We are surrounded by it. Most often we associate design with graphics or web design, but it’s much more inclusive. The spaces we live in are the result of architectural design. Our furniture and surrounds are interior design. How we move around is transportation and mobility design of everything from cars, boats, planes, down to bicycles, […]
The Way Forward
When it comes to control product development there seems to be no middle ground between large automation vendors and small OEMs with unique product requirements. This seems incongruous against the background of emerging technologies and the market opportunities they are intended to address. In the field of mechatronics it seems even more difficult to sort […]
More Than Obsolete
The legendary PLC 5 product line officially becomes obsolete this year after more than a decade of protests from customers with large installed bases of these products. This may not be front page news, but is the tip of the iceberg that represents a crisis for manufacturers in all sectors of the industrialized world. At the same […]
More Robots
Developing a new robot design for a specific task is a major challenge. Combining traditional rotary motors and gear reducers will produce very limited results. New robot mechanical solutions are the key to expanding robot capabilities. The problem is that new mechanical solutions are hard enough to deal with, writing new control software for a […]
Robots Everywhere
The International Federation of Robotics reports another record year of robot sales in 2014. 225,000 robots were sold worldwide. 26% over the previous year. The estimated inventory of working robots is now approaching 2 million and increasing dramatically. The shipped value of the robots is in the range of $11 billion and the estimated value […]
Complexity and Control
Complexity in the controls world is expanding exponentially. The amount of data necessary to describe the real world is staggering when fully considered. Sensors and feedback devices of every imaginable type are providing many orders of magnitude of increased resolution to allow improved control over processes in all industries. The rotary encoder that was typically […]
Interoperability, Complexity, Big Data
“The unknown future rolls toward us…” as Sarah Conner put it in the Terminator sequel, and so it is with the Internet of Things. The future of the internet is a great unknown, yet it rolls toward us with inevitability. One of the most important accomplishments is defining what the Internet is; communications backbone, […]
Electric Motors – the Workhorse of Industry
OK, so Tesla won. The AC motor became much more popular because it turned without the need for complex and expensive speed controls. With mass production, the AC motor costs around $75. per horsepower and runs reliably with no maintenance requirements for years. Which is exactly the conversation you will get with any happy electric […]
Electric Motors in Context
It seems odd that after over 100 years of electric motor manufacturing, we have very few people in the industry that can really ‘boil it down’ to the basics of what is important in applying electric motors. An electric motor transforms electricity into mechanical work. That’s why most electric motor manufacturers employ mechanical engineers. And […]
Buy or Build
When is it appropriate to build something custom or buy the next best thing that will get the job done? Manufacturers are constantly faced with this problem in one form or another. Some large manufacturing concerns have huge scale in numbers of units. Many beverage plants have to ship over 1,000,000 drinks a day. In […]
How Big is Big Data?
Another component of the “Big Data” conversation is what “big” really means. In the early days of the PLC an I/O map of 1024 inputs and 1024 outputs was considered “big”. Not so much these days. Adding 12 or 16 bit analog values to the mix of data was really taxing. As control system technology […]
Not So Big Data
“Big Data” is all the buzz in Information Technology circles and business editorials. Generally the discussion is around how we will ever be able to make meaningful use of all the vast, undefined data that is being created. It’s all hype. Software vendors want to add urgency to the adoption of computer systems that manage business […]
Time to Trade Up!
Obsolete systems can be a liability, or they can be an opportunity to make improvements. Aging production equipment often has a history of increasing downtime that makes it obvious that there is an issue. Sometimes other business performance factors can lead to the decision to make improvements. More production from the same facility at a […]
The Age of Industrial Controls
At the dawn of the Age of Industrial Controls computers were programmed with punch cards in Fortran and programs were run in batch process. Computer hardware was the size of a small building and the heat generated required substantial air conditioning in order for the machine to operate. Massive, complex, expensive hardware that required a […]
Obsolete!
It has been roughly 50 years since Dick Morely created the first programmable controller, and while the demise of the PLC has been predicted many times, it is still here with us. As the control industry has evolved in the “age of electronics” PLCs have changed dramatically. One of the subtle problems of electronics is […]
Complexity and Cost
The next generation of design is going to be something remarkable. Consider the impact of part fabrication in which complexity has no impact on cost. In fact, the more complex part the part construction the less it will cost. Why? Because the cost of a 3D printed part is almost exclusively based on the weight […]
Cars and Printing – Part 2
The cost analysis of most 3D printing processes is based on the direct material cost, usually in dollars per pound. By making machine costs low and eliminating tooling costs the barrier to entry in many markets is reduced to a tiny fraction of other processes. Which is entirely intentional and why 3D printing gets so […]
Cars and Printing
The United State automotive industry has recovered its production capacity to 16,000,000 vehicles a year for domestic consumption. That’s a lot of cars. It’s important because car making is one of the 4 or 5 largest segments of economic activity and because of the industry’s size, it impacts the entire economy. That means on average […]
3D Printing and Material Science
3D printing continues to make headlines. From ‘printing cars’ to printing jet engine parts, the field is growing. The good news is that a lot of money is being invested by government labs, large corporations and private investors. The bad news is that there will be a lot of “weeding out” as small start ups […]
Labor and the Next Generation
In the coming generation we may see the early expression of the science fiction novelist’s most popular premise; a world in which a significant amount of labor is performed by robots. From the first use of the work “robot” in the 1920’s, the notion of a working force with the dexterity of human beings and […]
Energy & Storage
Energy continues to make the news this week as the barrel price for crude oil goes up and gasoline prices at the pump increase. Electricity, which has increased in cost substantially, will continue to become more expensive because of political choices about our sources of generated power. Write your State congressman if you don’t like […]
Robot R&D
Breakthroughs in robotics continue to make headlines. Most of the interest generated by the dramatic reduction in system cost for the new class of “human safe” robots. Most people understand, even if they are not economists, that if something costs less, it will sell more. So as robot manufacturers have broken the $30,000 barrier, which […]