Broken-coil detector is simple yet robust

摘要

The circuit in this Design Idea was originally designed to detect damaged conveyor belts in the mining industry. Thin coils are embedded inrnthe conveyor belt. If the belt suffers damage, it stretches at the affected location, causing one or more coils to break. The method for detecting thernbroken coil is to allow a "sensing" coil to magnetically couple with the passing coils in the belt, thus changing the total inductance of the magnetic pair.