Complex mechatronic systems can be challenging to evaluate.  The broad functional questions of throughput speed and part quality are usually fairly easy to measure.  Machine output in parts per minute or hour are not too difficult.

And sometimes not.  You can get to applications like making 1 million bottles of beer a day, and keeping up with output and quality becomes more challenging strictly based on the fact that you may only have 20 milliseconds to, for example, look at a bottle with a vision camera, and determine that the part is  of sufficient quality that you can proceed to fill it with beer.  And all the things that follow.

When we are dealing with electronic assembly and there are 50,000 part placements per hour and the placements have to be accurate to less than one thousandth of an inch, it gets challenging.  There are the usual speed and torque concerns about making the servo systems position the placement head.  But things like life expectancy for the actuators become significant concerns when  an expensive piece of machinery has to operate at the high speed and accuracy, and last multiple years at the same time.

How does this  challenge change when the systems we are concerned about are extremely high force and physical size?  How does the wind industry go about testing gear boxes that are the size of a school bus? Does the testing methodology or hardware even exist?

As it turns out, in the case of wind turbines, there is currently no test facility for 10 megawatt gear boxes.  This is simply because no one has built one yet.  The DOE released half of the funding for a $95 million testing facility at Clemson University, the balance of funding provided by private companies, to built such a test system.

Based on audited monitoring of 942 wind turbines, 237 events occurred which involved significant damage to the turbine.  Amazingly, 109 events were related to the gearbox, and an equal number were related to the generator.  Everyone who has seen pictures of a HWT nacelle shooting flames and burning up knows how serious this is.

Simulations are a great way to do testing.  There are many cases where there is a lot to be learned through simulation.  Horizontal Wind Turbines don’t fall into the simulation category.  These systems are too large and expensive to make reliable.  But there so much money involved, sadly a lot of it is government money, that suppliers keep putting patches on the problems and equipment continues to be sold into large projects that are never going to be profitable.

Statistically, based on the sample, 1 in every 10 turbines has been shut down because of significant damage.  This sample is collected from 2006 to 2010, so in the first 4 years of operation, 237 failure incidents.  The wind industry needs to get serious about testing and the DOE needs to get serious about new technology that will make wind energy a success.

Mechatronic Tips

In recent years we seem to be more focused on the size of the market and how much money can be made in solving a particular problem.  And that’s okay, making money keeps people employed, earning wages, spending money and paying taxes.  All good stuff.  Selling a million electric cars in the United States would be really cool.  If we can make them at a price that will attract more buyers and run for less money than a gasoline car.

But the decision making process of the private capital system may not be what it used to be.  The mechanism by which funding reaches research and development is increasingly in the hands of government bureaucrats.  More than 50% of every research dollar will be committed based on a government program.

The Department of Energy oversees a budget of $26 billion.  The system works by patronage and influence.  The large program offices are able to increase their influence by offering to fund projects using matching fund requirements.  So for every dollar offered, they get to control $2.  Nice trick.  So if the entire R&D expenditure of the US is $75 Billion, it is easy to see how government can literally control the majority of the work that is going to be done.

Does this leave room in the system for entrepreneurs and small start-up businesses?  In a tight economy where there is very little liquidity, funding is hard to come by.  And while R&D money isn’t the only way to get something started, the overall availability of funding becomes an issue.

More important, is this model of how we do R&D the way we, as Americans, want to do things here in the US?  Government administrators are people just like the rest of us.  They have their pet ideas and personal preferences.  And like the rest of us, they can make mistakes.  Sometimes more that the rest of us.  So mistakes like Solyndra and Beacon Tech get made on a regular basis.  Some guy in DoE with limited expertise should not be deciding what technology is going to get funded.

So who gets to invent the future?  You and me.  Let’s go out there and do it.

