came up with the idea to use this concept for measuring the vertical depth of empty space in a bin, and using that measurement to calculate how much material is in the vessel from the bottom up or percent full. Probably the most tried and true method, and maybe even the most common still used today, is the plumb bob style or “weight and cable” method. Because there hasn’t always been the fancy high-tech methods of measuring level in a bin we know today, or even electricity for that matter, yet still a need to know, this need has led to innovative methods of measuring how much material one has in a bin.įrom hitting the side of a bin with a hammer (or even throwing rocks up the side of a silo) while listening to the type of “bong” the hit creates, to waking up extra early to see where the morning dew on the side of vessel begins or ends, there is no shortage of ways people have come up with to measure level. Whether it is for inventory counts, loading out or in, or batching, there is always someone somewhere in a plant needing to know what is in a silo or other holding bin. For as long as there has been a need to store material there has been a need to know how much is being stored at any given time.
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