How to build a inductive gate loop

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Aluminum is a conductor, thus detectable. The chassis is still steel. If the vehicle is totally made of non-conductive and non-magnetic materials, then the coil sensor may not work. Although if there is a spark ignition engine, then a coil could still be used to sense the presence when the engine was running.

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boboelectric said:
What will happen now that they are making all aluminum cars and trucks?
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All aluminum? Less steel is likely, but no steel at all is not very likely. Think about how well aluminum would work out for power driving shafts, or if aluminum were, used how much bigger they will need to be than a steel shaft.

Electric vehicle? About has to have steel cores associated with motor windings.
 
kwired said:
All aluminum? Less steel is likely, but no steel at all is not very likely. Think about how well aluminum would work out for power driving shafts, or if aluminum were, used how much bigger they will need to be than a steel shaft.

Electric vehicle? About has to have steel cores associated with motor windings.
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Aluminum drive shafts have been around for quit awhile, GM started using them in their trucks and vans and some cars back in 1999, it might surprise you but aluminum can be made as strong as steel with the right alloys, when I was at Florida Extrusion we made some T-12 alloy that was very strong, not sure what it was for but it was a 1.5" hex shaft for an order for Martin Marietta when they were on the AH 64 (Apache) development at their south Orlando, Fl. plant, I know that they use magnesium, nickel, chromium and other alloys to get the strength they need and also heat treat it to the hardness they need without making it brittle.

But since aluminum is a conductor it still is detected in the sensor loops, when they go to all carbon fiber and fiber glass then it will require a different method to detect a vehicle present, but there are many methods out there such as optical, sound, radar, heat, many red lights are now using computerized camera systems to detect when a vehicle is in a lane, as far as gated communities go you can use IR optical laser eyes (non-visible) on a short post to detect the presents of a vehicle, one place I take care of the gates at does just this to detect if a vehicle or pedestrian is in the way of the gate if so the gate wont close, the nice thing about using the laser system is you don't need a reflector and you can program it to ignore things after a set distant so it won't be triggered when someone is mowing the lawn, the company engineer was telling me they were developing a scanning version that will scan an area so you won't have to worry about someone slipping in out of view of it, so you can cover a larger area with out any dead spots.

I'll try to post the manufactures web site, I think I have it on this puter?
 
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hurk27 said:
Aluminum drive shafts have been around for quit awhile, GM started using them in their trucks and vans and some cars back in 1999, it might surprise you but aluminum can be made as strong as steel with the right alloys, when I was at Florida Extrusion we made some T-12 alloy that was very strong, not sure what it was for but it was a 1.5" hex shaft for an order for Martin Marietta when they were on the AH 64 (Apache) development at their south Orlando, Fl. plant, I know that they use magnesium, nickel, chromium and other alloys to get the strength they need and also heat treat it to the hardness they need without making it brittle.

But since aluminum is a conductor it still is detected in the sensor loops, when they go to all carbon fiber and fiber glass then it will require a different method to detect a vehicle present, but there are many methods out there such as optical, sound, radar, heat, many red lights are now using computerized camera systems to detect when a vehicle is in a lane, as far as gated communities go you can use IR optical laser eyes (non-visible) on a short post to detect the presents of a vehicle, one place I take care of the gates at does just this to detect if a vehicle or pedestrian is in the way of the gate if so the gate wont close, the nice thing about using the laser system is you don't need a reflector and you can program it to ignore things after a set distant so it won't be triggered when someone is mowing the lawn, the company engineer was telling me they were developing a scanning version that will scan an area so you won't have to worry about someone slipping in out of view of it, so you can cover a larger area with out any dead spots.

I'll try to post the manufactures web site, I think I have it on this puter?
Click to expand...
How much "magnesium, nickel, chromium and other alloys" are needed before you no longer call it "aluminum"? Isn't steel kind of the same way? Mostly iron, but contains other alloys and when final product comes out we don't call it "iron" anymore though iron is a majority of what is in there.
 
kwired said:
How much "magnesium, nickel, chromium and other alloys" are needed before you no longer call it "aluminum"? Isn't steel kind of the same way? Mostly iron, but contains other alloys and when final product comes out we don't call it "iron" anymore though iron is a majority of what is in there.
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Steel is nothing but a low carbon iron, Iron comes out of the blast furness with about 2 to 5% carbon content along with other impurities, they take it and pump oxygen through it to burn off or oxidize the carbon and impurities (BOF method), when it gets below 1.5% to as low as .005% you now have steel, below this you have pig iron or pure iron, at this point you haven't added any alloys, but when you make stainless steel (which is still called steel by the way) you add 10 to 30 percent chromium you create stainless steel, chromium and molybdenum creates chrome-moly steel, but it is all still called it's base metal which is steel which is really low carbon iron.
 
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