Machine design , tập 83, số 11, 2011

Don’t settle for standard parts 63 MACHINE Design.com JUNE 23, 2011 MOTIONTRENDS INDUSTRY FOCUS First, motion out-of-the-box devices combine two or more motion-control devices into one

TO MODIFY STANDARD PARTS ?

page 63 WORKING WITH ROLLER PINIONS ,

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MOTION

and even help with troubleshooting Partnering with speed commercialization Here’s how

Custom brings benefits

Customization sounds time consuming and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be In the simplest form, customiza- tion involves a vendor modifying its COTS products to save an OEM time, cost, and headaches.

Perhaps the most basic example is adding cables to a motor Many motors come with bare terminals, and us- terminal once, it’s not a problem Bend the terminal twice

In a perfect world, no matter the application, commercial shape In reality, almost every design involves trade-offs times, the leap is simply too big Projects can get side- ucts that are in the right ballpark What’s often needed is customization.

Engineers involved with motion-control applications may not realize that the catalog is often only the start

Modifying off-the-shelf parts or customizing can simplify R&D and speed production.

Test labs do everything from qualifying products to evaluating performance under harsh operating conditions.

Don’t settle for

standard parts

63 MACHINE Design.com JUNE 23, 2011

MOTIONTRENDS INDUSTRY FOCUS

First, motion out-of-the-box devices combine two or more motion-control devices into one These can include the controller, drive, motor, I/O, and gearhead This con- cept is not necessarily new, but it’s clear its popularity is

of this attention.

The simplest out-of-the-box option is an integrated motor, or smart motor It consists of the drive electronics coupled with the motor and often a simple motion con- troller Over time, more devices such as smart actuators rotary-to-linear actuation.

Another out-of-the-box motion option gaining larity is coupling the direct-drive motor to the load with- out any additional components such as coupling belts or better performance than that of traditional servosystems

popu-Direct-drive motors also have higher bandwidths and fectively zero backlash Eliminating components reduces potential failure points and lets engineers boost perfor- mance with simpler installation compared to traditional servosystems.

ef-While it’s true that the motion-control world hardly changes at an iPhone pace, it doesn’t mean there aren’t fas- cinating movements afoot And although there are a host will focus on three general trends:

• Motion out-of-the-box

• Power to the programmer

• Machine builders – Easing their pain

Motion out-of-the-box

As staffing levels continue to shrink at OEMs, many machine builders are seriously questioning the long-held the highest value Instead, they’re turning to out-of-the- box devices as a better way to build machines and improve long-term value.

Here are three trends making waves in the motion-control industry.

WANT MORE?

Focus on this code image using your smartphone and free software from www.

neoreader.com, and you will be connected to related content

on machinedesign.com.

http://tinyurl.com/3s73cs5

new, cutting-edge machine to the market means you will likely have stringent weight, space, power, cost, and perfor- box approaches So a best-in-class component selection Engineers are also using another out-of-the-box op-

tion, namely stepper torque control This technique vocontrol methods by adding a feedback device, typically current regulation found in microstepping drives Step- motors are just another type of brushless motor, or what synchronous motor (PMSM), but with more poles In other words, it’s a brushless motor that benefits from the same control techniques Using PMSM control eliminates stalling and excessive heat, common problems with tradi- tional stepmotor control And engineers can discard the All of this contributes to a less costly approach than a com- parable servo-based device.

in-In terms of performance, this approach does away with jitter (holding-position hunting) and can boost torque by

a factor of four for servos spinning at up to 2,000 rpm The with servocontrol to get a less-expensive, better perform- ing motion-control system.