Mechatronic Tips

Yes, it was also about making money.  But the major issue was standardization.  The nature of direct current is that it loses power over distance.  Alternating current does, but to a drastically lesser degree.  As an example, in solar power projects, even small ones, there is a preference for AC wiring due to the voltage drop of the direct current output of the solar panels.  There is a calculable system loss in efficiency in using dc wiring which everyone in the industry would like to avoid.  This is the primary motivation for microinverters being attached to each solar panel.

The irony is that 100 years after the war of the currents, they were both right. AC will travel over long distances with very little power line loss.  DC is extremely efficient, and in fact, most devices run on DC so we have billions of tiny power converters in our “stuff” to get from AC to DC.  (ever count how many AC to DC power supplies you have in your house?  You will be amazed)

In the end, you need both.  And this is the very thing that is wrong with the political nature of having the DOE picking technology favorites.  Or for many in the alternative energy camps, supporting one solution to the exclusion of all others.  The fact is that for any technology problem, there is rarely one dominant solution.  There are usually several solutions that several multiple applications.

The most obvious example is in the automobile.  In the 1920′s the car market was divided equally between hydrocarbon fueled vehicles, steam power cars and electric cars.  Not until Ford and Rockefeller agreed to lower the price of cars and gasoline did the others disappear.   Now, 90 years later, we find that electric car returning to the marketplace as gasoline becomes more expensive.

In the energy sector, we need to drill for oil and gas, we need nuclear power plants, and we need solar and wind power to become cost effective before they can become widespread assets in our mix of energy supply.  In automotive sector, we need high mileage alternatives to the piston engine, and there are several that have demonstrated 2 to 3.5 times the miles per gallon, in addition to electric and hybrid options.

We don’t need the government picking technology “winners”.  Compact fluorescent lighting, as an example, is going to be a disaster when someone has to figure out how to prevent the mercury in the bulbs from getting into the environment.

So when it comes to solutions, we need more, not less.  Edison and Tesla were both right.

Mechatronic Tips

Interestingly electricity production has been going through a similar series of changes in recent years.  In many states, the electric utility company is owned by the State government.  19 State legislatures have adopted Renewable Energy Portfolios, which are intended to reduce carbon emissions.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that power generated by alternative energy sources is more expensive than coal and natural gas fired generation, electricity costs are creeping up higher in those states.

The politics of energy can be complicated.   Several major government agencies are involved in the creation of energy policy in the United States.  The Department of Energy has been promoting Renewable Energy sources based on the misrepresentation that the sun and wind are free sources of energy.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Even stranger is the position of the utility company.  Many state run utility companies have been forced by their legislatures to pay rebates to customers who put solar power projects on line.  Utility companies are reducing their income by supporting solar projects which they are paying cash subsidies to the user.  It’s like funding your own competition.

This has caused financial crises in the utility that result in accelerating the need to raise the price for electric power.  This should not come as a surprise.  If utility companies are going to go solar, the only way it will make sense is for the cost of equipment to be much lower that it is now, which the Chinese manufacturers are helping with, and for the utility company to own the project.  After all, the utility is in the power generation business.  And it would certainly make sense for the utility company to do the maintenance and technical support involved in solar systems.

The Department of Energy is responsible for deciding where huge sums of money will be spent when it comes to renewable energy.  The Federal government created a $60 billion loan guarantee program to reduce the risk and accelerate financing for renewable energy projects.  Of that $60B, over $600 million found its way to Solyndra and Beacon Tech who have both gone out of business.  Add to the bad news, the failure of three more solar panel companies.

So we now have two problems, lost taxpayer funds in loans to companies that went broke and thousands of jobs in the solar industry that are now gone.  How’s that “hope and change” administration working out for the Green Industry?  And when will those Green Industry jobs replace the 2 million jobs lost in the mainstream sectors?

Think it’s time for a real change.

