The picture above is a manually operated station where an operator places two metal parts into a fixture. When the second item is placed a sensor activates a press mechanism and the two pieces are pressed together. When evaluating an …
When I was growing up one of my favorite shows on TV was the Jetsons. There were cool looking houses, flying cars that folded up into a suitcase and best of all, robots! Then Star Wars came out in the …
From The Primer: 4.2 Indexers and Synchronous Machines 4.2.1 Rotary Cam Indexers Rotary indexers are used to move actuators to fixed points in a circular path. They are built to move to discrete points and are typically available in 2-12 …
As I work on my Six Sigma classes through Purdue I am reminded often of my previous experiences with companies who have Lean/Six Sigma programs. Back in the late nineties we did a lot of work for Avery Dennison, who …
Everyone remembers where they were during significant historical events for some reason. Ten years ago today I was in Memphis at the USDA cotton classing facility. We had put in a conveying and testing system about a year before and …
Serial communications are still used extensively in automation despite the lack of serial ports on most computers. It used to be about the only way you could connect to and program controllers, whether PLC, DCS or others. From the Primer: …
Despite being an Electrical and Controls engineer I often have to do mechanical design, albeit on a basic level. Whenever I need to fixture something, for instance on a vision application or other inspection, one of the first manufacturers I …
Some basic info on photoeyes from the Primer: Photoelectric sensors or Photoeyes transmit and receive a light signal. The sensor changes state when the light changes from being received to not being received or vice-versa. There are two conditions for …
One of the first applications I wrote about on this blog back in January 2011 was a Rocker Arm Cover gauge that used a number of LVDTs to calculate a plane and its intercept points. In that blog I concentrated …
Early in my career I became in involved in material handling systems more often than any other kind of project. For one thing, they were generally pretty simple from a controls perspective, just turning conveyor motors on and off, moving …
