Colour sen­sors open up a wide range of var­i­ous ap­pli­ca­tions, such as in the pack­ag­ing in­dus­try, ro­bot­ics, au­toma­tion, qual­ity as­sur­ance or in the process in­dus­try.

Au­to­mated processes can be sim­pli­fied and ac­cel­er­ated using the ver­sa­tile colour sen­sors for de­tect­ing colour nu­ances in car­pets and tex­tiles or for colour mark­ings on pack­ag­ings or la­bels.

The Bal­luff se­ries of colour sen­sors op­er­ate using pulsed white light, mak­ing them par­tic­u­larly in­sen­si­tive to am­bi­ent light. The light re­flected back from the ob­ject is re­ceived and processed by three dif­fer­ent re­ceivers (red, green, blue).

The var­i­ous light spot geom­e­try con­fig­u­ra­tions of the re­spec­tive sen­sors (round, rec­tan­gu­lar or square) can re­li­ably de­tect even the small­est colour mark­ings.

Nu­mer­ous spe­cial func­tions such as colour scan­ning, pulse ex­pan­sion and blank­ing input pro­vide ad­di­tional ap­pli­ca­tion flex­i­bil­ity.

Fea­tures

• High switch­ing fre­quency
• With or with­out dis­play
• Ro­bust and in­dus­trial grade
• High ranges of up to 400 mm thanks to a strong white light
• Op­tion­ally with IO-Link in­ter­face for sim­ple pa­ra­me­ter­i­za­tion
• Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion be­tween any num­ber of ob­jects (255 can be learned)
• High colour res­o­lu­tion
• Ap­pli­ca­tion-spe­cific pa­ra­me­ter­i­za­tion

Above all, fork light bar­ri­ers are un­beat­able when it comes to op­er­a­tional re­li­a­bil­ity and pre­ci­sion. Since the trans­mit­ter and re­ceiver are in a sin­gle hous­ing, as­sem­bly and ad­just­ment ef­forts are low and safe processes are en­sured

In terms of pre­ci­sion, Bal­luff’s fork sen­sors are un­ri­valed for small-com­po­nent and de­tail recog­ni­tion as well as op­er­a­tional re­li­a­bil­ity. You can achieve the best re­sults with our laser fork sen­sors – in par­tic­u­lar when it comes to pre­cise po­si­tion­ing as well as with se­cure de­tec­tion of fast move­ment se­quences and small parts. For ex­am­ple, in ro­bot­ics and au­toma­tion.

Our com­pre­hen­sive port­fo­lio also of­fers you re­li­able so­lu­tions for dif­fi­cult ap­pli­ca­tions. Or for spe­cial ap­pli­ca­tions like trans­parency recog­ni­tion, water de­tec­tion and web edge con­trol.

The fea­tures

• Dif­fer­ent light types (red light, in­frared, Laser)
• Ro­bust metal hous­ing
• Sim­ple align­ment to the ob­ject
• High op­ti­cal res­o­lu­tion and re­peata­bil­ity
• Fork widths from 5…220 mm stan­dard­ized mount­ing holes
• Iden­ti­cal me­chan­i­cal and op­ti­cal axes
• High process re­li­a­bil­ity as the trans­mit­ter and re­ceiver are firmly aligned with each other
• Spare time and ex­pense – only one elec­tri­cal con­nec­tion is re­quired

Con­trast sen­sors are high-res­o­lu­tion light sen­sors that dis­tin­guish be­tween ob­jects on the basis of their greyscale val­ues. Hence, colour, bright­ness, and glow have a strong ef­fect on mea­sure­ment re­sults. In the case of minor dif­fer­ences in greyscale val­ues, a con­stant mea­sur­ing dis­tance must be en­sured. The sen­sor res­o­lu­tion de­creases as the sens­ing range in­creases. Sev­eral ranges with dif­fer­ent light types and func­tions are avail­able to en­able a di­verse field of use for these sen­sors.

Fea­tures

• For fast processes thanks to highly ac­cu­rate switch­ing – high switch­ing fre­quency up to 30 kHz
• Dif­fer­ent light types (laser/red/green/blue or white light)
• Large ranges with laser
• Clearly vis­i­ble light points for easy align­ment
• Ex­ter­nal Teach-in pos­si­ble
• Also avail­able with ana­log out­put sig­nal
• Avail­able with or with­out dis­play
• Dif­fer­ent mod­els for dif­fer­ent ap­pli­ca­tions

If var­i­ous ob­jects have to be iden­ti­fied in pro­duc­tion, when pack­ag­ing or in qual­ity con­trol, the new high-res­o­lu­tion Light band BLA is ideal. Be­cause it iden­ti­fies, com­pares or sorts ob­jects based on min­i­mum size or height dif­fer­ences. The in­tu­itively op­er­ated de­vice can be put into op­er­a­tion eas­ily. It con­sists of a high-per­for­mance red-light laser and a re­ceiver and op­er­ates en­tirely on its own. It does not need any other ac­ces­sories such as a con­troller, a com­puter or spe­cial soft­ware. The range en­com­passes up to 2 m. The con­sis­tent and well vis­i­ble light­ing strip pro­vides an ex­cel­lent res­o­lu­tion of 0.01 mm.

