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•    Mr Lonnie Rush has been appointed managing director of AT&T International (Australia) succeeding Joseph Berrier who opened AT&T's Sydney Office in 1981.

•    Oueensland laser manufacturer Laser Dynamics is expanding its Gold Coast factory and head Office to morę than double the existmg production capacity. The

l expansion will add morę than 1600 square metres, and is costing $500,000. It includes a secure area for work on defencę contracts.

•. A joint venture company has been set up by Amcor and BWD Industries subsidiary BWD Precision Instruments, to manufacture a new rangę of elećtronic instruments. To be called AB Systems, the new company will be making industrial instrumentation. Its first product will be an instrument for measuring the pulp concentration in paper making. known as the Połameter.

•    The Australian Electronics Industry Association has elected Mr Brian McKay as its president for the nexl two years. succeeding Mr Bill Page-Hanify of STC. Dr Laurie MacKechnie of Plessey has been elected as vice president for the'same period.

•    The fourth Mathematics-in-lndustry Study Group will be held at the University of NSW from February 1-5, 1988. Sponsored by the University and the CSIRO division of Mathematics and Statistics. the group seeks to further the transfer of

II* mathematics ideas and processes to Australian industry. Further details are available from Dr N.G.Barton of the CSIRO. on [phone].

•    Datamatic subsidiary Data Peripherals has been appointed Australia and New Zealand distributor for the LAN products of US manufacturer AST Research. Imagineerlng will continue to be the distributor for other AST products in both countries.

• Sydney-based lnnovative Technology has changed its business address to 5 Moseley Street. Carlingfęrd 2118 (PO Box 458). The telephone number is [phone].

properly

others,”

Australian breakthrough in thermocouple technology

Yet another breakthrough in thermocouple technology "has been madę in Australia by leading researcher Dr. Noel Burley, General Manager R & D of Bell-IRH Limited. At this month*s International Temperaturę Symposium in Sheffield, LJK, Dr Burley will unveil a new high-performance sheath alloy for mineral-insulated thermocouples, known as Nicrobell’. This new alloy offers pro-tectiye qualities even better than those of previously used sheath materia! such as stainless Steel and inconel, coupled with themial properties which match al-most exactly thosę of the newer type N thermoelectric materials.

The development of Nicrobell is ef-fectively' a foilow-on from Dr Burley*s development of the Nicrosil/Nisil thermocouple, now promulgated interna-tionally as the type N syśtem (BS 4937:-Part8, ASTM E 23(1), and the "N-CLAD-N" mineral-insulated * mctal-sheathed (MIMS) type N thermocouple. These achievements largely supersede most existing types of base-metal thermocouple construction, and the new sheathing alloy seems set to complete this Australian-led revolution.

Nicrobell is a nickel alloy containing

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essentially chromium, Silicon and niobi-um. It provides high-temperature me-chanical properties superior to those of stainless Steel and Inconel, while having thermal expansion properties which arę alniost identical to those of Nicrosil and Nisil. At the same time, it also offerś freedom from the thermal diffusion and impurity migration effects which pro-duce thermal instability by extraneous contamination in MIMS thermocouples sheathed in conventional materials.

In short, this new MIMS alloy ap-pears to be very close to the optimum sheathing materiał for MIMS thermocouples operating at up to about 1250°C. The combination of ohe of Dr Burley*s type N thermocouples, housed in a MIMS type probe with a Nicrobell sheath, seems set to become the pre-ferred thermocouple sensor for a ma-jority of applications in science and in-dustry. This is becausc such sensors will show hjtherto unattainable degrees of

thermoelectric and environmental stabil-

• * •ty-

Currently various standards labora-tories around the world are preparing to investigate Nicrobell-sheathed type N MIMS thermocouples to determine the degree of thermoelectric stability attain-able. Several overseas MIMS thermocouple manufacturers are also making prótotypes of this kind of thermocouple, as a precursor to fuli-scalę commercial

!

Australian scientist Dr Noel Burley, a. world authority on thermocouples.

production. *

Plans are also well under way for the production of this new type of thermocouple by Bell-IRH Limited.

* The composition of Nicrobell (a Bell-IRH tradename) is the subject of patent applications lodged by Bell-IRH Limited in'Australia and a number

of oyerseas countries.)

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Radio operators prosecuted in two States

An amateur radio operator in Sydney has become the first in Australia to have his licence wlthdrawn under the Radiocommunications Act 1983. A citi-zens band (CB) radio operator in Brisbane has also been fined $350 and had his equipment confiscated, after being convicted of charges of harassment and being unlicensed.

A spokesperson for the Federal Department of Communications said that these prosecutions were the latest re-sults of an ongoing campaign to clean up the airwaves across Australia. The spokesperson said CB radio operators and amateur radio operators faced an inereasing risk of being prosecuted for the use of obscene language and other anti-social behaviour on air.

“We have to protect the airwaves against this type of abuse in the inter-ests of operators who are licensed and show respect for the spokesperson said.

Under the Radiocommunications Act, it is an offencc to use a radiocommunications transmitter for the purpose of harassing another person. Departmental inspectors conduct their own investiga-tions and act quickly on complaints. Penalties for unlicensed operation can attract a fine of up to $10,000 and in addition a court may order forfeiture of offending equipment.

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ELECTRONICS Australia. September 1987