Winters Pressure Instruments

StabilizR™: The specialized dampening movement minimizes effects of pulsation and vibration without liquid filling.

Industrial: Use where harmful vibration and pulsation are present.

Process: Ideally suited for process, chemical and petroleum industries.

Economy: Most economical, all-purpose pressure gauge.

 



Video Transcript:

Winters offers a full line of pressure and temperature instrumentation. When we’re dealing with pressure gauges you might wonder what’s the difference between one and the other? We have a variety here. The first one is what we would call a PEM or winters economy gauge. Accuracy of this gauge is 323, meaning 3% on the extremes and 2% in the center half. It is used in applications for noncorrosive and where you want reference readings. Accuracy isn’t critical, but you want to know what kind of pressure you’re dealing with in the line.

If you go to the winters PFQ, that has a 1.6% accuracy. It comes liquid filled, and you’ll notice, this one also has brass internals. Again, noncorrosive medium, but now, if you’ve got vibration and pulsation, and especially in your hydraulic market, this would be a good fit.

Then we go up to the winters PFP. These pressure gauges are all stainless steel. The 2 ½ inch is 1.5% full scale, while the 4 inch is 1% full-scale. These are made for a much more aggressive and heavy-duty processes where you want a good life expectancy and to be able to give you a nice accurate reading.

Finally, in the process market we have the winters PPC gauge, that’s our process gauge, most accurate industrial gauge that you can use, half percent accuracy full-scale.

You might wonder, how do I know what range of a pressure gauge to give a customer or that I should use? The first rule of thumb is that you should determine what’s your normal operating pressure. For instance, if your normal operating pressure was to be 100 psi, what you would do is double it. What that allows you to do is operate on a normal basis with your pointer pointing at 12 o’clock, that’s the easiest and most accurate place on the dial to read. The other reason you want to be about 50% of the scale is you could see a surge in pressure. If you’re running too close to the top, you could overpressure the gauge, have the movement lose contact with the gears, and then a gauge would be out of calibration.

You never want to run a gauge continuously at greater than 75% of the scale. The reason is because the bourdon tube is a C-tube that is shaped and formed in the shape of a C. If you were to leave it at an extreme level for a longer period of time, when you let it go, it does not return to its original shape. Any pressure gauge can be operated from zero to full-scale up and down, and as long as it doesn’t stay there for a long period of time, you’re okay. Those are the rules of thumb. Double your operating pressure to give the proper range, and you never want to operate continuously at over 75% of the range.

In our PFQ and our PEM and we have several other series, if you are working with potable water systems that are subject to the lead free or the Clean Water Act, we have lead free gauges. What happen on these gauges, when you looked at the part number on the end, it will be –LF. Not for liquid filled, but for lead free. Any of those gauges can be used in potable water applications.

All of our pressure gauges, whether it’s an economy pressure gauge or whether it’s a process pressure gauge, come with a five-year warranty against manufacturing defects. Our warranty is one of the best in the industry today and Winters stands behind their products.

All of winters pressure gauges are assembled and tested to be sure that they meet the requirements as we state in our specifications. For instance, on the PPC gauge, which states that the accuracy is half percent full-scale, upon assembly, every gauge is run up against test gauges to assure that these gauges all are within the specified accuracy as put in our literature. However, if someone requires what we call an NIST CERT, then that is an extra charge. As long as we know ahead of time, we will certify the gauge, we will serialize the gauge, and you will get a document that says what all the readings are and exactly where they are within the specification.

Winters is in Houston, Texas and Buffalo, New York and some of our other facilities, we are full-service. We can do gauge calibration, we can do gauge repair, we calibrate competitors gauges as long as they don’t need parts, and we can do diaphragm seal assemblies, we can do dial changes, as well as any other specialty gauge that we need to make. Winters does a very good job.

One of the things that Winters does, is a lot of times we’ll have companies that are making equipment, so you’ll have OEM manufacturers and they will have where they’re going to buy 100 gauges, 1000 gauges, but they would like the benefit of having their custom dial with their name and their 1-800 number and their logo, whatever it is they want, Winters does this very well and it is a nominal charge. Some of our competitors charge exorbitant amounts to have that artwork done. Winters philosophy is we would rather have the business and the repeat business than make it hard for somebody to do it. As long as there is some volume involved, then certainly, we can do private labeling for your OEM customers.