Sensor Basics: What's the difference between a Flush vs Non-Flush vs Factor1 Inductive Sensor?

Ever feel like your prox application just isn't working right? Maybe it's the type of inductive sensor that was applied! There are a couple inductive mounting principles you must understand to successfully apply an inductive sensor. Today I'm going to do a sensor basics on:

"𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒇𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒉 (𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒅) 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒖𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒏-𝒇𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒉 (𝒖𝒏-𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒅) 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓1 (𝒎𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒂𝒍) 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒔?"

Traditional automotive, electric vehicles, appliance, metalworking, forming, bending and even food and beverage rely and many industries rely on inductive sensors as a workhorse in their production. With lightweighting in automotive the variety of metals is expanding and making sensing applications more complex than ever.

But with an understanding of these three principles, you can select the right sensor for your application.

What are the three sensing principles sometimes called mounting:

⚙ Flush: A shielded sensor has a sensing field that only comes out of the face of the sensor, it has the shortest sensing range typically but the entire face of the sensor can be surrounded by metal. We see this a lot in metal stamping dies.

⚙ Non-Flush: A un-shielded sensor has a sensing field that comes out the side of the sensor and has the longest sensing range typically but then there needs to be a metal-free zone around the face so that the sensor doesn't accidentally detect the environment.

⚙ Factor1: Traditional inductive proxes are designed for steel/ferrous targets. When presented with a metal like aluminum or copper there is a correction factor to reduce the sensing distance. This can cause problems in sensing applications. Factor1 or multi-metal sensors are specially designed to trigger for most any metal target at the same sensing distance. This is important as many hybrid/electric automotive and consumer goods applications are using more aluminum and custom metals today.

Virtually every inductive proximity sensor vendor offers these three modes to allow for adaption to your specific application and target.

I'll link to some resources below for more information on this!
https://www.balluff.com/fileadmin/use...

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