Browse Topic: Manufacturing equipment and machinery
Five-Axis CNC machines have become essential for creating the complex geometries demanded by industries such as aerospace and defense. These advanced machines offer superior part accessibility and minimize the need for repositioning, enabling shops to eliminate secondary set-ups and post-processing. However, for many machine shops, unlocking the full performance potential of five-axis equipment requires more than sophisticated motion control: it also demands higher spindle speeds. Traditional five-axis machines often top out at spindle speeds between 6,000 and 15,000 RPM. While this is sufficient for heavy roughing operations using large diameter tools, when it comes to finishing intricate features or micro-drilling, small tools require consistent spindle speeds of 40,000 to 90,000 RPM on the toolpath to function effectively. Without that capability, shops risk poor surface finishes, broken tools and unacceptably long cycle times. This is where governed high-speed air-driven spindles offer a transformative upgrade.
The segment manipulator machine, a large custom-built apparatus, is used for assembling and disassembling heavy tooling, specifically carbon fiber forms. This complex yet slow-moving machine had been in service for nineteen years, with many control components becoming obsolete and difficult to replace. The customer engaged Electroimpact to upgrade the machine using the latest state-of-the-art controls, aiming to extend the system's operational life by at least another two decades. The program from the previous control system could not be reused, necessitating a complete overhaul.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the field of parallel kinematics was viewed as being potentially transformational in manufacturing, having multiple potential advantages over conventional serial machine tools and robots. Many prototypes were developed, and some reached commercial production and implementation in areas such as hard material machining and particularly in aerospace manufacturing and assembly. There is some activity limited to niche and specialist applications; however, the technology never quite achieved the market penetration and success envisaged. Yet, many of the inherent advantages still exist in terms of stiffness, force capability, and flexibility when compared to more conventional machine structures. This chapter will attempt to identify why parallel kinematic machines (PKMs) have not lived up to the original excitement and market interest and what needs to be done to rekindle that interest. In support of this, a number of key questions and issues have been identified which need to be explored to advance the technology further. In this chapter, we establish the history and current state of the art of PKMs and identify key issues that unlock the technology’s potential. We have sought the views of recognized thought leaders to understand the practical limitations that have hindered deployment and what, if anything, can be done to move the technology forward given the prospective advantages.
Vacuum suction cups are used as transforming handles in stamping lines, which are essential in developing automation and mechanization. However, the vacuum suction cup will crack due to fatigue or long-term operation or installation angle, which directly affects production productivity and safety. The better design will help increase the cups' service life. If the location of stress concentration can be predicted, this can prevent the occurrence of cracks in advance and effectively increase the service life. However, the traditional strain measurement technology cannot meet the requirements of tracking large-field stains and precise point tracking simultaneously in the same area, especially for stacking or narrow parts of the suction cups. The application must allow multiple measurements of hidden component strain information in different fields of view, which would add cost. In this study, a unique multi-camera three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC) system was designed and applied to measure the strain concentration of the suction cups while the cups were running the pulling progress. In this technique, a multiplexed quad-cameras DIC system which contains two sets of 3D-DIC system (4 cameras) with different field of view or different measurement directions enables simultaneous measurement of full-filed and hidden parts under the same calibration progress. The first two cameras built a sub-group of the 3D-DIC system, which was used to measure the local strain of the narrow or stacked prats. The other system was used to acquire the strain fields of the entire suction cup. In addition to the experimental test, the fatigue test to see the cracks appeared location. The results of DIC were compared to the fatigue data, and the DIC experimental data validated the crack location. This project aims to help designers and operators thoroughly understand the performance of vacuum cups by investigating the strain concentration and crack location.
One of the imaging technologies that many robotics companies are integrating into their sensor packages is Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Now Duke engineers have developed a new LiDAR system that can potentially improve the vision of autonomous systems such as driverless cars and robotic manufacturing plants.
Contrary to popular opinion, Henry Ford didn’t invent the automotive assembly line. That was Ransom Olds of Oldsmobile fame, who reportedly patented his novel manufacturing approach in 1901. Twelve years later, Ford simply took Olds’ good idea and made it better. Much better, it seems. Rather than using a stationary line like Oldsmobile, the Ford Motor Company founder added a moving conveyor, thereby reducing worker fatigue while drastically increasing production throughput. The concept stuck, and more than a century later, the moving assembly line remains an integral piece of most automobile manufacturing.