But there is a downside First, suppliers of this ogy tend to be single-sourced and newer players in variation of PMSM, its high pole count limits maxi- mum speed to approximately 2,000 rpm, as opposed

technol-to 10,000 rpm or higher for traditional PMSMs nally, some users simply have a philosophical hang

Fi-up about using stepmotors for applications tionally served by servos.

tradi-So why aren’t all engineers jumping on the of-the-box bandwagon? The fact is, introducing a

out-Authored by:

Bill Allai

Chairman

Motion Control Association

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Edited by Stephen J Mraz

stephen.mraz@penton.com

Resources:

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., www.solidworks.com Delta Tau Data Systems Inc., www.deltatau.com Hochschule Esslingen, www.hs-esslingen.de Kollmorgen, www.kollmorgen.com Mathworks, www.mathworks.com Motion Control Association, www.motioncontrolonline.org National Instruments, www.ni.com Yaskawa, www.yaskawa.com

Advantages of out-of-the-box motion

END-USER BENEFIT RATIONALE Quicker to market Reduces design and installation time Reduced maintenance Reduces cabling and potential failure points Smaller size Eliminates or significantly reduces cabinet space or factory-floor requirements

This schematic shows a typical motion-control hierarchy with a spline interpolator feeding a PID compensator, which provides a setpoint to the drive In this case, the physical hardware connection is abstracted away from the programmer The drive command output could be written to the drive via analog or any digital network.

This schematic shows the same example but replaces the compensator with a state-space model, retaining the rest of the code In this case, the spline algorithm and communication method for sending the setpoint to the drive are untouched This lets the developer delve into the motion-control application at any level of interest All the vendor-supplied pieces including the API are retained.

The Top Three Trends

Shaping motion control

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

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44

VOLUME 83ISSUE 11JUNE 23, 2011

The top three trends

shaping motion control

Here are trends making waves in

the motion-control industry

Taming unstable servos

Several factors can contribute to

the likelihood of instability in an

ac drive

DonÕt settle for

standard parts

Modifying off-the-shelf parts

or customizing from scratch

can simplify R&D and speed

production

Linear actuators that

keep on rolling

Roller pinions give linear

actuators precise motion control

with little to no backlash

2

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For customized article reprints and permissions please contact: Penton Reprints, 1-888-858-8851, e-mail at reprints@pentonreprints.com or visit pentonreprints.com.

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ON THE COVERServo-powered machine photo courtesy of Siemens Industry Inc

EDITORIAL

College classes for the wealthy

EDITORIAL STAFF

LETTERS

SCANNING FOR IDEAS

Transporter moves heavy loads across factory floors

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RS# 104

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RS# 105

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

6

RS# 106

College classes for the wealthy

With summer in full swing, let’s reflect a bit on summer jobs Back in the early 1970s, I landed a job one summer assisting industrial electricians We spent most of our time wiring machines that were to be installed on automotive assembly lines The most vivid recol-lection I have of that summer was the paycheck We worked a lot of hours, so

we ended up making time-and-a-half and even double-time pay By the time

I headed back to college, I had earned enough to pay for my next three ters with a little left over

semes-My experience that summer wasn’t unique Several of my classmates had summer employment that paid for much or all of their next-year’s tuition And this was at a school considered to be among the top five U S engineering colleges

Fast forward to today Summer jobs that will pay for more than a year’s worth

of tuition at a major school are few and far between In a nutshell, tuition costs have risen dramatically, a fact well understood by parents with college-age kids Pay scales for jobs within reach of college students just haven’t kept up

Consider what it now costs to educate a student for one year at a good gineering school At Purdue University, the annual in-state tuition alone runs

en-$9,070 Supplies and room and board are extra Purdue students who don’t happen to reside in Indiana get a tuition bill for $26,622 Aspiring engineers at Georgia Tech pay an annual in-state tuition of $8,716 and an out-of-state tab of

$26,926

To pull off a feat similar to my own in the 1970s, today’s college kids would have to find a three-month, 58-hour/week summer job paying north of

$13/hour Those paying out-of-state tuition would need better than $38/hour

to accomplish the same thing A point that also helps illuminate this situation is the current U S minimum wage of $7.25/hour Back in the 1970s, the minimum wage was below $3/hour My base rate that summer so long ago was above mini-mum wage, but not by much

This analysis explains why many college students finish four years of school with both a degree and a large student loan debt I believe it also helps show why

a significant number of engineering students abandon the engineering field and opt for careers in finance Consider that entry-level engineering jobs pay in the

$60,000 range For analytical jobs in finance, the entry level is around $90,000, sometimes with a shot at bonuses that can equal that figure When you are start-ing a career with fistful of IOUs, that kind of money talks

