Sartorius Introduces ProBatch+ Software

Goettingen, Germany – The Sartorius ProBatch+ software used in conjunction with the Sartorius X-Family, Combics Pro, and other PLC controllers offers the user efficient management of original raw material and recipe data. The powerful ProBatch+ software program allows for visual presentation of the running process and enables all batch procedures to be both visually monitored and easily controlled.
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New Controls Revive SR Motors

The thing about the electronics industry is the incredibly consistent economies of scale.  The more volume that is produced the lower the price gets.  The economy of scale also has the ability to change the economics of complementary technology.  So as the electronic components for motor control continue to fall in price, the impact not only measurable in the products that we are familiar with, it also makes possible innovations that have been impractical because of cost.

Among these, the venerable Switched Reluctance motor appears to be having a resurgeance.  SR motors have a number of unique features that were expected to transform many electric motor applications.  Among which, the motors can be programmed on the fly to produce dramatically varied speed/torque profiles.  One of the large targets was transmissionless washing machines.  The motor and controller could be programmed to run a low speed high torque profile for agitation and then programmed to a higher speed lower torque output for spin cycle. 

Another feature of the SR motor is in the manufacture of the rotor.  The rotor does not use magnets or windings.  A stamped laminate structure with salient poles is all that is needed.  Less complex, read “lower cost”, than an alternating current rotor. 

So let’s review, a motor with programmable power output, and potentially lower cost than traditional AC or any permanent magnet variant.  So where’s the hitch?

At the time, the controller requirement were extremely high performance.  So the available processor technology was very expensive.  The power electronics needed were typically three phase, although many variations of phase and rotor pole count are possible.  But regardless of the exact implementation, the power electronic cost of 20 years ago which made AC inverters very expensive, also made the SR motor control very expensive. 

So fast forward 20 years, where processor power is cheap and power electronics continue to follow the economies of scale that have brought us, for example, the $99. inverter.  Algorithms for control are widely available and custom motor control code can be written by a larger population of engineers.  So a couple of possibilities are now created;

SR motors unique performance and potential low cost of manufacture are now attractive for many applications.  Development teams in many industries are dusting off the old textbooks and checking out this fascinating technology.

The nature of software programmable motor applications is changing what kind of performance and cost we can embed in a wide range of products and processes.  This trend will continue to expand what is possible.

Like Moore’s law for semiconductors, the electronics industry will drive innovation in some unexpected ways.

Got Brushes?

So, on the theme of the old “Got Milk?” ad campaign, and at the risk of sounding absurd, Got Brushes?  No?  That’s okay.  But don’t be surprised if a lot of the toys you have around you do!

From my narrow slice of the world in industrial motion control, we have long since abandoned the brush motor, or brush servo, to the boneyard of antiquity.  Like the single phase SCR drive, or dare I say the old GE vacuum tube (yes you read that right) motor drive of yesteryear, gone and almost completely forgotten. Read more

Mechanics vs. Electronics

I have offered the opinion that mechatronics is a field whose solutions are mechanically bounded.  The limits to performance are initially constrained by the mechanical design of the system.  This is no small matter.

In many companies the mechanical design and electrical design are separate activities.  I know many companies whose mechanical and electrical departments are at war with each other after years of struggles and crises generated by the separation of the disciplines.

Sometimes the mechanical design team takes the lead in creating a machine with longevity as its primary constraint.  And customers deserve equipment that runs reliably for many years.  The mechanical designers may choose heavy materials for high strength to support the demand for strength and reliability.  Read more

Electronic Dive Buddy

An Electronic Dive Buddy built by University of Auckland engineering students could make scuba diving a much safer sport.

Anatoly Kudryashov and Jenny Xu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Mechatronics Engineering specialization have designed a computerized system to automatically adjust a diver’s buoyancy if they get into trouble. The project was supervised by Associate Professor Vojislav Kecman and assisted by Technical Officer Rob Earl.

“The most important task for a diver while underwater is buoyancy control. Normally this is controlled manually by adding or releasing air in a buoyancy control device, which is worn like a jacket,” Anatoly says.

“To rise in the water, a diver adds air to the buoyancy control device. To sink, air is let out. If the buoyancy is not adjusted correctly, a diver may rise too rapidly or descend too quickly to an unsafe depth, risking serious injury or sometimes death,” Jenny says.

The Electronic Dive Buddy attaches to the buoyancy jacket and monitors the diver’s motion while underwater. It automatically adjusts buoyancy if an unsafe depth or velocity is reached. The device also has a ‘cruise control’ feature, allowing divers to automatically maintain a desired depth in the water.

