Special machines and custom projects
Vibratory bowls and feeders use a variable amplitude control box to control a drive unit with thrusters oriented in the direction of part movement. A bowl with special tooling and tracks sized to the component is mounted to the drive …
My goal is to become a national and international resource and as such I am hoping to expand my network considerably. Please contact me if you wish to become part of my new automation solutions network.
In another post I described an air filter tester built with NAS in the late 1990s. These testers were for automotive filters and generally were built around a single automation concept; a Cosmo leak tester or vision system for instance. …
This station was used to measure a small crystal used in the manufacture of medical CT scanners. A Keyence laser scanner was used to measure the crystal in three different axes, providing both dimensional and “squareness” information to an operator. …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Poka-yoke is a Japanese term roughly translated to “mistake-proofing”. Techniques include the use of sensors to verify part location, orientation and quality, fixturing to ensure incorrect components can’t be installed, sequencing and detection of proper assembly steps by such techniques …
I was browsing through some old pictures of systems trying to get some inspiration for today’s post and ran across some pictures of the cotton classing system we helped put into the USDA facility in Memphis. This was a cooperative …
As I travel on business I realized that it is more difficult to post when on the road. All of the familiar patterns are broken as I don’t have a ready plugged-in and booted up computer to sit down and …