Mechatronic Tips

Companies gain certification by implementing policies, procedures and systems that follow and meet ISO standards, which are audited and assessed by a third-party certification body. Certification is retained through ongoing compliance audits. ISO 9001:2008 is known worldwide as the standard denoting the highest of quality management processes. Hegel Holdings’ process control and testing capability has previously been recognized by Underwriter’s Labs by granting the organization the ability to self certify in U.L.’s behalf. The formal ISO certification reflects Hegel Holdings’ commitment to its rigorous quality management system, continuous process improvement, and delivery of the highest level of customer satisfaction.

“Everyone in international commerce knows that competition is becoming more global every day. At the same time, worldwide demand for US-manufactured product is as strong as it’s ever been. Obtaining this quality system certification will clearly help us validate our capabilities and our quality for customers everywhere. It will also help them understand the strength and commitment of our employees,” said Dan Schnabel, vice president and general manager.

Since relocating to Illinois from California in 2001, Minarik Drives, then a Division of Minarik Corporation, has always had a focus on quality. Steve Christophersen, Manufacturing Manager and leader of the ISO focus team said, ”We have always said that quality had to start with our people and be a culture that everyone participated in. Being ISO certified, is affirmation for our people, that their efforts have indeed yielded world class results.”

Hegel Holdings, LLC

American Control Electronics
www.americancontrolelectronics.com

Mechatronic Tips

The primary attribute driving a new motor design can be any of a long list of things.  Usually there is a minimum speed and torque.  Then there are starting and stopping requirements.  Eventually the packaging issues come to the forefront; size, weight, and environmental conditions like temperature range and resistance to external contaminants.  There are a lot of issues to keep track of.

One of the more difficult design constraints that has everyone’s attention these days is efficiency.  It’s important in many applications because it directly impacts operating cost.  But efficiency is even more critical in mobile applications like electric cars and wheelchairs.  Every aspect of the product performance is a result of the motor and drive selection.  So motors that go into mobile products get a lot of attention.

We think of efficiency in terms of operating cost, cut another aspect of that is heat.  Stepping motors are generally thought of as hot running motors.  Motor winding insulation, which is what keeps the motor operating at all, is only able to protect the winding to about 155 centigrade, or about 300 degrees Farenheit.  Magnets used in electric motors have critical temperatures which, if exceeded, will result in permanent loss of some of their characteristics.  Optical encoders and bearings have temperature limits, so motor heating is one of the areas of greatest concern when it comes to life expectancy and reliability.  A motor that doesn’t get very hot has some serious advantages in the marketplace.

Motors operate based on the interaction of two magnetic fields.  They are made up of copper wire and some form of temporary or permanent magnet.  If the motor involves permanent magnets, then magnet cost becomes a major concern.  Any design using Neodymium Iron Boron magnets is going to require some justification such as energy density, high torque in a small size motor, to make the design cost effective.

But since most motors today are electronically controlled, and in fact some motor designs, cannot function without electronic controls, then the trends in control technology cost are also part of the consideration.  In the last few years, the DSP has been the processor of choice for motor control applications due to the processing speed required to operate electric motors at 2 kilohertz update rates.  With the advent of today’s low cost microcontrollers and their advanced motor control architectures, it is now possible to implement vector control or open loop vector control with a $2 device.  Couple this with power semiconductors like FETs and IGBT which have become (predictably) more cost effective, and the old balance between electronically controlled motors and AC motors operating with no controls has really shifted in favor of more use of electronics.  Some recent entrants in the field of moped drives have shown excellent cost management through highly integrated designs where the controllers were completely housed inside the motor housing.

Look for more of the same and better as motor industry in the US ramps up.

Mechatronic Tips

In an agrarian economy where most people are working hard to get enough rice to eat in a day, making $1.70 an hour may appear be quite a benefit.  For some multinational companies who can afford to deal with the logistics, making products in China might be a “no brainer”.  Or it might be a big mistake.

Average wages in the US were “indexed” at $41,673 for 2011 by the Social Security Administration.   That would be an average hourly earning rate of $20.43/hour.   For workers in the “knowledge” industry who were making $50-150/hour writing software, your earnings have been “outsourced” to India where the labor rates are quite a bit lower.  Highly skilled Eastern European electronic engineers, up to PhD level, are working for $55. an hour.