Fea­tures

• Ro­bust metal hous­ing for sta­ble mount­ing and pre­cise align­ment
• 50-mm wide light band
• Up to 2 m dis­tance be­tween trans­mit­ter and re­ceiver
• Ex­cel­lent res­o­lu­tion from 0.01 mm
• Two freely con­fig­ured ana­logue out­puts
• Three pro­gram­ma­ble dig­i­tal out­puts
• In­tel­li­gent in­ter­fer­ence con­tour mask­ing at the touch of a but­ton
• Sim­ple, in­tu­itive op­er­a­tion via a dis­play with clear text
• Only one power sup­ply for both – saves on wiring ef­fort, power sup­ply units and ex­penses
• Self-con­tained de­vice – no ad­di­tional ac­ces­sories such as con­troller, PC or soft­ware re­quired

Light grids are avail­able with dif­fer­ent mea­sur­ing field heights and with short and long ranges. This en­ables wide and re­ally large ob­jects to be de­tected re­li­ably. Our light grids are also avail­able with a low or high res­o­lu­tion. To di­rectly in­di­cate the height or width of an ob­ject, the sys­tem has an ana­logue volt­age out­put. An ad­di­tional switch­ing out­put in­di­cates whether an ob­ject is within the mon­i­tored range. The light grids are sup­plied with a mount­ing bracket so that you can mount them quickly and eas­ily. The setup process is just as user-friendly as the as­sem­bly process.

Fea­tures

• Dif­fer­ent lengths avail­able
• Also suit­able for large ob­jects up to a range of 2.1 m
• Ideal for count­ing due to its short re­ac­tion time
• Ro­bust metal hous­ing
• In­vis­i­ble in­frared light
• Switch­ing out­put (PNP) and ana­log out­put (0…10 V)
• Sim­ple con­nec­tion, easy in­stal­la­tion with­out the need for ad­di­tional equip­ment
• Ready for im­me­di­ate use – no pa­ra­me­ter­i­za­tion nec­es­sary

Bal­luff’s Fiber optic sen­sors are used if the usual op­ti­cal sen­sor is too large or too rigid for the ap­pli­ca­tion. Our fiber optic sen­sors are op­tion­ally com­bined with plas­tic or glass fiber op­tics for a com­plete sen­sor. Thanks to their dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties, you have max­i­mum flex­i­bil­ity de­pend­ing upon the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Or large se­lec­tion of plas­tic fiber op­tics can be used es­pe­cially when there is no great re­quire­ment for ro­bust­ness or re­sis­tance to en­vi­ron­men­tal tem­per­a­tures or chem­i­cals. We do, how­ever, have high-tem­per­a­ture-re­sis­tant fibers in the pro­gram. In glass fiber op­tics, we also offer tread-re­sis­tant, tem­per­a­ture-re­sis­tant and chem­i­cal-re­sis­tant vari­a­tions.

Fea­tures

• Recog­ni­tion of sub­tle con­trast dif­fer­ences
• Very fast – up to 8 kHz
• High po­si­tion­ing pre­ci­sion
• Flex­i­bil­ity in mount­ing, sim­ple to in­stall
• Ad­di­tional func­tions avail­able (freely con­fig­urable pa­ra­me­ters)
• Me­chan­i­cally ro­bust
• Highly-ac­cu­rate switch­ing
• With one-way or de­tect­ing prin­ci­ple
• Straight or an­gled op­tics
• Com­pact con­fig­u­ra­tion for mount­ing on top-hat rails
• With or with­out dis­play
• Dif­fer­ent light types (red or in­frared)
• Also op­tion­ally with ana­log out­put sig­nal
• Dif­fer­ent se­ries for glass or plas­tic fibers

If you need to de­tect marks that are in­vis­i­ble to the human eye, lu­mi­nes­cence sen­sors are ideal. They can de­tect all kinds of flu­o­res­cent sub­stances, even if the marks are only faint.

Fea­tures

• UV light – no ex­ter­nal lamp or light source re­quired
• Pro­gram­ma­ble with the touch of a but­ton – with­out sep­a­rate soft­ware
• Ro­bust, in­dus­trial-grade de­signs

Op­ti­cal win­dow sen­sors have a se­ries of par­al­lel beams of light. This de­sign makes it pos­si­ble to sense ob­ject not only at a point but also over an area (win­dow). The spe­cial de­sign of the op­tics en­sures that the out­stand­ing res­o­lu­tion re­mains the same at any lo­ca­tion in the win­dow. Our op­ti­cal win­dow sen­sors work dy­nam­i­cally, which means that parts are only de­tected in the ac­tive area if they are mov­ing.