And finally there’s this: Efforts to encourage kids toward engineering careers get a lot of press these days It is a safe bet that most U S engineers come from middle-class backgrounds But a college education increasingly looks out of reach for many kids from middle-class homes So despite a lot of chest thumping

by politicians about the need to reinvigorate manufacturing and boost exports, the high cost of a higher education makes it unlikely this will ever happen

— Leland Teschler, Editor

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Editorial Production Manager

Randall L Rubenking, Art Director

Leland E Teschler, Editor,

leland.teschler@penton.com

Kenneth J Korane, Managing Editor,

ken.korane@penton.com

RS# 110 RS# 109

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

10

RS# 111

It would have been helpful if a sheet

of absorbent paper toweling could have been bound into the magazine

in the letters’ section recently As it was, I had to scramble to find my personal “crying towel” upon read-ing the plight of these engineers

A s fo r t h e e d i t o r i a l (G o o d Enough for Government Work,”

April 19), I have never worked on

a government contract that didn’t need a correction to the designs or

specifications provided by all those government workers

Richard Distel

Outsourcing debateOutsourcing is a bad idea and could only work if you believe a nation as large and diverse as the U S can survive and grow using a service-based economy (“Thinking About Outsourcing Product Develop-ment?” April 5) If a company does not have the knowledge of how to develop its own products, what dif-ferentiates it from any other com-

Stop the whining

Jobs have dried up … some have

gone offshore … the government

isn’t helping …woe is me That’s

what a lot of the letters in your

magazine seem to say

(“Engineer-ing’s Downside,” April 21) So? Get

off your duff, use those engineering

skills you supposedly have, and go

to work for yourself Design a

prod-uct Provide a service Build it in your

garage Start small and build it up

Stop feeling sorry for yourself

I’m 75 with a high-school

educa-tion (graduated in ‘53 when it was

possible to get a good, rounded

education), and I immediately

started my own business at 18 and

failed just about as quickly Serial

entrepreneurs simply move on and

work on the next challenge

I am currently working seven

days a week (and falling behind with

orders) making a product (patent

pending) that had not been updated

or revised in the last 500 years

RS# 112 JUNE 23, 2011

MACHINE Design.com

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LETTERS

sponsibilities for their country and act accordingly We are on the way What about you?

Herman Hellstern

For the safety expert

At our company, we use several safety devices on machinery Often two such devices are used at the same time, including pull backs, light curtains, palm buttons, and guards My concern is that we are looking at a new press brake that uses a safety feature consisting of three laser beams placed about the tooling tip It senses objects and is programmable We have asked for literature on the equipment, but I would also prefer third-party infor-mation or safety reviews

Have you seen any information on this feature or its ability to keep work-ers safe? Is there a database available

of case files? How can we get access? Any thoughts to a best practice for

So goes Germany

At least we in Germany are trying

to find a way to a future without nuclear power Not only because of the dangers from the power plants but also because of the nuclear waste which will become more and more difficult to handle We feel responsible for our country, our resources, and our children Sus-tainability is what we reach for This does not mean closing one nuclear power plant and building two coal power plants We have a long-term energy plan It is a strategy for the next 10, 20, 50, and 100 years This

is foresight, a goal

And we have started tackling that goal with concretely defined milestones One very important point is to raise the efficiency and

to save energy Energy that does not have to be produced is the cleanest and safest

I am very proud to live in a try where people accept their re-

coun-pany? Know-how, the ability to do

what needs to be done, is probably

the most valuable asset an

organi-zation has We devalue this asset at

our own peril

Louise Kitchner

Thank you for your comment I think

what is often misunderstood is the

difference between core technology

that every company should certainly

retain internally, and noncore

engi-neering functions For example,

de-signing a plastic component is not a

core technology Sure, it may be part

of a larger system, but executing a

de-sign is something that specialists can

do faster and better in many cases

When looked at this way, a company

does not give up anything regarding

the core knowledge of its products

This is what we see in our business

and we view our role as maximizing

a company’s internal talent and

re-sources by shedding noncore

activi-ties — Jorg Lorscheider

RS# 114 JUNE 23, 2011

MACHINE Design.com

14

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of the grant

The professors also spoke ably of using grad students as slaves

favor-In fact, they said the only two forms

of slavery left in this country are grad students and interns Another rule of thumb they discussed was that no professor worth his salt teaches any more than he absolutely has to, espe-cially undergrad classes That’s why teaching assistants (grad students) were invented

And to these professors, “peer review” meant: “Don’t criticize my paper and I won’t criticize yours.”

