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

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.

The Future of Mechatronic Design

I think mechatronics generally begins with mechanical design.  That’s just my perspective, it may differ in your experience.   If its a power window in a car, a hard disk drive platter machine, a blender, an amusement park ride or display, a surgical robot, whatever.  They all start with mechanical design, performance goals and boundary conditions that are required for the mechanical system to be useful.

This is why there needs to be great emphasis on the design of software tools that are extensions to the 2D and 3D CAD products that are currently available.  Obviously, if you are engaged in mechanical design, you are in a unique position to the final outcome of the design project.   The mechanical design work sets the boundary conditions of what is possible. Read more

Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency is another “hot” topic. And like many topics in technology, its very prone to misunderstanding and misrepresentation.

For example, a recent prominent engineering magazine published a cover article on the subject of electric cars, one of my favorite topics. And the cover had a really cool graphic comparing the energy density of lead acid batteries to the newer lithium ion batteries which have 4 time better storage capability, and then comparing that to gasoline’s energy density which is eighty three times more power per pound than lead acid technology. Read more

What guarantees Mechatronics success? Communications.

By Leslie Langnau,
Managing Editor
Design World

In an ideal world, if top management had its way, product design and development time would be seconds, (maybe minutes) rather than weeks. Such an idea is reminiscent of the “replicators” from the fictional TV series Star Trek. You simply asked for what you wanted, perhaps specified a few details, and the part or device appeared in seconds.
Read more

Facts or Fiction? Politics or Science.

I recently picked up my monthly copy of one of the pre-eminent magazines in the sciences that I have subscribed to for many years. This month’s cover article was on American energy policy. OK, fine. We are all concerned about the rising prices at the pump and impact (mostly negative) on our economy.

But it freaked me out when I tried to read the article. The entire thing was an editorial based on reader responses to a survey sent out by the magazine. No facts, no science, no specific issue really, not even any survey demographics, no factual support for several pages of random assertions about what different factions in the government are doing wrong and the havoc being wreaked in our economy.

I admit, I got a little irate. Read more

One Size Never Fits All

Sometimes a lot is made of new technology. There is a tendency to talk about the next big thing in whatever field as “The Solution”. But there’s rarely just one solution that works for everyone.

Currently in the “car wars” (a favorite topic, since we are all effected by gasoline prices) many ideas have been advanced as “The Solution”. We heard a lot about bio-fuels reducing our dependency on oil by 30%, but now are primarily contributing to rising food prices. Hydrogen fuel cells will replace gasoline engines, but not anytime soon because we don’t have an infrastructure that can produce hydrogen as a fuel, nor an acceptable means to store it. And so it goes. This progression of ideas, and attempts to market same, makes the point that there is rarely a single solution that suits everyone. Read more

More Mechatronic and Robotic Reflections

The blend of sensors and motion control become crucial in many applications. The dextrous robot hand of recent years cracks eggs like a chef with the aid of sophisticated pressure sensors at the tips of its “fingers”. Check out the Shadow Robot company for some amazing videos of their “air muscle” powered robot hand in action. Lots of interesting work has been done to mimic the human hand. A miracle of grace and efficiency that is hard to duplicate. Read more

Clarity

A national talk-show host I listen to comments “I would rather have clarity than agreement”. I think that is a great platform for discussion. And I approach the blog with the same goal. This posting is an attempt to clarify my previous entry.

I got into the big debate on automobile technology in the 1980’s. It started with a duty cycle chart of engine horsepower and led me to join Unique Mobility in the late 80’s to try and help bring hybrid technology to the California low emission initiative. We were not successful. Primarily because none of the Big 3 automotive companies would agree to supply a vehicle platform for the drivetrain we developed. We did succeed in building a drivetrain for BMW’s EV-1 and EV-2 which were very successful steps along the way.

But the point of my earlier blog was simply to comment on “automobile technology” as the greatest mechatronic challenge of all. You can start with a simple F=ma approach and deal with how much mechanical power must be produced to move the vehicle, which the Big 3 have been messing around with for years. We have cars made out of plastic to reduce vehicle weight (the “m”) in an effort to get lower power solutions which mean more miles per gallon, you know the rest. Read more

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