An Industrial and Factory Automation Resource
Several of my topics in the past have dealt with gauging and measurement. Most of the systems I have worked on in the past used LVDTs, encoders, optical sensors or machine vision when it came to accurately measuring the physical …
As I work on my current automotive-related project I have reached the point where the system is operating in Auto Mode and testing a throttle body. There are various tests performed on this system including leak and flow tests, physical …
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 …
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 …
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 small test stand was built in 2005 for Kiesler Automotive, a custom transmission builder in Maryville, Tennessee. After placing the transmission into the cradle and closing a couple of DeStaCo clamps by hand, a 2 hand anti-tiedown station is …
In my previous life I spent about 30-40% of my time doing vision applications. Most of the jobs I did involved using “smart cameras” which are self-contained vision systems where the frame grabber circuitry, image processing and I/O are built …
This is an application to determine whether a gasket is located properly in a rocker arm cover. 3 LVDTs were used to measure the outside edges of a plastic rocker arm cover establishing a plane. 4 additional LVDTs were then …