Rich Merritt

of room for human error

6 If this device is programmable, make sure any hazard analysis looks

at the worst possible scenario I am always concerned about program-mable devices in that they may be programmed for maximum produc-tion rather than maximum safety

7 Make sure anyone who leads your safety investigation is a quali-fied safety expert, knowledgeable in machine guarding, and, hopefully, has a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) rating — Lanny Berke

Professors being honestYour editorial (“Bad Advice Online,”

May 4) reminded me of the time

I attended a conference at due University as an editor, and a bunch of professors assumed I was one of them

Pur-About 10 of us went out for pizza and beer, and I heard stories that would curl your hair They talked about grantsmanship and how

searching this kind of data?

Chris Bunten

I am not familiar with this guarding

system If I were in your place, I would:

1 Contact the company and ask

for a copy of their hazard-analysis

and safety-studies reports Be wary

if they are not willing to share this

information with you

2 Contact OSHA and ask if they

know of this safety system and any

problems it might have

3 Have your corporate attorney

check to see if this device has been

involved in any lawsuits The

law-yer should have contacts with the

plaintiff bar which keeps this type of

information

4 Perform your own hazard

anal-ysis study of this device

5 Be aware of the differences

be-tween machine guards and machine

guarding devices All of the safety

devices you mention rely on people

using them properly This leaves a lot

RS# 116

up to 50% of the energy they use), you’ll be able

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Edited by Stephen J MrazTransporter moves heavy

loads across factory floors

Transporters from Wheelift Systems, Waverly, Iowa

(www.wheelift.com), can move hundreds of tons of

equipment or machinery across almost any type

of floor, including ramps and in-floor rails And for

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from the factory’s electrical subsystem The load ules can spin 360°, letting the transporter move in any direction at any time, even diagonally And the opera-tor need only tell the transporter where to go and on-board controls handle steering for each load module.Hydraulics power the load-leveling feature on the load modules to keep cargo level Hydraulics also let the load modules raise the transporter by 8 in This should let the 19-in.-tall vehicle drive under heavy, bulky loads, then lift them The headless version of the transporter is low profile, while the vehicle can also be equipped with a headboard

LPG gas

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RS# 119

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SCANNING FOR IDEAS

Probe detects temperature of

corrosive exhaust gases

The EGT Diesel & Biofuel Exhaust Gas temperature sensor

from The Sensor Connection, Troy, Mich (www.

thesensorconnection.com), features a noncorrosive

sensing tip that withstands sulfuric exhaust gases from

burning biofuels and diesel fuels An ungrounded

Type K thermocouple measures temperatures

from –148 to 2,372°F (–100 to 1,300°C) Errors are

±0.4% of the reading The probe comes with a

6-ft double-jacketed Teflon cable overbraided

in steel for abrasion resistance This cable

can be optionally extended to 12 or

25 ft The probe measures 0.187 in in

diameter and includes an adjustable

stainless-steel compression fitting

for mounting it to most

diesel-engine exhausts The sensor

sheath can be either straight

resistant 316 stainless steel

Corrosion-Inconel sheathing withstands temperatures to 2,280 °F.

MgO insulation

High-temperature potting compound withstands long-term temperature cycling.

Ungrounded enclosed sensing tip protected against sulfuric exhaust gases.

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

20

Keep Your Machine Running!

Festo’s VTUB pneumatic manifold is not only

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RS# 121

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

Consider the Formula One (F1) race car Rather than

just running on simple oval tracks and always turning

left, F1s race on closed tracks — sometimes even on

blocked-off city streets — and drivers must quickly

brake, corner right or left, and accelerate along

straightaways Motorsports engineers thus try to

opti-mize F1 aerodynamics for these tricky conditions The

vehicle’s complex design, along with constantly

chang-ing regulations, makes aerodynamics an evolvchang-ing

challenge, says Frank Michaux,

aerodynamic engineer at Toyota Motorsport in Germany.