Fea­tures

• Con­sis­tently high res­o­lu­tion
• Dy­namic method: only mov­ing ob­jects are de­tected. Feed shafts etc. do not af­fect the mea­sure­ment
• De­tec­tion of parts as small as 0.8 mm
• Ad­justable out­put sig­nal length
• Ad­justable sen­si­tiv­ity
• Three frame sizes
• Stan­dard M8 con­nec­tor

When it comes to pre­ci­sion and the de­tec­tion of small parts and de­tails, angle light bar­ri­ers are un­beat­able. Since they are a fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the fork light bar­rier, they also have prac­ti­cally the same data. But their spe­cial de­sign makes them re­ally use­ful in lots of more chal­leng­ing ap­pli­ca­tions. Their de­sign and beam geom­e­try en­able im­pact and the de­tec­tion of ob­jects from prac­ti­cally any di­rec­tion. Bal­luff angle light bar­ri­ers are avail­able as red light and laser vari­ants.

In­stal­la­tion is also easy in dif­fi­cult con­fined spaces: The trans­mit­ter and re­ceiver are firmly aligned with each other. There­fore, there is no need for com­plex at­tach­ments, also time-in­ten­sive ad­just­ments are elim­i­nated.

Fea­tures

• Ideal for every ap­pli­ca­tion thanks to dif­fer­ent light types (red light, in­frared, laser)
• Ro­bust metal hous­ing
• The an­gled form makes for ex­tremely flex­i­ble mount­ing
• High op­ti­cal res­o­lu­tion and re­peata­bil­ity
• High process re­li­a­bil­ity since the trans­mit­ter and re­ceiver are firmly aligned with each other
• No time-in­ten­sive ad­just­ment
• Large se­lec­tion of dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes

Our uni­ver­sally us­able pho­to­elec­tric Global sen­sors guar­an­tee re­li­able ob­ject de­tec­tion and are avail­able in a wide as­sort­ment with a large num­ber of dif­fer­ent modes of ac­tion, de­signs and sizes.

In ad­di­tion to var­i­ous hous­ing forms, such as cylin­dri­cal or cuboid forms, you can choose be­tween vis­i­ble red light, non-vis­i­ble in­frared light or high-per­for­mance laser light.

All pho­to­elec­tric sen­sors from Bal­luff are quick to in­stall and sim­ple to op­er­ate. The high-qual­ity tech­nol­ogy also has an at­trac­tive price/per­for­mance ratio.

The fea­tures

• Dif­fuse sen­sors with ranges up to 900 mm
• Retro-re­flec­tive sen­sors with ranges up to 16 m
• Through-beam sen­sors with ranges up to 60 m

Pho­to­elec­tric mini-sen­sors from Bal­luff are the right choice if small parts need to be de­tected in lim­ited space with pre­ci­sion and long ranges are im­por­tant. This is be­cause they work ab­solutely re­li­ably from less than one mil­lime­ter to dis­tances of up to three me­ters.

With their wide range of prod­uct vari­ants, they are a re­li­able so­lu­tion to all ap­pli­ca­tions and offer a great de­gree of free­dom in de­sign.

Ad­vanced laser tech­nol­ogy, ho­mo­ge­neous red light or in­no­v­a­tive pin­point tech­nol­ogy stand for high process ac­cu­racy. Dif­fuse sen­sors with back­ground sup­pres­sion re­li­ably elim­i­nate in­ter­fer­ing in­flu­ences.

And our pho­to­elec­tric mini-sen­sors are ex­tremely easy to op­er­ate.

The fea­tures

• Long ranges: up to 3 m
• Large range of prod­uct vari­ants
• High process ac­cu­racy
• Easy to op­er­ate

The Mi­cro­mote sys­tem of Bal­luff is es­pe­cially small and, there­fore, can be very flex­i­bly used. It com­bines an ex­ter­nal proces­sor unit (am­pli­fier) with ex­cep­tion­ally small op­to­elec­tronic sen­sor heads. As a re­sult it is suit­able even for ex­tremely con­stricted spa­tial con­di­tions and mov­ing ma­chine el­e­ments.

The mod­u­lar sys­tem of the Mi­cro­mote sen­sors with in­no­v­a­tive sen­sor el­e­ments meets your in­di­vid­ual re­quire­ments: a va­ri­ety of hous­ing con­fig­u­ra­tions en­sure an es­pe­cially high de­gree of de­sign free­dom, pre­cise op­to­elec­tronic mod­ules en­sure a high process pre­ci­sion with each ap­pli­ca­tion.

The fea­tures

• Large se­lec­tion of sen­sor heads with max­i­mum pre­ci­sion: Mi­crospot, Nanospot, lasers, in­frared, clas­sic red-light LEDs
• Am­pli­fier for ana­log, dig­i­tal, dy­namic
• Dis­play in­di­ca­tion of tar­get and ac­tual val­ues
• Con­ve­nient op­er­a­tion
• Ex­tremely flex­i­ble sen­sor cable
• Out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal pa­ra­me­ters
• Ro­bust – can be used under dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions
• Op­ti­mum use in grip­pers using light com­po­nents
• El­e­gant, seam­less in­te­gra­tion in the ma­chine
• Adap­ta­tion to ap­pli­ca­tion at eas­ily ac­ces­si­ble points using sep­a­rate am­pli­fiers