Japanese Words…
For all of my thousands of followers I’m sure you all noticed that I didn’t post for the last couple of weeks. I spent some time on a badly needed vacation, visiting Seattle and Japan. As mentioned in a previous …
Author: Frank
Electrical Engineer and business owner from the Nashville, Tennessee area. I also play music, Chess and Go.
Binder Processing
This is another machine built with NAS in about the 1998-1999 time frame. As you can tell, NAS was a huge user of aluminum extrusion; for about 5 years or so the were the biggest 80-20 customer in East Tennessee. …
Vendor and Platform Choices
In my previous life as a consultant I was able to experience a wide variety of vendors and automation platforms. There is a wide variety of choices available though you are often restricted by the specifications of the company you …
The Bite Too Big to Chew
This is the loading station of a machine that was one of the last jobs I did with my small machine building company. It is a precision hydraulic press for torque converters. During the years of 2005-2006 we had acquired …
Systems Integration
For the last twenty years or so I have worked in the controls, machine building and systems integration fields, generally involved with automation on some level. I understand the controls and machine building part, they are pretty self-explanatory and descriptive …
Leak Tester
This is another application done with NAS from about 1998. We did a lot of vision, gauging and leak testing applications for Tennex, a Japanese cooperative venture in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This company has since been bought by Mahle, a German …
An HMI application
This is a screen shot from a job I subcontracted for in about 2002 or so. A Kraft Life Savers plant was shut down in Michigan due to the US tariffs on sugar and moved to Montreal in Canada. This …
Upgrading Old Equipment
When I was on my own I often got requests quote the rebuild of old and obsolete equipment. There were various factors at work to make companies want to do this: inability to obtain spare parts due to discontinued components, …
Safety Classifications
I have spent the last few days working on a fairly elaborate safety system that involves linking and unlinking safety zones. Usually I have used on machine as a “master” and the the other a “slave” or sub-zone, but this …
Panelbuilding
This picture is from about 1999 when my small company was primarily a panel shop and controls integrator. At this time about half of our work came from NAS who built a lot of custom packaging equipment (they build mostly …