Where’s this all going?  We are all competing for work.  As work has migrated globally, we are forced to compete for that work globally.  Emerging economies with low labor costs are able to compete, because even with the cost of transportation, their products are cheaper.

But this only works for high volume, commoditized products that are labor intensive.  As technology content becomes more complex, the automated production required makes low cost labor markets less attractive.  Except that in the recent past, the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and most cellular telephones, most computer parts, are being built in China with very low cost labor.

American Political Leadership over the last 20 years has taken a wrecking ball to American industry.  Once the model of success in the entire world, we are on the verge of being marginalized by our global competition.  Higher transportation costs and slowly rising labor rates in the cheapest markets are beginning to swing the tide back to US shores.

The examples of success in the US are companies that have completely transformed their business practices or invented an altogther new business that is not subject to offshore competition.  New technology businesses, new classes of products, businesses that have constant improvement as part of their makeup, are harder to “clone” in offshore environments.  Process breakthroughs, real innovations that lead to market leadership.  These will be the hallmarks of the new economy.

Never underestimate what is possible.

Mechatronic Tips

So why doesn’t every company make great products?  Because it takes time and costs money.  And the financial analysis usually goes along the lines of: if we are going to sell X product we can’t afford to spend more than Y to develop and manufacture it.  So there is a big issue about how much new product development is allowed to cost.

Personally, I think there is a hidden fallacy in the logic here.  If the financial projection is based on product X, is there a calculation that defines what happens when the product is truly superior?  How many extra units of sale occur beyond the projected amount when the product is really outstanding?  Does the seller get to charge a little more for excellence?   Those are difficult questions for marketers to answer.

The primary goal of this discussion is to focus on a strategy for cost reduction in new product development.  The opportunity presented by the 3D printing revolution is the ability to quickly and inexpensively produce prototype parts before machining takes place.  Test assembly of parts for fit and functionality allows developers to validate parts before a final decision is made to manufacturing a part.  Lowest cost manufacturing strategies can be explored quickly given the fact that 3D printing can iterate parts in hours instead of the weeks that having a machine shop would take.

With an in-house printer, iterations can be done in hours.  Time is money in this context.  This is what makes 3D printing so valuable, not only are parts low cost, but you can make changes on the fly in hours.  This means time to market is reduced as well.

The lower cost of this aspect of the prototyping process makes it possible to experiment in the process without the concern about cost building up.  This also makes it reasonable to explore alternative solutions.  The more possibilities that are considered, the more likely that there will be a breakthrough that no one else has considered.

These explorations may lead to solutions that have exceptional performance, but may lead to unique manufacturing strategies as well.  So the best products in the market may also be more profitable as well.  This is the kind of innovation that we need to grow on.

Mechatronic Tips

The semiconductor machinery industry has been making machinery to make semiconductor products for about 40 years.  As each generation of semiconductor technology leads to unique machinery requirements, machinery must be created to mass produce the new technology.  The semiconductor industry has had to re-tool to deal with lager wafer sizes since the early days of the industry.

Each major change has created complete machinery systems in order to produce new products for consumer electronics, aerospace, medical and all the different end uses that we have found for semiconductors.  In recent years, semiconductor machinery builders have been making machinery at the rate of $30-40 billion a year in value.   This means that over the last 10 years, there is roughly $350 billion in equipment installed.

In the past, the rate of change in the industry made the majority of equipment obsolete.  In recent years, there are segments of the industry that continue to supply products from 6″ wafers.  This means that machines that were once obsolete have longer life cycles and require maintenance.  For the most part, this type of machinery was never intended for a 20 year life expectancy.

So there is a new industry emerging.  Semiconductor machinery refurbishing.  Bringing an old machine back to full production capability is much less expensive than trying to buy new equipment.  Especially when there is no one around who remembers the original equipment design.

