Eyni Lopez - Spectra Symbol is pleased to present our Employee of the Month award this month to Eyni Lopez!  Eyni has stepped up and become a critical part of our Line 2 operations and has shown herself to be a quick learner and a huge help with our Siemens projects.

Her curiosity and willingness to rise to the challenge is apparent in everything she does.  Eyni’s consistent attention to detail and pride in her work shines through every day.  She takes on challenging projects and doesn’t shy away from the opportunity to learn and grow.

Eyni is from Venezuela and worked as a nurse there before joining our team here at Spectra Symbol.  She loves junk food and spending time with her family, especially her two little girls.

We want to acknowledge her excellence in everything she does and show our appreciation for the quality of her workmanship, dedication, and her great attitude. Congratulations, Eyni, we are so lucky to have you on our team!

  1 Oct National Coffee Day

  3 Oct "Mean Girls" Day

17 Oct National Pasta Day

26 Oct National Pumpkin Day

31 Oct Halloween

Important Company Events:

20 Oct Spectra Symbol Haunted House (see flyers and TV for details)

26 Oct End of Quarter All-hands Meeting (everyone plan on attending)

English Session: 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

Spanish Session: 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

Biodex Rehab- p/n's 4418 & 4419

Have you tested for any 1% pots lately or have you performed a debris test on any pots?  What exactly is it you're testing for?  0.5%, 1%, 3%, or 5% of what?  What does debris do and why do we test for it?  Well, it's all about Linearity!

What is linearity?  In Spectra Symbol's case, it is a specification of the maximum permissible deviation of the actual output of a tested potentiometer from a theoretical, straight, reference line or, in other words, how much will Spectra Symbol allow the output curve of a tested potentiometer to deviate from a theoretical straight line that represents an expected output.

As you can imagine, the important part of this specification is in how that theoretical line, that represents the "expected" output, is generated in order to measure the deviation from it.  Fortunately, some folks, that are a whole lot smarter than I am, figured out a standard specification where each potentiometer is gaged against itself, not a fixed scale or "golden" part, and allows us to easily calculate a theoretical line that "minimizes the linearity error" and "provides the tightest tolerance specification" for our price point.  This specification is called Independent Linearity.

Basically, the Independent Linearity specification allows us to capture the output of a tested potentiometer, plot a best-fit line through the data, measure how much any of the captured data points deviate from the best-fit line, and compare the maximum amount of deviation for any one of those captured points against the agreed upon allowed maximum deviation.  If any point exceeds that agreed-upon value, then the potentiometer is sorted out or rejected.

With this in mind, you can see how debris can impact linearity and how easy it is to use linearity testing to detect debris in the active area of a potentiometer because, as the wiper travels over the debris, it creates a momentarily open circuit, which drops the measured voltage for that point, and even with a best-fit line, that datapoint will deviate outside any reasonable specification.

Now that you have an idea of how we specify and use linearity, why is a specification like this important?  Ultimately, it boils down to how well we and the customer can expect the potentiometer to function in their application, especially when the customer intends to use it as part of a position feedback system.  If the linearity of one of our potentiometers is outside of the agreed-upon specification it can lead to miscalculations in movements which can cause damage or harm, faults in the system causing it to stop, or otherwise behave erratically.

If you have any questions about linearity or how potentiometers work, feel free to ask one of our Engineers or you can find out more from The Potentiometer Handbook by Bourns: HERE (you will be redirected to the Bourns website)

• Rachel Rose - $100 (Myra Rose's first week)

• Courtney Boren - $100 (Rose Hannah's first week)