The Right Pressure Sensor for Your Application

If your application requires precise pressure measurement, you are faced with a wide range of options. Our extensive portfolio of pressure transducers, pressure transmitters and digital gauges covers almost every area of application. But which solution is right for your specific application?

In this article, I will show you what is important when choosing the right pressure sensor and how you can make the best decision step by step.

Before you start searching for the right product, it is worth clearly defining and structuring your requirements. This will make your research easier and facilitate communication with our sales department. A distinction is often made between:

1. «Must» requirements
2. «Nice-to-have» requirements

As a general rule, the fewer mandatory criteria are defined, the greater the chance of finding a standard solution, which has a positive effect on costs and delivery times.

However, in order to define these requirements, a comprehensive analysis of the underlying problem is first necessary. Only on this basis can the findings be translated into clear requirements for the desired product. This requires knowledge of the possible characteristics of the product to be purchased. Therefore, in the following section, I provide a brief overview of possible descriptive characteristics that are required along our product structure.

Our product structure is divided into several levels. Each of these levels has specific characteristics that can be used as requirements or specific filter criteria when searching for products.

Product Category

At this top level, our product portfolio is viewed from a bird's eye perspective. The aim is to determine the basic direction for further product selection. Here, for example, you decide whether a pressure transmitter or a pressure gauge is more suitable for your application. This decision is often made intuitively, but it has a significant influence on the next steps in the selection process.

To the KELLER Pressure product overview.

Expansion Stage

For products such as pressure transducers or pressure transmitters, you can choose between a complete transmitter or a partial expansion stage. This decision depends primarily on the installation conditions of the application. In space-critical applications, it may be advisable to opt for the pressure transmitter capsule expansion stage only.

You can find more information about our expansion stages in our blog «Expansion Stages From the Pressure Sensor Capsule to the Connector».

Line / Series

Once the product category and configuration level have been defined, the focus shifts to selecting suitable product lines or series. These differ in terms of a number of technical features, which are documented in the respective data sheets. When making your preliminary selection, you should initially only consider the specified mandatory criteria. If several series meet all the mandatory requirements, additional features or overarching aspects such as price and delivery time can help you make your decision.

Perhaps the following blogs will help you to define the important criteria correctly.  

• Blog «Accuracy or Total Error?»
• Blog «Pressure Types and What They Mean»
• Blog «Dynamics of Pressure Transmitters»

Pressure sensors for application-specific uses

An alternative approach is available for industry-specific applications. Many manufacturers offer so-called ASSPs (Application Specific Standard Products) for this purpose. These product series cover application-specific requirements, such as gold-plated diaphragms for hydrogen applications, as standard. Standardising such series often results in a significantly more cost-efficient and faster-deliverable solution than selecting a conventional product from the portfolio and then adapting it for a specific application. Typical areas of application for ASSP products are H₂ and O₂ applications, as well as gas meters and semiconductor manufacturing.

To the hydrogen application page. 

Helpful tips

If it is unclear which solutions we can offer for your current problem, we recommend that you analyse the project together with our sales department and, if necessary, directly with our developers. We attach great importance to direct communication between the customer and our development team. In most cases, practical solutions can be found quickly in a personal discussion – ideally from our extensive standard portfolio. If no standard solution is suitable, a customised solution can be developed at any time on request.