Anatoly, who is in avid diver, couldn’t understand why computer control hadn’t been introduced to scuba diving and decided to tackle the problem as part of his assessment for a Bachelor of Engineering Degree. Mechatronics Engineering students work in pairs to complete a major research project in their final year of study.

The Electronic Dive Buddy prototype was tested in the laboratory and in a 4.7 metre deep swimming pool.

“Our tests so far have proven the device to work, so the next step is to look at its marketability. As far as I know, a device like this does not exist,” Anatoly says.

Anatoly and Jenny presented their findings at The Department of Mechanical Engineering project display day on Friday, 10 October 2008. The students received an IPENZ Award for the quality of their presentation and display.

SKF Solutions for Increased Productivity and Sustainability Benefits

SKF has a wide range of technology that can be applied in the Agriculture Industry to increase productivity, lower operational costs and deliver sustainability benefits.

Solutions are typically aimed at extending machine component service life and reducing maintenance, both of which contribute to less stoppages, more reliability, and more machine availability. All of this results in longer operational hours for tractors, combines and attachments in the agriculture industries. Emphasis is also put on designing solutions with minimal lubrication needs. Where needed, the use of automatic centralized lubrication systems provide accurate and timely lubrication to all key rotating, sliding and oscillating positions on the vehicles and equipment. This reduces the use of lubricants, reduces component wear and reduces ground contamination from oil and grease, thus contributing to environmental care and sustainability. Advanced new mechatronics solutions offer greater productivity through ergonomic benefits while consuming less power than traditional hydraulic systems.

SKF Agri Hub increases productivity with less pollution
The SKF Agri Hub is a completely new product used in rotary discs for land tilling.  SKF field trials indicate an increase in productivity of up to 150% and a reduction of the total cost of ownership by up to 30%. Furthermore it is lubricated and sealed-for-life saving an estimated 500 kg of grease per machine, over 10 years, that could leak from conventional designs. It is reliable for an estimated 10 farming season and is relubrication- and pollution-free and easy to install. The SKF Agri Hub is a single unit, replacing traditionally up to 15 separate components and is expected to reduce OEM costs in management and overhead by up to 90%.

Motion Made Easy - Part 2

So to continue the thought process, motion control as a subset of the field of mechatronics is the intersection of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering.  Two very diverse disciplines with totally different areas of concerns and parameters of what is important.

The intersection of the two fields might be a very narrow slice of the engineering disciplines, but in practice it doesn’t work out that way. The electronics domain requires knowlege in control, power device implementation, sophisticated protection schemes, and lately, communications protocols that are increasingly required in factory automation settings.  Mechanical engineers must deal with load, mass, friction, acceleration and all the related enviromental conditions required for a given product to be successful.

In the end, the intellectual examination reveals another interesting lesson.  Experience counts.  A lot.  And it is enigmatic at the same time, because I don’t know how you capture this most human quality of accumulating a variety of seemingly unrelated experiences and being able to integrate them into a meaningful whole.  But there it is.

Experienced motion control people are the industry’s biggest asset.  It takes many times more effort to develop high quality applications or products without experienced people.  The learning curve takes too long.  Many companies re-create that learning curve and miss the window for getting to market with something excellent that moves their us all forward.  Spending too much time or money can wreak havoc with new product introductions and make some products too expensive to be sustainable.

An interesting contradiction is the growing complexity of setup and diagnostic software  for AC drives and starters, when, at the same time servo drive designers are trying to simplify their products for “Ease of Use”.  In principle, all three product domains serve three phase electric motors.  One intelligent starter I recently reviewed had 168 parameters that had to be configured in order for the starter to operate.  AC Drives have had close to 500 parameters.  Why are the servo products migrating to greater simplicity and the other products to greater complexity?  Are we attempting to collect some “added value” by making things complex, and at the same time adding value to other products by making them “easy to use”, i.e. - less complex?

So how do we make the mechatronic design cycle more effective?  Many colleges are offering mechatronic tracks of study in their engineering departments.  Foundations like First Robotics Competition are bringing the challenge to students who have never built a robot before.  These programs bring young minds together with more experienced people and offers a means of transferring a great wealth of knowledge to a new group of people who will advance the field in just a few years.

But is “Motion Made Easy” contradictory to the natural complexity of the field?  The connection is Experience.  Experience is what makes the hard stuff easy and the really impossible stuff do-able.  So again I will say, if you haven’t done motion control projects before, be cautious, it may not be as easy as you think.  And check around for someone with more experience with solving the problem you are after.  You might find that the “better, cheaper, faster” solution is possible, with a little help from a qualified expert.

