It seems trite to say that Newton’s basic laws of motion still haven’t changed. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, except when it hits something…
Starting and Stopping
Cars guys will sometimes say that the worst thing you can do is start your car. This is because after sitting still for any length of time, at…
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….
Additive Manufacturing in the Real World
There is no doubt that additive processing will dramatically change the future of manufacturing. If you consider the original stereo lithography polymer proces, 3D printing, one example of…
Omron Foundation Helps Establish the “Omron Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory”
The new Omron Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory at Northern Illinois University’s College of Engineering and Engineering Technology (CEET) was unveiled during a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday, April…
Mechanics of Control
Just as mechanical definitions are critical in motion control systems, mechanical definitions have an incredibly important role to play in control systems as well. I was reminded of…
Cars and Reliability – Part 2
One aspect of reliability is simplicity. Simple mathematics. If there are fewer parts, there are fewer things to go wrong. Yet the internal combustion engine, not to mention…
Cars and Reliability
Today’s cars are extremely complex assemblies of all kinds of mechatronic systems. Toyota says their average car contains about 30,000 parts if you include all the screws and…
Renewable Energy Future
What is the current state of renewable energy in the US? Depending on who you listen to, 2012 could have been the best year ever, and 2013 is…
What’s Next for Machine Controllers
In the world of Industrial Controls, the traditional platform has been the PLC. This control was initially the by-product of decades of hard wired automation based on relay…
WRW Engineering Launched as Part of BWC’s Renewed Focus
Bishop-Wisecarver Group (BWG), announced the launch of their mechatronics based engineering service company. WRW Engineering helps companies integrate mechanical, electrical and software engineering into custom mechatronic solutions that…
Consumer Electronics and Industrial Control – Part 2
Maybe the real answer is volume. Comparing the size of the consumer electronics market to the industrial controls market including motion control there is still a huge disparity….
Industrial Control and Consumer Electronics
The world of consumer electronics migrates on at the speed of Moore’s Law. Cost and performance have been increasing uniformly for the last 20 years. The cellphone in…
Electric Racing
Lots of email this week about electric car and motorcycle speed records. My apologies to the many who corrected my errors, I was probably looking at old information….
Keeping it Simple
The KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid. Hopefully they still teach this in engineering school. It is the essence of good design. Reducing the complex to the most…
Electric Car Racing
Is it entertainment or engineering? Car races are a huge deal in the US and around the world. It’s fun to see how fast we can make our…
Silicon Technology and Control
In the semiconductor world the rate of change is incredibly fast. Processor power continues to increase and costs continue to decline. It makes you wonder if there are…
Networks and Control
Ethernet is probably the most widely used means of communications in the industrial world. There, I said it. This has been a controversial subject for many engineers, and…
M2 – M is for Motion – Part 2
Let’s break down some of the terms pertaining to motion control. I am suggesting a definition along the lines of ”An independently functioning system capable of converting energy…
M is for Motion Control
During the last decade or so the controls industry has adopted the term “Mechatronics” as a replacement for the previously used phrase “motion control”. I will respectfully break with the current trend and suggest that motion control is the proper term because it better defines the field of knowledge. For one thing, the term […]
Feedback
In the past I would have said I was more familiar with the kind of feedback that came from an electric guitar and amplifier. Lately I have become more familiar with the kind that shows up on servomotors and linear feedback on actuators. Feedback technology has become more sophisticated and some vendors like Timken Motion […]
The Future of Control
The industrial controls industry does not seem to follow the economies of scale that the rest of the electronics world seems to follow. This can be explained by…
New Year’s Motion Resolution
My New Year’s resolution for 2013: Make Better Motion. It’s always been part of my makeup when doing motion control projects. Come up with the most cost effective, highest performing and, whenever possible, most innovative solution possible. Not innovation for it’s own sake, but innovation that adds value to the customer’s business. Reduce scrap parts […]
Christmas Mechatronics
Santa, I want an Arduino experimenter’s kit, a power board module and some stepping motors under the tree for Christmas. Clearly there is something wrong with me. But how else are we going to learn this stuff? Experimenter’s boards, development boards or sometimes known as “design kits”, are how manufacturers help designers sample and evaluate […]
Optimizing Motion Control
Decades of effort have gone into methods of improving servomotor control. There are many contributing factors that result in better products. Better feedback devices give the controller chips that manage the voltage and current to the motor winding a higher resolution basis for the management of power between the amplifier and motor. These are critical […]