Company Business
Zettlex is an independent, privately owned business founded in 2004. Our headquarters is in Cambridge, UK and our European office is in Bratislava, Slovakia.
We make standard and customized products. Standard products include our IncOder range of rotary encoders and the LINTRAN range of linear encoders. You can buy these from the store part of this site. We also make a wide variety of custom OEM position/speed sensors which we design and make for specific applications such as actuators, servos, motor encoders, valve transmitters etc.
Since the main components of our sensors are printed circuits, the cost for tooling and engineering is modest - making a bespoke design attractive option for many of our customers. If an existing sensor design is not suitable we can readily engineer one to suit from our extensive design library.
In some high volume applications we supply application specific ICs together with design data so that our customers can integrate Zettlex sensors in to their own electronic systems.
All Zettlex engineering and design is carried out in house. We use a special pupose CAE system which allows us to virtually design, build and test sensors before building any hardware. This provides us with a massive productivity advantage for our engineering and development work. We also use SOLIDWORKS for our mechanical design.
Our Cambridge, UK facility carries out all production for 'high-spec' products for applications in military, aerospace, medical, oil & gas. In-house facilities include stores, kitting, assembly, test and packaging as well as an electrical and mechanical prototyping shop.
All operations work to a comprehensive ISO-9001 quality system.
High volume production - typically for industrial products - is typicallly carried out in Slovakia - either using manual or fully automatic assembly.
We use high performance calibration and test equipment to ensure the highest levels of precision.
We sell through a variety of channels:-
- through our own sales and marketing team in UK
- from our web-site
- via our extensive network of international agents and representatives.
Zettlex sensors measure position or speed. They use a resonant inductive technique with printed circuit boards (PCBs) as their main components. This enables a non-contact measurement technique offering highly accurate and stable performance in harsh environments. The basic physics used in Zettlex sensors is similar to inductive proximity switches but the Zettlex technique allows absolute position measurement in various geometries including rotary, linear, 2D and 3D. Rotary sensors can measure over a full 360 degrees in diameters ranging from 12 – 1200mm. Linear sensors range from 0,1 to 2000mm. On this web-site we tend to use the term ‘sensor’ but some might refer to Zettlex products as transducers, encoders, resolvers, detectors or transmitters. Similarly we also use the term ‘position’ but some might refer to angle, rotary, multi-turn rotary, linear, curvi-linear, displacement, location. We simply use the term speed as the time derivative of position but some might use the term velocity. Whilst we measure position directly, such measurements can be used to measure servo position, force, wear, weight, vibration, stress, strain, pressure or even temperature by virtue of thermal expansion or contraction. There are a myriad of scientific techniques to measure position including potentiometers, magnetic encoders, magnetostrictive transducers, Hall effect sensors, optical encoders, optical scales, magnetic scales, LVDTs, RVDTs, LVITs, RVITs, synchros, resolvers, pancake resolvers, capacitive transducers, capacitive encoders, electric encoders, Inductosyns, reed switches and magnetoresistive devices. Zettlex sensors offer high precision, high reliability, compact form and lightweight. Since the sensors are made from PCBs it is relatively easy to engineer a device to suit customer applications and much of Zettlex’s production is for OEM specific sensors that are used in industrial, defence, medical, aerospace, petrochemical, oil and gas applications. We make lots of sensors for pan and tilt camera controls (PTZ), electro-optic equipment (EOI), gunnery systems (azimuth and elevation controls), weapons control systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, linear actuators, rotary actuators, ATEX equipment, steering angle sensors, torque sensors, valve controls, servo control, motor encoders, missile seekers, missile fin control, hydraulic cylinders, ball screws, joysticks, medical robots, industrial robots, rotary joints, radar antenna, antenna pointing systems, solar pointing devices, valve transmitters, remote control weapons systems (RCWS) and direct drive motor controls. Our sensors have a wide variety of interfaces – both analogue and digital – including 0-5V, 0-10V, 4-20mA, A/B pulses, A/B/Z reference, sin/cos, 1V pk. to pk. sin/cos, HART, CAN, RS232, RS422, RS485, SPI, I2C, SSI, Namur, power line carrier. Electrical supplies range from 3,3V to mains. Some of our standard products such as LINTRAN and IncOder are available directly from our web-site www.zettlex.com. OEMs should contact Zettlex directly to discuss requirements especially if there are safety, certification or aerospace requirements such as ATEX, SIL, DO-178, DO-254, duplex or triplex electrical redundancy. We specialise in providing reliable fit, form and function replacements for existing problematic devices – especially potentiometers, electric encoders and pancake resolvers.
