RS and Banner Engineering Make Industry 4.0 Accessible
March 3, 2025
RS offers Banner Engineering’s extensive portfolio of advanced industrial automation sensors, including non-contact photoelectric, laser distance measurement, and multipoint or 3D time-of-flight sensors.
Sensors are a vital link in the densely interconnected networks that drive the implementation and evolution of Industry 4.0 — responsible for measuring, monitoring, and transmitting information about a host of operations essential to driving efficiencies on assembly lines and factory floors alike. And as industrial automation technology has evolved, so have the various sensor technologies that enable them.
Banner Engineering’s advanced photoelectric, laser distance measurement, and multipoint sensors provide users with much more information than early versions of these technologies. When leveraged effectively, this additional operational data helps users improve productivity, simplify processes, and reduce costs — all of which are perennial goals in the industrial automation sector. In addition, all of these sensors employ non-contact sensing technology. This allows them to deliver reliable detection and measurement without coming into contact with products and other targets, the benefits of which include eliminating moving parts subject to wear out, enabling greater design flexibility, and mitigating potential electromagnetic and RF interference with machines and production lines.
Banner Engineering’s photoelectric sensors are ideal for detecting the presence or absence of an object or changes in the surface conditions of a target and are available with several different sensing modes — including opposed mode or through-beam, retroreflective, diffuse, and background suppression — for broad application suitability.
These general-use sensors are widely employed in most industrial market segments, including material handling and packaging and food and beverage manufacturing industries, and are commonly used for leading-edge detection on production lines and conveyor belts to ensure the accuracy of actions like label stamping and sleeve wrapping. They’re also widely used for quality control and counting applications, like detecting whether a certain part is present and in the right place in an assembly or counting a row of moving targets, like pills being filled into a bottle.
Designed to replace hundreds of other sensor styles, Banner’s QS18 Series all-purpose photoelectric sensors offer maximum application flexibility, including one of the most comprehensive arrays of sensing modes available on the market — 12 different sensing modes, compared to the three or four modes that most competitors offer in a similar form factor — and a universal housing equipped with an 18mm threaded barrel or side mounts for flexible mounting. They also offer a variety of sensing distances extending from 15–36,000mm; visible red, infrared, or laser sensing beams; standard M8 and M12 quick disconnect connections, both integral or pigtail, or a cable; outputs to fit any requirement, including DC and AC powered applications; and operating temperatures extending from -40°C to +70°C.
Additional features include IP67 and NEMA 6 ratings for harsh environment applications, user-friendly potentiometers or pushbuttons for simple setup, bright LED status indicators with 360° visibility, and IO-Link capabilities for simplified wiring, installation, preventative maintenance, and diagnostics.
Banner Engineering’s laser distance measurement sensors utilize triangulation or time-of-flight technology to provide single-point distance measurements. They are especially well-suited for detecting dark or challenging targets and small features due to their high excess gain and small spot size and are ideal for use in applications that require long-range, diffuse detection or high precision.
They’re available in discrete models commonly used to detect the presence or absence of challenging targets, like black foam in automotive assembly quality inspections; analog models, which measure how far the target is from the sensor and are commonly used to measure the diameter of label rolls to ensure timely replacements; and IO-Link models capable of sending and receiving commands and inciting actions, like activating an indicator to communicate that a programmed status or value has been achieved.
Designed to solve a wide range of application challenges with a single SKU, Banner’s Q4X Series offers a best-in-class combination of range (25–610mm), precision, ruggedness, and versatility and allows users to fully configure each sensor with just a few buttons and the display. It’s widely used in automotive manufacturing and non-hygienic food and beverage industry applications due to its robust, IP69K, FDA-grade stainless steel housing, which reliably resists mechanical impact, overtightening, and extreme vibration, and its ability to accurately detect a wide variety of target colors, materials, and surfaces. The series also accurately detects millimeter changes in distance and is available in discrete, analog, and IO-Link versions, which is uncommon at its accessible price point.
Additional features include a dual-mode teach function that combines intensity and distance measurements for error-proofing applications and an angled four-digit display designed to provide clear distance readouts.
Banner Engineering’s multipoint or 3D time of flight sensors detect and measure multiple targets within their broad, three-dimensional field of view by emitting a signal across a wide area. This signal is then reflected back to a multipoint pixel array, which creates a point cloud that can be used to accurately measure non-uniform targets, such as bin fill levels or part detection.
Banner’s K50Z Series sensors feature 64 measuring points with a wide 45° x 45° field of view and two independently configurable output zones, which allows them to replace multiple sensors, reduce system cost and complexity, and eliminate possible points of failure. They are commonly used in bin filling applications to accurately account for the peaks and valleys involved with volumetric measurements and in pallet wrapping applications to provide full visibility of the mechanical arm and prevent premature task completion. Banner’s K50Z sensors are also amongst the lowest-cost multipoint sensors available on the market, which makes their unique features accessible to industrial organizations of all sizes.
