Ohmeda Inc.

Berg Company, LLC

Neil D Roiland

Thomas E Giles

William L Pursell

Ching Chu

David Timpel

A beverage dispenser has a faucet with a spout, a fitting for connection to a beverage supply, and a lever operated valve. A servo motor, coupled to the lever, operates the faucet and proportionally controls the flow of the beverage. That proportional flow control manages the amount of beverage foaming. A flow sensor has a magnetic turbine within the faucet and a Hall effect element that magnetically senses turbine motion and produces a signal indicating an amount of beverage flow. A keypad enables service personnel to designate various portions of the beverage to automatically fill serving containers of different sizes. A control circuit responds to activation of the keypad and to the flow sensor by operating the servo motor to dispense the related quantity of the beverage.

Automatic controller for a beverage dispensing faucet

An ultrasonic transducer is disclosed for emitting an ultrasonic wave radially inward. The transducer is constructed with a strip of piezoelectric material laminated with a pair of electrically conductive metal layers that are conductively isolated from one another. In a preferred embodiment, the strip of piezoelectric material is formed in a cylindrical shape and with continuous sinusoidal ripples along the circumference. The sinusoidal ripples are designed to emit a specific wave length of a desired frequency. The radius of the sinusoidal wave is based on material characteristics and the desired resonance frequency. The invention discloses various methods and apparatus for constructing and maintaining the transducer sinusoidal shape. One method includes attachment of a pair of rigid end caps on the laminated piezoelectric material, and another discloses weaving the laminated piezoelectric material through a nonconductive mesh cage, and yet another includes adhesively attaching the transducer to a housing. The invention also includes an application of the above described transducers in a gas analyzer having an internal chamber in which the transducer is arranged. The method of analyzing gas includes passing the gas through the internal chamber and across the surface of the transducer, energizing the transducer to emit an ultrasonic wave into the passing gas toward the center of the transducer. The ultrasonic wave is reflected from a pressure center and sensed by the same transducer that emitted the wave. The invention also includes a method of manufacturing the transducer with sinusoidal ripples to accomplish an emission of desired frequency.

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Deerfield, WI, United States of America

Neil D Roiland