What is a Displacement Sensor?

What is a displacement sensor? A displacement sensor is a device used for measuring positional movement or detecting the movement of a given object, these movements can be in either a linear or rotary fashion.

Displacement sensors, also known as position sensors, are a very common type of sensor. They are used throughout many industries and can be found all around us.

Displacement sensors are available in different types, different shapes and different sizes to suit different applications.

What is a Displacement Sensor Used For?

Displacement sensors are widely used. Some of the most common industries for displacement sensors are; Motorsport, automotive, industrial applications, agriculture, aerospace, robotics and many more.

Some example applications using position sensors are;

Automotive and Motorsport – in this industry, displacement sensors can be used for steering systems on agricultural machinery, electric cart throttle control, the suspension on bikes and many other applications.

Factory Automation – displacement sensors can be used for conveyor speed measurement, labelling machines and control, printing processes and packaging.

Medical Applications – displacement sensors are used on medical pieces of machinery such as MRI or oncology machines.

Security Applications - displacement sensors can be used in security applications, for example, monitoring the angle of a CCTV camera.

Barriers and bridges – displacement sensors are used to position various types of barriers; these could be for pedestrians or vehicles. Moving bridges and ramps also use displacement sensors to control the positions they are fixated in.

Other applications – displacement sensors can also be used for; elevator position, special effects in film and TV, for use on Segways and other transportation devices, various renewable energy applications, baking machines, paper mills and many others.

Types of Displacement Sensor

Displacement sensors are available in different types. The main two types of displacement sensor are linear and rotary. Within these categories there are other types of displacement sensor, this is down to the technology used within the sensor. There are many different types of technology used in displacement sensors, some of these are contacting and others are non-contacting.

Linear Displacement Sensors

Linear displacement sensors measure movements which occur along a single axis, this can be left to right or up and down. They use a range of technologies and have different outputs depending on the application requirements.

Rotary Displacement Sensors

Rotary displacement sensors are used for measuring turning movements. They transform rotary movements into output signals. Rotary displacement sensors can be used for either clockwise or anti-clockwise movements and can be single turn for motion ranges under 360° or multiturn for larger movements than this.

Contacting Displacement Sensors

Contacting displacement sensors use a technology where the sensor encounters the given object and the components inside also come into physical contact with each other to measure displacement.

Potentiometer – also known as “pots” are a contacting technology using a slider and a resistive track to monitor displacement. Potentiometers can be either linear and rotary and we have a range of each on our website.

Cable extension transducers – cable extension transducers are a type of linear potentiometer, but they use a flexible cable and a spool to measure long range linear position.

Non-Contacting Displacement Sensors

Non-contacting displacement sensors have no touching parts. This eliminates the friction as well as the wear and tear giving the sensor longer – and sometimes infinite life.

We have a variety of non-contacting technologies in our displacement sensor portfolio. Some of these are;

Hall effect – Hall effect tends to be used for rotary sensors but can also be used in linear sensors, we have our own range of Hall effect rotary sensors which are available as standard or micro size.

Inductive sensors – this technology uses alternating currents and is used to measure linear displacement. 

Encoders – shafted or hollow shaft encoders are used for monitoring and controlling rotary position, they can be absolute or incremental.

Positek PIPS – this technology comes from Positek, one of our sister companies; it is a non-contacting technology for either linear or rotary displacement.

LVDT and RVDT – Linear or Rotary variable differential transformers which use an iron core and copper coils to measure displacement.

Displacement Sensors from Variohm 

We have a comprehensive range of displacement sensors; they can all be found on our website.

We have our own range of linear and rotary displacement sensors as well as various ranges from our trusted suppliers. This gives us a portfolio which offers a displacement sensor for any application in any industry.

If you have a require any displacement sensors, please contact us.