by Steve Meyer, Contributing Editor Decades of exposure to the realities of keeping farm equipment running have provided FireFly Equipment with insight to the problems, and the solutions, needed to making highly automated agricultural machinery a reality. Forest for the trees? Sometimes we get too close to a problem and the big insights escape us. […]
Festo Online Configurator slashes OEM engineering costs and speeds delivery for Cartesian robots
Festo introduced today the Handling Guide Online configurator for Cartesian robots. This new productivity tool significantly reduces engineering overhead for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and speeds delivery to laboratory equipment, electronic light assembly, end of line packaging, food and beverage, automotive, and machine tool manufacturers. More after the jump. Equipped with basic application information such […]
Kitagawa now offers automated jaw pallet system for lights-out machining in robot-tended mill and turning cells
Kitagawa North-Tech — maker of workholding products, standard and custom engineered solutions and services — now sells a new Automated Jaw Pallet System (AJPS) for Robot tended CNC Mill and Turning cells used in flexible automated production environments. The Kitagawa Automated Jaw Pallet System in conjunction with Kitagawa Promano Grippers provide seamless flexibility in a Robot tended machining environment by […]
Position or not Position?
In the last post there was some discussion of how positioning is accomplished from a general perspective. As with all things in the world of mechatronics there are at least three perspective on the subject; mechanical, electrical and control. In order to understand the performance requirement, the underlying variable that ties everything together is the […]
Workholding setup for secondary sperations from SideWinder Vise
The Kurt SideWinder vise provides vertical workholding without interfering with an existing host vise or the spindle. SideWinder vise expands the capabilities of 6 or 8 inch vises by adding vertical clamping above and behind the host vise and provides easy spindle access for secondary or final machining operations. SideWinder mounts to any vise with […]
Control Programming and Language
Like the Tower of Babel, control system programming in the past was the domain of many disparate languages that did not interact across disciplines. Programming has been a crucial element of control systems since the inception of automation itself. The early days of the PLC were built on the language of electrical wiring diagrams used to […]
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
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 […]
Making the correct robotics choices at the best price
Because of the many options in the field of robotics, end users sometimes face a dilemma in choosing between entry-level and high-performance features. People have different perceptions of how to define performance, speed, power or expensive controls. The best approach is to use a defined set of sizing and selection criteria to determine the required […]
Industrie 4.0 is really Work 7.0
Work is what we do to feed, clothe and house ourselves. Work in the last 100 years has changed so dramatically that it may not be recognizable as work. What started as simple mechanical automation to reduce the labor required to make things like clothing, has evolved over the years into the daydream of producing […]
The Future of Manufacturing
The future of manufacturing is here. The rate of change is nothing short of amazing. The implications for the near future of American industry are hard to predict, but my optimistic side says we are looking at a manufacturing rennasisance. This will not be without turmoil, change is never easy. But the potential for success […]
Machine builders use mechatronics
The origination of the term “mechatronics” is credited to Tetsuro Mori, an engineer at the Japanese company Yaskawa, in 1969, who was working to develop an industrial robot. The mechatronics discipline has always given engineers a unique perspective on machine tool design, building and use in the manufacturing world. However, it was the automotive industry […]
Critical Actuator Technology
In the emerging economy there is a critical dependency on linear actuator technology. Not just linear actuators, but linear actuators that give high performance at low cost. I am intentionally vague on the performance. Performance can mean many things. For heavy machinery and forestry industry machinery, hydraulic actuators with high force and high power density […]
More on Robotics
There are several aspects of the mechatronics challenge in robotics. In the previous post, I hinted at some, but on reflection the list is significant and all the issues should be considered. Managing the trajectory is a challenge on computing level just to crunch the numbers and resolve the mechanical organization of the robot into […]
Machines & Making Money
I stumbled on some amazing videos of advanced machine tool centers at the European Machine Tool show in 2011. These machining centers were demonstrating some very high performance software called hyperMill developed by Daishin Seiki of Japan. The company’s website is in Japanese, but you will find some high profile video on YouTube, and it […]
Apple to invest $7 billion in robots
According to a story in Seeking Alphaª, Apple plans to purchase billions of dollars of industrial robots from Fanuc for placement within Foxconn’s factories in China. Neither Apple nor Foxconn have confirmed the piece. It takes 141 steps to make an iPhone and passes through 325 pairs of hands over 5 days. Although labor only…
Aging Equipment, New Opportunity
Machinery manufacturing is unique in the fact that the product makes another product. Making machines that make semiconductors, for example, is a very complex endeavor. It is all about pushing the limits of technology at every level. There are some interesting features of the machinery market to consider. The semiconductor machinery industry has […]
Doing More In the US
The old business school motto, doing more with less, can have some interesting applications. American manufacturing is going through a renaissance of sorts. Across many industries there are substantial efforts to bring more manufacturing back to the US. A lot of it is precisely ‘doing more with less’. How do we make the same […]
Next Generation Manufacturing
As a follow on to the last post, I have been investigating the cost of manufacturing equipment. The classic machine tool is the most widely used piece of equipment for fabricating just about anything made out of metal. The machine tool has been quietly undergoing it’s own revolution since it’s inception in the 1950’s. The […]
2012, Year of Opportunity
2011 was a difficult year for many sectors of the US economy. World markets were about the same as at home. The general weakness was felt world wide with currencies, especially the dollar and the Euro, declining due to bank failures in EU, financial crises in Greece and Italy, unrest in the Middle east creating […]
Kurt Engineered Systems Capabilities to be Shown at IMTS ’08
Kurt Manufacturing will introduce and demonstrate the capabilities of the new Engineered Systems Division at IMTS ’08. Operating continuously during the show, Kurt will show a fully integrated automated indexing system of a robot, multi-station workholding, indexer and gage with process control. The Kurt Engineered Systems offering is the result of the formation of a […]
Siemens PLM Mechatronics Software Derived From Video Games
Siemens PLM Software announced a new integrated machine design solution aimed at creating value for companies that develop and market machine tools and production machines. Mechatronics Concept Designer™ represents a paradigm shift for the industry with a new systems engineering approach to machine design that captures “voice of the user ” input, manages early requirements […]