R-K
Electronics, Inc.
Cincinnati, Ohio USA
March/April 2004
Sales Tip: Is your brain open?
Quote
New Pricing
PVMPs and Dinosaurs...
Amazing Product Application: Contact Resistance Problems
Sales Tip:
Is your brain open?
When you make a sales call, you’ve got to have you eyes open to drive the car. You’ve got to have your eyes open to get to the front door. You’ve got to have your eyes open to look at what your customer is showing you.
Why not open your brain too?
Over and over I see salespeople get to the customer with their eyes open, but their brains are closed. It’s like they have a filter on their brain that says I will mentally see what I want and expect to see, but I will filter out things that don’t quite fit.
Guess what, the “don’t quite fit” area is where the money is made.
The customer is showing you a control panel with a lot of your stuff in it. Are you gloating in the glory of your ‘“stuff?” There is a lot more in the panel and maybe connected to the control that you are filtering out.
By removing your brain filter, you will see new opportunities to serve your customer, expand your sales and lock out your competition.
When you walk into your customer, remove the sunglasses (filters) over your eyes and your brain.
Quote: “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” – Alfred Hitchcock
New Pricing
R-K’s List Pricing has been revised, effective March 8, 2004. We gave you a heads-up on that in our previous R-K Today, but you may have missed it.
• Not all prices went up (some even went down!).
• Some products have been discontinued.
• Some new products have been added.
You can get a copy of the new List Pricing from the R-K web site, www.rke.com. Click on Pricing and then select 2004 List Pricing. It is a pdf file that you can download and print.
The multiplier schedule has remained the same, but we have a new one available with a revised date to avoid confusion.
If you would like to have an Excel file that has
all of our active part numbers and pricing on it, contact Lisa or John. We can e-mail it to you or the appropriate IT person in your company. There are just under 3,000 part numbers with prices in that file.
Also, you should check out the list of revision dates on the home page of our website and compare those with your catalog literature sheets. Print out the ones you need to update
and replace the old ones in your catalog.
Questions? E-mail...
Lisa at lsmith@rke.com or
John at jkeller@rke.com.
PVMPs and Dinosaurs...
The PVM product line is now obsolete. Most of our customers that used the PVM have already been converted to the TVM series.
The PVMs were a three phase voltage relay with a plug-in base.
The replacement product for the PVM is the TVM. The TVM has been in the catalog for several years and is a much superior product, not to mention less expensive.
You can download the TVM literature sheets from our web site at www.rke.com. There are several versions. If you need assistance in selecting the right one, just e-mail or call us.
Amazing Product Application:
Contact Resistance Problems?
Every now and then we run into customers that have a problem with contact resistance problems. R-K has a solution.
A - Applications
A problem with contact resistance usually occurs where there is a contact closure that is remote (push button or limit switch). The contacts may have oxidized, increasing their resistance. When voltage is applied to the contacts to detect if they are open or closed, the resistance is high enough that the contacts always appear to be open, even if they are closed.
This problem could also result from really long wiring runs or bad connections. The contacts may not be bad, but the resistance of the long wiring run was too high or a terminal that was not tightened properly has caused the high resistance.
B - Benefits
By using R-K’s ISR (which is an Intrinsically Safe Relay) you can help your customers get past high resistance in contact closures or wiring resistance problems.
The ISR is designed for monitoring switch closures or conductivity of probes in applications where the opening of a contact can not cause a spark. One of the features of the ISR is that it will detect a “closure” or “conductivity” of a contact or probe up to 10,000 Ohms, typically.
Most contacts have very low resistance, usually well below 0.1 Ohms. Okay, so the wiring or oxidized contacts have increased the resistance up to 2 Ohms, which could be a real problem for low power circuits.
2 Ohms? What’s that!?! The ISR will sense a contact closure with up to 10,000 Ohms of resistance. It also provides you with a contact closure to use in your control circuit.
C - Customers
Most customers are going to have facilities that have limit switches, operator buttons, etc. that are some distance from the control panel.
• Process facilities
• Pendant station applications
• Large material handling operations
• Chemical plants
• Food processing facilities
Remember, while the ISR does a great job for contact resistance problems, it actually was designed to monitor contacts and probes in areas that could have explosive liquids or gases. The ISR is UL913 listed meaning that the power we send to the contacts and probes is so low that it will not generate a spark.