This closely follows the experience in the machine tool industry.  There are many shops and many happy customers who have had 40 year old machine tools rehabilitated to better-than-new performance.  The economics are quite clear.  Businesses can improve the accuracy and throughput of old machine tools with new controls for about 10 to 20 percent of the cost of new.

As economic pressure and competition intensifies, many industries that depend on large numbers of machines to make their products will “discover” this strategy.  Investing in rebuilt machinery is a great way to lower amortization cost and lower barriers to new markets.

And the key enabling technology is mechatronics.

Mechatronic Tips

The advent of the electronics age has changed that to a large degree.  GM, Ford and Chrysler are still mainstays of the US economy.  But Apple, HP, IBM and Dell are a whole lot bigger part of the picture.  These companies did not exist 60 years ago.

It’s hard to make level comparisons.  If you look at total revenue, GM, Ford and Chrysler earned revenues of $318 billion in 2011 and Apple, HP, IBM and Dell earned $355 billion.  The electronics giants are a much larger generator of revenue.  The comparison between cars and computers is not exact in this case since Apple makes Iphones.  So what happens if we take all automotive companies and compare the revenue to all electronics.  If you narrowly define electronics as mobile phones, computers (all types) and flat screen displays, I suspect you will come up with sales of electronics being double the sales of cars.

Is anybody worried about bailing out Apple?  Don’t be ridiculous, they have more cash reserves than the entire Federal Government.  HP, IBM and Dell aren’t asking for any help either.  The electronics industry grows faster and improves itself faster than any other sector of the economy.  A lesson that automotive manufacturers don’t seem to be able to replicate.  And it’s not for lack of available technology.  There are plenty of options to the piston engine that are based on gasoline, in addition to the electric and hybrid products that are being explored.

So what is the difference?  There are lots of different opinions on this subject.  Mine is probably a little more controversial, and harder to prove.

The car companies have been engaged in defending their “way of life”, not in delivering value to the consumer.  GM management in the past has refused to make smaller, high mileage cars because “they could not make them cost-effectively”, which led to the importation of the Japanese made Geo Storm.  Now GM is building the new Cruze which is rated 42 mpg.  Could this car have been built 20 years ago?  I think so.  They just didn’t want to.

American electronics companies concentrate on excellence in all aspects of design and product development.  The customer experience has to be outstanding in order for that company to survive.  The price of the product has to be competitive and profitable at the same time.

Are the automotive companies there yet?  Not quite.  But the industry is changing.  And probably for the better.  Recent internal shakeups, some mandated by government, are probably long past due.  But if American automakers can learn some lessons from the electronics companies, what’s good for America will be a better GM, Ford and Chrysler.

Mechatronic Tips

Short term economic trends for manufacturers are pretty easy.  Costs are going up.  Outsourcing continues.   What else is new?

Quite a bit actually.  There are significant trends in technology that have impact on the motion control industry.  Motor control technology has gone through a not-so-quiet revolution in the last few years.  There are dozens of embedded microcontrollers that have emerged over the last few years that offer incredible performance at very low cost.  The most extreme example of which would be the Arduino family of processors.  These controls are the lowest cost on the market and they have found their way into thousands of stepping motor applications in low cost 3D printers.

There are comparable processors from TI, NXP, ST and others.  What is significant here is that there a many “embedded” processor solutions available with chip costs in the low dollars, literally $2 type part costs.  This should provide an opportunity to develop really low cost controllers with reasonably sophisticated performance.

Power mosfets are really inexpensive and the industry keeps trying to develop better devices.  The latest generation involves Silicon Carbide substrates for higher efficiency and increased operating temperatures.

What we are not seeing is a major offering in low cost control systems.  This may be due to the engineering burden needed to develop new products and the extreme reliability testing that is often required to validate products for sale.  Which is one reason some companies have tried to outsource that function to places like India.

In the motor arena, the critical cost trends are magnets, copper wire and lamination steel.  All three materials have been the subject of fluctuating prices.  Making forecasting very difficult.

