Hello from Atlanta, Georgia where I am about to teach a 4 day class on Siemens’ TIA Portal. I have been away from home for two weeks trying to finish up my project down at American Beverage Depot in Miami…
Category: Machine Assembly and Fabrication
Machine assembly and fabrication
The Big Toys
Posted in Applications, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Machine Builders and Integrators, Me Tagged with: ABD, custom machines, design, machine building, Wright Industries
Application: Sensor Choices 103
Today’s post concerns how sensor choices are made in real applications. I have written various posts on sensors in the past, and even participated in a Control Engineering webcast and forum last year on the topic. While I have covered…
Posted in Applications, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Photoeyes, Sensing, Sensors Tagged with: Automation Direct, Banner, photoeyes, sensors
My Little Factory – Fabricate
A couple of weeks ago I started a series called “My Little Factory”, describing a system I am building for training purposes. I plan on updating the progress on this project monthly, but today’s topic is also related. As those…
Building The Machine: A Bedtime Story
The following story is from my book Industrial Automation: Hands On (McGraw-Hill, 2013). I wrote it to illustrate how a machine or production line is concepted, purchased, designed, built and delivered. This is a pretty typical description of the procedures…
Posted in Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Machine Design, The Book Tagged with: custom machines, Industrial Automation Hands On, machine building
Machine Start-Ups
As I prepare for a trip to Japan and China, I am reminded of the many machine start-ups I have participated in over the past twenty years or so. One of the things I used to enjoy about project work…
Posted in Integration, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, troubleshooting Tagged with: custom machines, Debug, machine building, startup
Raytheon Missile Material Handling Application
In my previous life as a project engineer at Wright Industries (a Doerfer company), I worked on some projects that I couldn’t talk much about, being either government-related or potentially breaching confidentiality agreements. The project discussed in this post was…
Product Development
Last week I had the privilege of sitting in a doctor’s exam room for about 45 minutes with nothing to do. Next to me was an exam table (not the one shown above…) that brought back some old memories. Back…
Posted in Engineering, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Machine Design, Product Development, Vendors and Manufacturers Tagged with: design, OEM, product development
Mechanics of Vibratory Equipment
The system I am currently working on is a machine that packages small plastic components. It consists of a number of hoppers with linear vibratory feeders that convey the parts into a mechanism that weighs the parts and feeds them…
Posted in Automation Concepts, Conveyors, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Material Handling, Packaging, Vendors and Manufacturers Tagged with: conveyors, Debug, feeders, machine building, vibratory bowls
Troubleshooting and Debug
The first thing a lot of engineers and technicians do when trying to isolate a problem on an automated machine is go get their laptop and use programming software to see where the issue might lie. In some cases this…
Posted in Automation Concepts, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Software & Programming, troubleshooting Tagged with: Debug, troubleshooting
Packaging & Nalle Automation
This week I made my first sales trip for my new consulting company. I returned to Knoxville where I had my old company ACS for 10 years and paid a visit to several old customers and friends. If you have…
Posted in Extrusion, Machine Assembly and Fabrication, Machine Builders and Integrators, Packaging, Vendors and Manufacturers Tagged with: networking, packaging, vendors
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