Simple and reliable, amazingly these Rustrak paper recorders are still in use - and apparently you CAN still get that carbon paper! Amazing...
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- Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
I was engineering manager at a company where we had these as an option in some of the equipment we sold. In a different format that was panel mount into a hole in the panel. A little full width bar periodically pushes the needle against the paper displacing the white coating making a dark dot. We called it a "beater bar" but I think the correct term is "striker bar." Rustrak recorders are still made today. The HUGE advantage is no ink. The disadvantage is the need for special paper which the company gladly sells (the "sell the razor blades" business model). Other recorders had ink, and especially the ubiquitous "circular chart recorders." We switched to a thermal print head with a row of about 200 dots as I recall and designed our own mechanism and software so we could do more than draw a line and print text or anything. Another Rustrak application: At the university I attended, and also worked part time, the fellow in charge of a repair shop used one for a security purpose. There were also two stockrooms that stored equipment. He put switches on the doors of the shop and stockroom and ran wires and hooked up a small power supply and different resistor values for a different current for each door. This was connected to a Rustrak. He checked the chart each day and could easily see which doors had been opened and when.
It sits at a bench scratching it's backside all day. Sounds like half my colleagues.
Etch a Sketch!
Cool little gadgets in the progression of man's intellect.
Some quality metal work in that unit! Nice. Thanks for sharing it. Cheers!
In late '89, I started working for a company that built lyophilizers (freeze dryers) for producing pharmaceuticals and other things such as astronaut food. We used this recorder as a base model for tracking four thermistor probes. The recorder we used came with inputs for that purpose. Presumably, many input options were available from Rustrak. Less than a year later, they discontinued it and thermistor probes in favor of thermocouples. They already had a 6-channel recorder for type "T" thermocouples, which became the base model offering. The advanced option was from Leeds and Northrup better known as L & N. I remember modifying the Rustrak unit to add RCA jacks to allow easy connections for the probes. They were popular; some customers would buy two and track 8 thermistors. The temperature probes measured some of the product vials to prove the drying run was consistent everywhere within the drying chamber. Thanks for bringing back old memories from my early days.
For some reason the name Rustrak made me think it was used by some Russian railway company. 🙂 Of course if it was Russian the text would be in cyrillic and in the 60:s it was not called Russia.
Tachographs (a device used to record the speed and distance driven, called tattlers in the USA I think) in heavy trucks used to use discs made of "scratch paper" but that was white on both sides and the styluses scratched the front side. You could write on those with any pointed object which was handy if all the pens you had were dry. 🙂 Nowadays all new tachographs are digital but there are older truck with the disc type still in use.
It's a shame there was no demo.
You can still buy the paper for that online
Hansen-Synchron motor, still available new.s
Simplex Clock "Stool Pigeon" data recorder used something similar.
I worked in a power plant for 30 yesrs. We had a version of this mad by Lear Siegler for our emissions monitoring recorders.
is it pronounced rust-rak or rus-trak? rust-rak sound like you're describing my car..
I really like the case, especially the paint finish. The finish makes me think of the trunk paint they used in the 1960's on cars. It was speckled but it had a similar texture.
Curious, are you going to make it work? Maybe the next earthquake? (humor)
show us a graph, make it work then show us the results
As a Penn alum I am curious from what department you obtained the recorder. My guess is the physics department in Rittenhouse lab
I've seen paper recorders, but battery powered and with a bimetallic thermometer attached to the needle, used to log temperatures in shipments of high value seafood. Sometimes you can't beat simple.
Two jobs ago, we used something similar to chart line voltage for 24 hours at various locations.
Pat Pending…. wasn't that a " Wacky Races" character?