Motor technology, however, continues to move on.  For every application, there is the theoretically perfect motor.  But getting into the motor business is not for the faint of heart.  Motor manufacturing also requires a lot of capital equipment, so the barrier to entry is fairly significant.  And engineering, development and testing of new motor designs is very complex, which means, expensive.

So we’re not seeing big changes in motors and controls.  This is consistent with the history of the market.  Motion control has been slow to change.  To a certain extent, it’s hard to argue.  If it works, don’t fix it.

On the other hand, if we want to see growth in the motion control markets, then new products, new technology are going to have to focus on lower cost solutions and simplification.  The beginning of this trend is seeing Ether Cat servo amplifiers that connect with CAT5 style connectors.  Instrument grade 12 bit analog command signals and all the complex interface wiring are gone.  This is the tip of the iceberg.

Whatever the next 10 years will look like, the motion industry is ready for change.  Let’s make it great.

Mechatronic Tips

Initially the vacuum rating doesn’t seem like it would be a major factor, after all, motors operate on the basis of magnetism, and magnetic circuits are fine in a vacuum.  All true.  Ironically, it’s all the other stuff that doesn’t work.  The list is long.

Hard vacuum causes materials to outgas and and stray molecules of whatever, especially if it’s metallic, may create an unwanted current flow causing the device to fail.  A large number of impurities can ruin an entire wafer whose cost may be $25,000, $50,000 and higher.  So absolute chemical purity in vacuum operations is required, and the procedures and costs for achieving this high level of “clean room” performance are complex and expensive.

With standard electromagnetic motors, operation in a vacuum is a problem because the materials themselves are difficult to make clean enough to prevent outgassing of contaminants.  The most obvious material problem being bearing grease, and since there are two bearings required in any rotary motor, this is an issue.  Ceramic bearings with no lubrication can be used, but they are expensive.

The list goes on from there.  Magnet wire coatings, lamination coatings, drip insulation on the windings, magnet bonders.  All these materials would have to be tested for outgassing at vacuum.   Since many semiconductor processes occur in the range of 300 degrees centigrade, far beyond the range of conventional insulation systems, alternative insulation materials would require testing at high temperature as well.  More expensive.

The other problem with vacuum technology is that there is no place for heat to go.  Heat in the motor has to be dissipated, regardless of what type of motor it is.  The application load conditions would have to be rated on the basis of conducted thermal loss because there is no radiated thermal path available.  More cost.

This is not to say that electromagnetic solutions cannot be implemented.  They can, and there are companies that specialize in the construction of custom motors and actuators that are clean room rated specifically for the semiconductor industry.  This makes sense based on the fact that semiconductor capital equipment is a $38 billion worldwide industry.

But, there are other options.  Piezoelectric actuators from Nanomotion are made from high purity aluminum oxide ceramic are available off the shelf that can perform both linear and rotary motion with only 1 moving part.  Piezoelectric actuators have an incredible power to weight ration of 4:1 and when there is no power applied to the moving element, it acts as a brake to hold the load in place.  These are almost ideal characteristics for motion control applications.  And because these motors are extremely efficient, thermal management is rarely an issue.

Piezo actuators are designed specifically to operate in hard vacuum and ultra high vacuum conditions reliably for years.  And with Nanomotion’s 20+ year history in semiconductor applications, they make it look easy.

Mechatronic Tips

I remember reading for many years about the development effort going into robotic surgery.  Incredible effort to develop touch sensitive servo controlled actuators with force feedback that have the dexterity of the most skilled surgeon.  These systems were complex, multi-axis motion control systems that were developed where force feedback technology didn’t exist.  A lot of it had to be invented for the first time.

And all the many hours of effort paid off.  These systems perform incredibly well.  They make possible complex surgery that can be done more quickly, more efficiently and with significantly less patient trauma that conventional surgical methods.

