Design end fabrication of a low cost water flow meter

A novel low-cost system consisting of a hot-wire water flow meter of capacity up to 9 liter/minute is presented. The flow does not come into direct contact with the silicon sensors. Thermal contact is ensured by pins in a lead frame. This system is less sensitive to the geometry and relative position of the sensor and the pipe, and simpler to pack, than previous solutions. This paper gives details of the design, fabrication and performance of the system extending our previous work reporting the basic ideas in a qualitative way (1997) and preliminary simulation results (1996)