Some Interesting Facts About Current Shunt Resistors

 

Current shunt resistors are essentially low-resistance resistors that offer precision when it comes to measuring AC or DC electrical currents by the drops of voltage that these current products across the resistance. These shunt resistors also go by the name of ammeter shunts. And they are classified as a kind of current sensor.

 

There are all sorts of current Empro Shunts that you can choose from in the current market. Most of them come with precision current shunts that help in measuring not only DC but also amp-hours, watts, and the like. Other ammeter shunts make use of an external DC shunt. Nevertheless, the measurement principal remains the same across shunts.

 

As per Ohm’s law, the voltage that is present across a resistance is the product of the current that flows through the resistance and the resistance itself. For instance, if a current shunt has 0.001 Ohms as resistance with 50 Amps of current flowing through it, then it will produce a voltage of 0.05 volts or 50 millivolts. To know more about electronics, visit this website at http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/03/tech/gaming-gadgets/ces-2014-trends/

 

Thus, when you want to measure the current of a circuit, you just simply insert your Current Shunt Resistor into the circuit. You will then determine the current as the shunt measures the voltage within the shunt. After determining the resistance of the current shunt, you can proceed to determine the current with the use of Ohm’s law. On the other hand, if you know the voltage and the current that is produced across the shunt, then you can still apply Ohm’s law to properly calibrate the resistance of the current shunt.

 

For many years, using an ammeter shunt means that you are using a current shunt resistor that you put in parallel with the analog, galvanometer kind of meter coil. Automobile manufacturers in previous years used to do this. The whole point of using this shunt is that you only get to measure a tiny current fraction that passes through the meter. The rest of the current will be shunted with the use of the current shunt, as the name implies. It was essential to choose the resistance of the current shunt so that the meter will not have a hard time reading the full scale for the choice maximum current that they get from the measured circuit.

 

In the present, however, you can measure the current shunt which carries all the voltage drop and current across it using an analog to digital converter. You will know how much you are measuring by looking at the numbers of the measured value displayed on a digital screen.