Ultraflux Minisonic Fixed Clamp-On Flow Meter
Permanent clamp-on ultrasonic flow meter for water and corrosive liquids. 0.5% accuracy, IP67, 4–20 mA and Modbus TCP.
SZMINI600A
Permanent non-invasive flow measurement. The transducers stay on the pipe, the transmitter goes on the wall, and the number goes into your control system — 4–20 mA, pulse, Modbus, RS232. Nothing was ever cut.
A portable answers "what is this line doing today?" A fixed clamp-on flow meter answers "what is this line doing, always, into the control system, forever."
The measurement physics is identical. What changes is everything around it: a weatherproof enclosure instead of a carry case, a permanent transducer mount instead of a strap, a couplant formulated to survive years instead of a week, and outputs — 4–20 mA, pulse, Modbus, RS232 — that put the number into your PLC, DCS, or SCADA.
The fluid would destroy a wetted meter. This is the strongest case. Acid, caustic, hypochlorite, solvents, ferric chloride. A wetted meter on that line is a countdown — and when it fails, it does not just stop reading, it becomes a leak path for something you very much do not want on the floor. A clamp-on transmitter has nothing in the stream.
The line cannot be broken to install a meter. Retrofit metering into an existing plant, an occupied building, or a process that has no scheduled outage. The alternative is not a different meter, it is no meter.
The pipe is large. Above about 12 inches, an inline meter is a capital project and a clamp-on installation is an afternoon.
Zero pressure drop matters. An orifice plate or a turbine costs you head, permanently, every hour it is installed. Pumping against that costs energy. Clamp-on costs nothing.
No moving parts, nothing in the fluid, no wear, no recalibration drift. That is all true. The caveat is couplant. It is the one consumable in a clamp-on installation and it is the one thing that will eventually degrade — particularly on hot pipes. Specify the right grade for the temperature, and watch the gain trend as your early warning.
Permanent clamp-on ultrasonic flow meter for water and corrosive liquids. 0.5% accuracy, IP67, 4–20 mA and Modbus TCP.
SZMINI600A
Permanent clamp-on transit-time flow meter, DN15–DN2000+. UK DSP technology, 16 MB datalogger, heat/BTU capable. Made in Britain.
IC-UPF
Wall-mounted permanent clamp-on Doppler flow meter for continuous monitoring of sludge, slurry, and raw wastewater.
C6PF-1
| If your line is… | Specify | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Acid, caustic, solvent, or any fluid that eats meters. Needs 4–20 mA and Modbus. | Ultraflux Minisonic Fixed | 0.5% of reading, 0.1% repeatability, 10 calculations/sec, IP67, on-site auto-zero. Handles water, acids, alkalis, chemicals. |
| Wide flow range — night flow, seasonal HVAC, batch processes. Needs a long data record. | METRI IC-UPF | 1:2500 turndown. 16 MB timestamped datalogger, waveform diagnostics, heat-flow capable. AC or DC power. |
| Sludge, slurry, raw wastewater, mine tailings. Continuously, into SCADA. | Compu-Flow C6 Fixed Doppler | Doppler reads what transit-time cannot. 5000 ft cable runs, submersible transducer, AC/DC/solar/battery. |
| Not running full | ORAKEL area velocity | A clamp-on meter on a half-full pipe reports roughly double the real flow. Not a defect — it is doing what you told it. |
Everything that matters for a portable matters more here, because you are going to live with the decision.
10 diameters upstream, 5 downstream, 30 diameters after a pump. On a portable you can walk the line and try again. On a permanent installation, a bad location is a bad number for the life of the meter — and worse, it is a bad number that everyone downstream trusts.
The meter computes flow from velocity × area, and it takes the area from what you enter. On a thirty-year-old line with scale and corrosion, the drawing is fiction. Take an ultrasonic wall thickness measurement at the actual mounting location.
This is the one that comes back. A standard gel on a hot line will bake out in months. The meter will not fail cleanly — it will drift, then get noisy, then drop out, usually long after everyone has forgotten there was a couplant decision.
The Minisonic Fixed provides an isolated 4–20 mA output and isolated contacts. Use them as such. A non-isolated analog signal on a long run in an industrial environment is a ground loop waiting to happen, and the symptom is a reading that wanders in a way nobody can trace.
Put the gain or signal quality on a historian alongside the flow. It is your only early warning of couplant degradation, and it turns an outage into a maintenance ticket.
The Ultraflux Minisonic Fixed gives one isolated 4–20 mA, two isolated contact outputs, and Modbus TCP over Ethernet. The METRI IC-UPF offers six I/O module options plus RS232 and USB. The Compu-Flow C6 Fixed gives 4–20 mA, a 0–12 V pulse train, RS232, hi/low alarms, and batch control. Between them they cover essentially every PLC and DCS.
The measurement itself does not — there are no moving parts and nothing in contact with the fluid to wear. What does degrade is the couplant. Watch the gain trend on the display: gain creeping upward over months means the transmitter is compensating for a weakening signal, and that is your early warning to re-couple. Catch it there and it is a routine fix. Miss it and the meter goes from fine to dropped-out with no warning. The Minisonic Fixed also has on-site automatic zero-point calibration, which handles zero drift without pulling the instrument.
Yes, if you specify it. The METRI IC-UPF is available as 85–265 V AC or 7–24 V DC at 10 W — specify when ordering, it is not field-changeable. The Compu-Flow C6 Fixed runs on AC, DC, solar, or battery. The Minisonic Fixed is mains only (110–230 VAC).
Turndown is the ratio between the highest and lowest flow the meter can measure credibly. It decides whether the instrument covers your whole operating envelope. It matters most at low flow — night flow on a distribution main, a chilled water loop in winter, the trickle phase of a batch. A meter that goes blind at low flow does not announce it; it reports zero or noise, and both look plausible. The METRI IC-UPF offers 1:2500, which is exceptional.
This is the specification that decides whether a difficult site is possible at all. The Compu-Flow C6 Fixed supports cable runs to 5000 ft (1500 m), and its transducer is submersible to 200 ft. The METRI IC-UPF ships with 10 m as standard with longer available. Put the transducer where the pipe is and the display where a human can safely stand.
Single-path clamp-on is generally not the instrument for custody transfer, and we would rather tell you that now than after the purchase order. If someone is being billed off the number, talk to us about what the accuracy requirement actually is — the answer may be a multi-path configuration, or it may be a different technology entirely.
Send us the line details and we will size the transducers, check the straight run, specify the couplant grade for your pipe temperature, and confirm the outputs match your control system.
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