Zero band (deadband) tutorial

Alicat mass flow devices measure flow using differential pressure, making them very sensitive. Because of this, factors such as the air conditioning in the room may lead to small fluctuations in device readings.

If you notice that your device is fluctuating around very low flow rates, you can use the zero band function. This will minimize noise, displaying very small flow readings as zero, but won’t affect the digital or analog outputs.

See below for instructions on changing the zero band settings on an Alicat device.

Video tutorial

Video transcript

“Hello, I am Michael Whiteside, an application engineer here at Alicat Scientific. Today, I am going to show you how to establish a zero band on your Alicat device. Now let’s get started.

As you can see with this Alicat device, it is fluctuating at very low flow rates in the negative direction. In order to avoid this, we can use the zero band functionality.

We do this by hitting menu (bottom right button), advanced setup (bottom middle button), sensor setup (top left button), and display as zero (top left button).

Now what this tells the device is that anything under this set limit will just be displayed as zero on the front display.

Since the full scale is 50 SLPM, changing this to 1 percent (top left button for ‘up’) means that anything under 0.5 SLPM will just be displayed as zero. We hit set (bottom middle button), and now we see that the device is only reading zero.

That is how you properly establish a zero band on your Alicat device.”

Step-by-step instructions (front panel)

Press the bottom right button for “MENU” selection.
Press the bottom middle button for “ADV SETUP” selection.
Press the top left button for “SENSOR SETUP” selection.
Press the top left button for “DISPLAY AS ZERO” selection.
Use the up, down, and select digit buttons to set your desired zero band.
Press the bottom left button for “SET” selection.

Contact an applications engineer for support