The open-wheel design of F1s disrupts airflow, creating wakes behind the front wheels, which, while local, can affect the entire vehicle’s performance, explains Michaux The

cars also sport airfoils that generate downforce while

also reducing drag

To get a handle on normally hidden aerodynamic

effects, Toyota Motorsport engineers rely on a wind

tunnel equipped for particle-image velocimetry

(PIV) Technicians feed PIV data into Tecplot 360, a

stand-alone computational fluid-dynamics (CFD)

post-processor This lets researchers quickly correlate PIV

results with CFD simulations — both measured and

rendered by Tecplot software

Toyota’s full-scale wind tunnel includes a “seeding”

generator (a pressurized vessel), CCD digital camera,

high-power laser, an optical device that converts a

la-Formula One race cars get faster thanks to

particle-image velocimetry and CFD

ser beam into a sheet of light, and dedicated software.For PIV tests, engineers position the camera at 90º

to the plane of the flow field they want to examine The generator floods the tunnel with tiny particles of di-ethyl-hexyl-sebacat (DEHS), which have nearly the same density as air The particles don’t affect airflow because they simply float

Engineers then turn off all tunnel lights A moving belt under the vehicle spins the wheels for more re-alistic load conditions Air in the tunnel is accelerated

to travel 50 m/sec Next, researchers illuminate the portion of interest with a laser, converted via optics

to a 2D plane of light The camera takes two black and white snapshots of the plane every 10 to 20 msec — the white DEHS particles contrast well with the black background — making up a dataset A complete data collection comprises 300 datasets, each containing the X, Y position of the measured point and its velocity

“Understanding the wake behind the front wheel

is important because it must be calibrated to get the best performance out of the F1,” says Michaux

“Because the front wheel is completely exposed to the air, wind hitting the wheel produces a weak ve-locity component in the wind behind it Ideally, this airflow should not hit other parts of the car, so we try

to move it as far outboard as possible For example,

we might use PIV to measure a wheel’s wake to see

if changing the shape of the front wing endplate moves the wake in a positive or negative direction.” The front wing endplate helps generate downforce

Resources:

Tecplot, www.tecplot.com

Toyota Motorsport, www.

toyota-motorsport.com

A Formula One race car sits in one of

Toyota Motorsport’s state-of-the-art

wind tunnels in Cologne, Germany.

Image Credit: Toyota Motorsport

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

22

makes perfect sense to choose over Pneumatics

Watch the video:

is coming out of the CFD code

“Because they are both surfaces, the software can also interpolate the field data from one set, say the computational slice, into a PIV slice,” says Peery “Thus, everything

is on the same grid The software computes the differences and then displays them, giving quanti-tative values for where the PIV and the CFD data differ and by how much This, in turn, lets engineers build increasingly exact CFD mod-els of the entire car.” MD

(in the CFD software) to get a computational grid of millions of finite volumes The postprocessor’s job is to accurately approximate the governing differential equa-tions — Navier-Stokes equations for the F1, with variations for com-pressible and incompressible flow

— and generate an approximate solution

Most commercial CFD packages contain their own postprocessors, says Peery “But one advantages of being stand-alone is that the post-processor can read in all kinds of

data, whether it’s from Ansys, ent, CFX, or CD-adapco, or even

Flu-experimental data.”

With low pressure under the wing

and high pressure on top of it,

air is forced from the top to the

bottom The endplate partially

blocks this flow, thus boosting

downforce

PIV builds data files —

basi-cally just text and numbers —

but they aren’t useful until

en-gineers can see them, says Mike

Peery, CEO of Tecplot Inc.,

Bel-levue, Wash “Engineers must

un-derstand the phenomena

quali-tatively — that is, what is in the

flow field: Is it a vortex, a wake, a

combination, and are they

inter-acting or not? They also must

un-derstand things quantitatively

Tecplot 360 can, for instance,

generate a profile across the PIV

field to extract vorticity.”

