Piher sensing systems - custom potentiometers and position sensors

Printed electronics has grown swiftly, particularly for wearable technologies. PIHER Printed Circuit Resistors (PCR) and Printed Power Resistors (PPR), are thick-film elements designed to be printed on a wide range of substrates. These range from ceramic to most PCB materials allowing the elimination of resistor, jumper wire, replacing expensive raw materials such asgold on contacts protected with peelable solder mask thick film circuit board, silver-conductive ink, electro-mechanical switches, insertion problems and associated costs.

Printed power resistors resistive tracks can withstand and conduct high wattage, high power densities can be achieved. This high power density can be used to dissipate wattage or to generate heat.  In either case, the screened on resistors form an extremely thin package. PCR / PPR product has custom shapes, resistance values and is printed on different types and sizes of substrates.

This PIHER market-leading thick-film printed potentiometers technology can be used to deposit any combination of embedded fixed resistors, potentiometer printed carbon tracks and conductors in virtually any size, shape, form and accuracy. Thereby offering an enormous range of design possibilities at competitive prices even for low batches.

The resistive values can be individually laser trimmed to obtain very accurate tolerances.

PIHER’s PCR resistance element technology is ideal for voltage-divider calibration and resistor family matching. In these cases PIHER offers high precision voltage ratios between key points of the circuit.
Furthermore, in those applications where the printed variable resistor or potentiometer is linked to an additional external mechanism, PIHER can design, manufacture and supply the wiper interface according to customers´ requirements. It´s low profile, unachievable by traditional electronics components, gives engineers the freedom to design and reduces size and weight in automotive, healthcare, building automation, industrial and wearables devices.

Embedded position sensors and variable resistors offer several benefits, including reduction of component count. parasitic effects, soldering fixing problems, less connectors by the use of castellation holes and PCB size reduction.

Our extended-life variable resistors and can operate in harsh enviroments without requiring periodic replacement being a low cost alternative to magnetic encoder modules, magnetic encoder chips, magnetic rotary encoders, magnetic linear encoders and magnetic ring encoders, plus optical linear encoders and optical angle encoders.

Markets served and technologies:

• Aerospace printed carbon PCBs
• Automotive carbon PCBs
• Carbon PCB for Industrial products
• Flex  carbon PCB.
• Fuel sender card.
• Game controller with printed resistive structures on the PCB.
• LED carbon PCBs.
• Medical carbon PCBs
• Printed polymer potentiometers, flexible potentiometer sensor
• PTC printed heaters
• Rigid carbon PCB
• Rigid Flex carbon PCB
• Semiconductor carbon PCBs
• Sensor PAD
• Telecommunications carbon PCBs
• Inductive printed touch control
• Potentiometer non-wirewound resistance elements sectors and matching wiper designs
• APPS (accelerator pedal position sensor)

Download datasheet