Megatronics’ Inevitability

By Richard Comerford,
Editor
Electronic Products

In the beginning of September, a press release came to my e-mail inbox that really caught my attention. Considering the facts that (1) I get hundreds of e-mails every day, (2) most are about a “new product that is the [first, smallest, fastest, least expensive, most powerful] of its kind”, and (3) I’ve been in the tech journalism business since Ben Franklin started flying kites, it takes something pretty unusual to stop me in my tracks.

The release was from a company called Vector Fields, a part of Cobham plc based in Aurora, IL, and it was announcing the release of design tools to help RF designers exploit the properties of metamaterials. The tools are part of its work for the Advanced Materials for Ubiquitous

Leading-edge Electromagnetic Technologies (AMULET) research project, which is a three-year £3.4m collaborative R&D project funded in part by the UK’s Technology Strategy Board. The project is led by a consortium consisting of Vector Fields, Cobham’s ERA Technology, the National Physical Laboratory, and Queen Mary University of London.

Metamaterials are a fairly recent class of engineered materials that were first conceived at the end of the last millennium by Rodger M. Walser of the University of Texas at Austin. He defined metamaterials as: “Macroscopic composites having a manmade, three-dimensional, periodic cellular architecture designed to produce an optimized combination, not available in nature, of two or more responses to specific excitation.” Recently, there has been theoretical discussions about developing cloaking materials that can bend light around objects to make them invisible.

Obviously, such materials could have a significant impact on warfare and armaments, and so the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding development since 2001. DARPA says it has completed this project, but given the nature of the agency’s activities, details are hard to come by.

Getting back to AMULET, Vector Fields’ role in program is to provide antenna developers with enhanced design tools to simulate metamaterial structures. The first phase of this support is currently being released to the market in the new version of the high-frequency electromagnetic design tool, Concerto. One of the key problems addressed by this software, according to it’s developers, is the need for efficient and fast simulation. Concerto handles this by exploiting the periodic nature of passive metamaterial structures to minimize the computations required. The AMULET project will also be exploring the use of active metamaterials, and Vector Fields intends to add modeling support for these in future developments.

There were several things about the announcement that made me take note. First of all, this was about the practical application of metamaterial to engineering problems not of a military nature, but of key commercial importance to everyone involved with wireless technology. Further, the tools are not just for a few researchers working on stealth projects, but for anyone who would like to get involved with this game-changing technology.

And there is no doubt that metamaterials are game changing. The properties of metamaterials are directly dependent on both their physical parameters and their electrical characteristics, and designs based on such materials must take both physical and electrical properties into account simultaneously if it is to be done at a practical pace. The fact that tools are being developed as part of the AMULET project is a clear indication that traditional approaches will not succeed with this
new technology.

If these new materials and tools create the revolution in design that I believe they will, it will certainly mean that we cannot go forward without mechatronics. It will become impossible to create a competitive product without simultaneously engineering its mechanical, physical, and electrical attributes. What’s particularly encouraging is the fact that those working in the field seem to realize that tools must come first, so as to allow designers to completely explore possibilities quickly and thoroughly, and thereby avoid most of the trial and error approach which has hampered development in the past.

Robotic Kits for “Do-It-Yourself” Packaging System Design

Modular programming and articulating arm kits let you design your own robotic-based packaging system.

By Tom Jensen
Engineering Manager
ELAU Inc., a Company of Schneider Electric

For many years two factors gave robot designers and manufacturers a lock on developing equipment for the packaging market: patents and the specialized kinematic knowledge required to program robotic motion. While the robotic arms were under patent, the controls held the unique motion algorithms needed to handle the complex path planning, blending, and resolution of multiple trajectories to the same point. Thus, robot articulating arms and specific controls were exclusive to robot developers.
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Wabco Extends ZF Contract

WABCO Holdings Inc. (NYSE: WBC) has extended its long-term agreement to supply ZF with transmission automation systems for their AS Tronic and AS Tronic lite automatic transmissions. According to Wabco, the contract will be worth several hundred million dollars in cumulative sales into the next decade.

Wabco’s transmission automation systems enable a manual transmission to be operated automatically, using mechatronics that combine mechanical systems with electronics and computational algorithms for greater efficiency and reliability, the company said.

According to ZF, the AS Tronic is fully integrated transmission that offers reduced maintenance, reliability, cost-effectiveness and environmental compatibility.

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