But the relationship between medicine and mechatronics is incredibly more broad that just robotic surgery. The human genome project could not exist without high speed actuators to speed up the process of chemical analysis.  Almost all forms of biological screening and chemical testing requires the use of 3 axis Cartesian gantry robots that are referred to as Lab Automation Robots.  They are used to process trays of up to 96 samples at a time and perform thousands of tests automatically.

Then there’s the MRI and CAT Scan machines.  Do you know why they are shrouded in white plastic covers?  Because if you could actually see the 2 meter diameter, 2000 pound scanner inside the covers that is spinning at 300 rpm around your body, you probably would not sit still long enough to get the imaging work done.  In addition to the complexity of scanning and sensing the human body in extraordinary detail, the mechatronic challenge of getting the payload to move that much mass at that speed is remarkable.

There are dozens of other examples of the relationship of mechatronics to medicine.  The heart lung machine is simply a set of rather exotic pumps that pump blood and oxygen needed to sustain life during extreme surgery.  High speed sterile packaging machinery prepared precise dosages of medicines in solution at blinding speed and with absolute traceability down to the individual dose.  Sterile saline and sugar solutions used in surgery are made by the carload using every kind of mechatronic solution ever thought of.

No, mechatronics will never replace the incredible science that goes into each of these applications.  But it is a key enabling technology that continues to make possible incredible advances in the field of medicine.

Mechatronic Tips

Founded by Dean Kamen in 1992, FIRST’s mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills. FIRST focuses on innovation and fosters well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication and leadership.

Mike Madison, president of CGI, Inc. noted that he is proud to participate in FIRST as the main event sponsor for Northern Nevada FTC Championship. “As a US based manufacturing company, we take great pride in our ability to produce competitively priced products meeting the needs of our customers and credit our success to the employees and partners of CGI, Inc. FIRST plays an integral role by introducing and ensuring that science and technology are at the forefront of today’s youth. We believe that investing in tomorrow’s leaders improves the future of CGI, Inc. and US Manufacturing.”

Dean Kamen unveiled the rebound Rumble Robotics Game on January 7, 2012 to a host of celebrities and over 60,000 high school students for the 2012 FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff. Finals will be held in St. Louis, MO April 25-28, 2012. For more information on the Northern Nevada FTC Championship Tournament click here for registration and schedule details:

http://firstnv.org/ftc-championship-tournament-bowled-over-northern-nevada

CGI Motion
www.cgimotion.com

Mechatronic Tips

Often, the gap is based on the target production requirement.  Obviously when spindle motors for hard disk drives are being manufactured in the tens of millions, economy of scale helps keep the price low and every opportunity for integration helps drive the cost down.  Some of the most advanced brushless dc controls ever built were created specifically for the hard disk drive motor.

But the massive volume applications are few and far between.  Which means that few applications get the benefit of tens of thousands of man-hours of design.  Application refinement has to be accomplished quickly, generally in no more than 2 revisions.  How much engineering time is available to research unique solutions and investigate novel solutions is limited.  And often, the lead time to production of a new product is defined in weeks or months during which all the issues have to be resolved.

Sometimes the real work is to examine a variety of near term solutions looking for highest reliability at the least cost.  Which is really a challenge.  Reliability can be managed through many different aspects.  One approach is to minimize the number of components.  Is a gearbox going to make the system lower cost or more complex?  Is a brake more reliable than a holding current applied to the load through the motor drive circuit?  These are all questions that should be asked and answered when doing this kind of investigation.  Often the answers seem obvious, but on closer examination, there are interesting tradeoffs that will lead to a great solution.

Then there is the gap between prototype and production.  The time constraint to get testing done and prove a new concept may require that off-the-shelf hardware be used that is not going to be used in production at all.

The production requirement may not be very large, even a few systems a month may justify significant customization of parts to facilitate any of a number of issues.  Reduction in assembly costs, integration costs in the overall structure of the mechanical system, finding ways to eliminate feedback are all part of the engineering equation that comes into play in new product development when mechatronic systems are being developed.

Mechatronic Tips