Positioning Equipment

A galvanometer is an instrument for detecting and measuring electric current. It is an electromechanical transducer that produces a rotary deflection, through a limited arc, in response to electric current flowing through its coil. more...

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The name galvanometer has been applied to devices used in measuring, recording, and positioning equipment.

Operation

The most familiar use is as an analog measuring instrument, often called a meter. It is used to measure the direct current (flow of electric charges) through an electric circuit. Such devices are constructed with a small pivoting coil of wire in the field of a permanent magnet. The coil is attached to a thin pointer that traverses a calibrated scale. A tiny spring pulls the coil and pointer to the zero position. In some meters, the magnetic field acts on a small piece of iron to perform the same effect as a spring.

When a direct current (DC) flows through the coil, the coil generates a magnetic field. This field acts with or against the permanent magnet. The coil pivots, pushing against the spring, and moving the pointer. The hand points at a scale indicating the electric current. A useful meter generally contains some provision for damping the mechanical resonance of the moving coil and pointer so that the pointer position smoothly tracks the current without excess vibration.

The basic sensitivity of a meter might be, for instance, 100 microamperes full scale (with a voltage drop of, say, 50 millivolts at full current). Such meters are often calibrated to read some other quantity that can be converted to a current of that magnitude. The use of current dividers, often called shunts, allows a meter to be calibrated to measure larger currents. A meter can be calibrated as a DC voltmeter if the resistance of the coil is known by calculating the voltage required to generate a full scale current. A meter can be configured to read other voltages by putting it in a voltage divider circuit. This is generally done by placing a resistor in series with the meter coil. A meter can be used to read resistance by placing it in series with a known voltage (a battery) and an adjustable resistor. In a preparatory step, the circuit is completed and the resistor adjusted to produce full scale deflection. When an unknown resistor is placed in series in the circuit the current will be less than full scale and an appropriately calibrated scale can display the value of the previously-unknown resistor.

Because the pointer of the meter is usually a small distance above the scale of the meter, parallax error can occur when the operator attempts to read the scale line that "lines up" with the pointer. To counter this, some meters include a mirror along the markings of the principal scale. The accuracy of the reading from a mirrored scale is improved by moving the head while reading the scale so that the pointer and the reflection of the pointer are aligned; at this point, the operator's eye must be directly above the pointer and any parallax error has been minimized.

Read more at Wikipedia.org