Any manufacturing facility that uses hydraulics powered by conventional fixed-speed hydraulic power units (HPUs) has engineers and personnel who know all too well how large, noisy, and inefficient older HPUs can be. In the past, such features were simply an accepted part of the manufacturing environment. But now, advances in engineering and design have led to new variable-speed power units that are smaller, quieter, and more efficient, intended for use in a wide variety of applications, and can directly replace traditional hydraulic systems.
Researchers have developed a robot that uses radio waves, which can pass through walls, to sense occluded objects. The robot, called RF-Grasp, combines this powerful sensing with more traditional computer vision to locate and grasp items that might otherwise be blocked from view. The advance could one day streamline warehouse operations or help a machine pluck a screwdriver from a jumbled toolkit.
As Industry 4.0 evolves, the use of more sophisticated robots, as well as advanced automation and control systems within industrial applications has become more common as companies continue their pursuit to increase efficiency and profitability.
The field of parallel kinematics was viewed as being potentially transformational in manufacturing, having multiple potential advantages over conventional serial machine tools and robots. However, the technology never quite achieved market penetration or broad success envisaged. Yet, many of the inherent advantages still exist in terms of stiffness, force capability, and flexibility when compared to more conventional machine structures. Deployment of Parallel Kinematic Machines in Manufacturing examines why parallel kinematic machines have not lived up to original excitement and market interest and what needs to be done to rekindle that interest. A number of key questions and issues need to be explored to advance the technology further. Click here to access the full SAE EDGETM Research Report portfolio.
Manufacturing workpieces with unique material characteristics can provide machining challenges. The metal beryllium is an excellent example. Beryllium is two-thirds the weight of aluminum and six times as stiff as steel. It has a high melting point and a very low range of thermal expansion. Those attributes deliver performance that is crucial in precision applications such as aircraft components, spacecraft, communication satellites and optics. However, beryllium is also hard and brittle and produces powder instead of chips when machined, therefore requiring special machining techniques to avoid cracking. It is also expensive, about $1,500 a pound. And finally, it is toxic and causes severe allergic reactions in those sensitive to it. As such, only a few shops in the United States are the lone providers of parts made from this tricky material. One of those is a California shop that combines a deliberate, highly structured production process; data-driven manufacturing analytics; precise and reliable machine tools; and longtime familiarity with processing beryllium to manufacture parts profitably and safely. Founded in 1954, L.A. Gauge Company in Sun Valley, California, is an ultra-precision machining and optic shop focusing on specialty metal fabrication for the aerospace and defense Industry. The shop regularly holds machining tolerances to within 40 millionths of an inch (1 micron), and polishing tolerances to within billionths of an inch (1 Angstrom).
There’s no doubt that Industrial Ethernet (IE) is paving the way for the automated factory of the future. IE is the backbone of modern industrial communications between devices on the plant floor, the enterprise information network, and the cloud services that companies increasingly rely upon to build and grow their business. At the macro level, IE is as essential to automation control as the internet is to e-commerce.
This specification prescribes process requirements for batch processing of used, metal powder originating from an existing additive manufacturing process workflow for reuse in subsequent additive manufacturing of aerospace parts in non-closed loop additive manufacturing machines. Such powders may be pre-alloyed or commercially pure. This specification is not limited to a specific additive manufacturing process workflow as the originating source of material to be reused. It is intended to define those procedures and requirements necessary to achieve required cleanliness and performance of metal powder feedstock to be reintroduced into the same additive manufacturing process from which such powder originated. This specification is intended to be used in conjunction with relevant AMS powder specifications and AMS process specifications for additive manufacturing. Unless otherwise specified, powder prepared for reuse following this specification is intended to be conforming in physical and chemical attributes as defined by the originating virgin powder specification for the purposes of producing aerospace parts, providing equivalent characteristics and properties as specified by the corresponding AMS material specification.
A robotic system called RFusion is a robotic arm with a camera and radio frequency (RF) antenna attached to its gripper. It fuses signals from the antenna with visual input from the camera to locate and retrieve an item, even if the item is buried under a pile and completely out of view. The RFusion prototype relies on RFID tags, which are cheap, battery-less tags that can be stuck to an item and reflect signals sent by an antenna. Because RF signals can travel through most surfaces, RFusion is able to locate a tagged item within a pile.
