The C5000 Sensor - Our Workhorse System

You may have heard me mention a thing or two about our retractable consistency sensor, the C5000. 

I know, I go on and on about this, but this sensor is really a big deal for our customers, and if you’ve haven’t tried one yet, it could probably be a big deal for you , too.

Why is it such a big deal? 

It’s retractable.  This means you can pull the sensor body out of the line at any time.  You don’t have to wait for a shutdown or isolate the line in order to service the system.

Because we made it to be retractable, we also made it easy to retract.  Here’s a short video I posted on YouTube on how to do it.  As you can see, you can extract a sensor in less than a minute.

Because it is retractable, we also made it hot-swappable.  That means you can swap out a sensor with another one without having to go through a recalibration.  Just auto-zero the new sensor and you can use your existing calibration without further adjustments.  All TECO sensors, by the way, have this “auto-zero” feature.  You can swap any of them at any time without having to recalibrate.  The nice thing about the C5000 is that you can do it without having to wait for a shutdown.

The C5000 also has what I like to call a superior flow characteristic.  What do I mean by that?  Well, you’ve heard me before mention that all consistency sensors – the mechanical ones, anyway -  are sensitive to changes in flow rate.  This means that shifts in flow rate will be perceived by the sensor as a shift in consistency.  If you’re not careful with your consistency setup, you might find yourself going in circles chasing what looks like a consistency problem but is really a flow rate problem.   

The C5000 avoids this problem altogether because it is immune to shifts in flow rate below 3.0 fps.  Put another way, there is no measurable impact on the consistency measurement for flows below 3.0 fps.  You can go from nothing to 3.0 fps and back again and it won’t have any impact on the consistency signal.  

 Of course, once you get above 3.0 fps, it’s a different story.  The C5000 will start to react to changes in flow rate.  Because we know that, we have provided on-board velocity compensation for all of our sensors in our transmitter.  Just land a flow signal on the transmitter and you can automatically compensate for variable flow rates up to 6.0 fps (up to 11 fps with our C9700 sensor body).

We’re low cost.  That means we won’t charge you an arm and a leg to buy one of our systems.  Also, when it comes time to swap sensor bodies, you don’t have to buy another whole system.  You can just buy the sensor body part.  We’ll even give you a credit when you send us the old sensor back (we do that with all of our consistency sensors, by the way, not just the C5000).

Finally, we’re local.  We fabricate and assemble everything in our factory in New Orleans.  We keep plenty of spare parts on the shelves, so we can ship you the things you need overnight.

If you haven't tried one of our C5000 sensors, please give me a call.  I'd be happy to talk to you about it.