What Are Load Cells?
When you step on your scale in the morning, you probably don’t think about how the device measures your weight. It does this using a load cell. Load cells are devices that measure pressure. But how do they do it? In the helpful video guide attached, RealPars answers this question, just as they have answered many other interesting engineering questions on their YouTube channel.
The key component of a load cell is called a transducer. These interesting components have a mechanical component that responds to the pressure being applied. It then reads the amount of depression or deformation of the unit and turns that into an electrical signal which is sent to a strain meter.
The strength or intensity of the signal sent out by the transducer tells the strain meter what it needs to know to send the final analysis to a computer unit. From there, the reading is translated into a number corresponding to a measurement of weight.
The advantage of all this is the miniaturization of an ancient process, measuring with weights. What once required heavy and bulky weights, levers, gears, and pulleys now take a handful of parts and a fraction of the space and weight of a traditional scale.
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