Industrial programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and their associated operations technology (OT) software and communication protocols have traditionally been best suited for localized installations. They lacked the computing performance, connectivity options, and security needed to easily integrate them with higher-level information technology (IT) resources.
In 1901, a patent was issued to Ransom E. Olds for the idea of a continuously moving assembly line, which he used to build the first Oldsmobile vehicles. In 1913, Henry Ford improved the concept by adding moving conveyor belts and with these two innovations, the time needed to assemble a car went from 1½ days to 1½ hours. The modern assembly factory was born.
There are some tasks that traditional robots — the rigid and metallic kind — cannot perform. Soft-bodied robots may be able to interact with people more safely or slip into tight spaces with ease. But for robots to reliably complete their programmed duties, they need to know the whereabouts of all their body parts. That’s a difficult task for a soft robot that can deform in an infinite number of ways.
A new algorithm significantly speeds up the planning process required for a robot to adjust its grasp on an object by pushing that object against a stationary surface. Whereas traditional algorithms would require tens of minutes for planning out a sequence of motions, the new approach shaves this preplanning process down to less than a second. This faster planning process will enable robots, particularly in industrial settings, to quickly figure out how to push against, slide along, or otherwise use features in their environments to reposition objects in their grasp. Such nimble manipulation is useful for any tasks that involve picking and sorting, and even intricate tool use.
You may not be able to see them but power anomalies that originate within your automated control system are costing you expensive downtime. Your automated production equipment has a low tolerance for poor power quality, especially if it is controlled by a PLC(s).
Lithium-metal batteries, capable of doubling the capacity of today’s standard lithium-ion cells, can be built utilizing much of the current Li-ion battery manufacturing process, according to researchers at the University of Michigan. Their findings, part of a project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, remove a major hurdle for automakers looking to embrace the next major evolution in energy storage technology for electric vehicles (EVs).
Linear motion components such as bearings, shafts, actuators, and slides are heavily utilized in many types of industrial machines, so the more that engineers can streamline component design, configuration, and ordering, the more they can lower their production costs.
As vacuum suction cups are widely used in stamping plants, it becomes urgent and important to understand their performance and failure mode. Vacuum suction cups are employed to lift, move, and place sheet metal instead of human hands. Occasionally the vacuum cups would fail and drop parts, even it would cause expensive delays in the production line. In this research, several types of vacuum cups have been studies and compared experimentally. A new tensile device and test method was developed to measure the pulling force and deformation of vacuum cups. The digital image correlation technique has been adopted to capture and analyze the contour, deformation and strain of the cups under different working conditions. The experimental results revealed that the relevant influential parameters include cup type, pulling force angles, vacuum levels, sheet metal curvatures, etc. Also, the deformation distribution and history of the cups denote the weak part and failure mechanism during operation. Moreover, this work could help designers and operators thoroughly understanding the performance of vacuum suction cups and greatly improved in further work.
A novel Spatially Optimized Diffusion Alloy (SODA) material has been developed and applied to exhaust systems, which are an aggressive environment subject to high temperatures and loads, as well as excessive corrosion. Traditional stainless steels disperse chromium homogeneously throughout the material, with varying amounts ranging from 10% to 20% dependent upon its grade (e.g. 409, 436, 439, 441, and 304). SODA steels, however, offer layered concentrations of chromium, enabling an increased amount along the outer surface for much needed corrosion resistance and aesthetics. This outer layer, typically about 70μm thick, exceeds 20% of chromium concentration locally, but is less than 3% in bulk, offering selective placement of the chromium to minimize its overall usage. Since this layer is metallurgically bonded, it cannot delaminate or separate from its core, enabling durable protection throughout manufacturing processes and full useful life. The core material may be comprised of various grades, however, this study employs interstitial free steel (low carbon), which eases manufacturing operations, as it is more formable than stainless steel grades. The material and its manufacturing process are described, including characterization measurements comparing its forming and corrosion resistance response to baseline exhaust materials. Rolled mufflers are manufactured with high-volume manufacturing equipment and processes without incident, demonstrating the ease of material substitution versus aluminized 409 stainless steel (409AL). Each application is exposed to various test conditions, including fatigue, corrosion, and thermal cycling and compared against baseline materials. Results overall demonstrate favorable performance, even along exposed and welded edges, which may be further protected locally with cold spray. SODA offers unique value in performance versus baseline materials, enabling a competitive alternative with much less chromium.
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