Vorticity is local rotation of the

fluid and is generally visible For

example, it’s sometimes possible

to see vortices at the wing tips of

airplanes when they fly through a

cloud

F1 aerodynamic studies

typi-cally use experimental data from

PIV, computational results from a

CFD package, and a CFD

postpro-cessor such as Tecplot 360

Pre-processing involves CAD software

(either as a stand-alone package

or as geometry-building

capabili-ties in a CFD package) to generate

a geometry and mesh generator

RS# 122

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com 23

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

Jetliners will get robotic assemblers

Bombardier Aerospace, Montréal, Canada, has decided to use

ro-bots to assemble much of the cockpit and fuselage sections of the company’s new CSeries of jetliners The goal is to reduce worker inju-ries, especially repetitive-motion types, and improve consistency and quality in the assembly process As a bonus, the company calculates the robots will cut 40 hr from the assembly time for each plane

Until now, Bombardier aircraft have been manually assembled

But the new aircraft, with a diameter of 12 ft,

is larger than any airliner the company has ever built Manual assembly would require time-consuming construction of scaffolding

to reach all parts of the plane

Instead, the company will use six 12-ton robotic arms capable of reaching the top and bottom of the aircraft The weight, much of it in the base, makes the robots stable enough to accurately install fasten-ers Each robot can drill a hole, then rivet or hammer a fastener into the lithium-aluminum fuselage every 32 sec For composite sections

of the fuselage, the process takes 53 sec and includes a step in which sealant is added Each robot mounts on a movable platform that lifts and lowers

The company estimates that four robots can join all the fuselage sections in 17 hr Machine vision on the robots ensures holes for fas-teners are accurate to within 0.01 in There is also a pair of lasers on each robot that projects a crosshair pattern tangent to the surface and centered on the fastener They can detect if an installed fastener

is flush with the fuselage MD

Resources:

Bombardier Aerospace, www.

bombardier.com

CSeries airliners from Bombardier will carry 100 to

149 passengers and have the lowest operating costs

of any aircraft in its class, according to the company

The airliner will compete against other narrowbody jets on the market from Boeing Co and Airbus The CSeries maiden flight is scheduled for next year.

A robot that recycles

In the European Union, there’s a ban on using workers to sort refuse for

recyclables Apparently, potential exposure to microbes, toxins, and sharp

and heavy items is considered too risky for workers

To help recycling efforts and waste-management tasks, engineers at ZenRobotics in Finland are devel-

oping a robotic arm and gripper from off-the-shelf components The robot will use a variety of sensors

to identify useful and dangerous material passing

by on a conveyor and treat them accordingly Some of the sensors the

research team have added include haptic sensors for tactile feedback, 3D

machine vision, metal detectors, and a spectrometer that identifies an

ob-ject’s make-up by analyzing light bounced off it The robot is programmed

to use several sensors simultaneously to fully and quickly identify

materi-als The robot’s suite of sensors can also grow as new sensing technologies

come on line

Currently, the robot can pick up and recognize certain types of plastics,

metals, concrete, and wood In the recycling center, technicians will

pro-gram the robot to place those items in specific bins and speed recycling It

will place objects and materials it does not recognize back on the conveyor

In tests, the robot correctly found half of all recyclable material in a

stream of trash passing by on a conveyor In the future, the robot could

identify contaminants such as lead, pesticides, and other harmful

chemi-cals, and safely place them in the proper containers Researchers also plan

on adding Geiger counters that would let the robot seek out radioactive

objects and remove them safely from the waste stream. MD

Resources:

ZenRobotics,

www.zenrobotics.com

RS# 124 JUNE 23, 2011

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RS# 125

GREAT TECHNOLOGY IS ONLY GREAT

network of radiation

detec-tors that are being

de-ployed around Japan’s

along with relatively

small solar panels that

will recharge the batteries

and give the devices an

unlimited life Each unit

will detect radiation levels

and wirelessly transmit that

information, along with

its latitude and longitude,

to a central location over

ZigBee radio for analysis

Once the network is up and

running, technicians can

easily add more detectors if

Hydrogen-based fuel cells have been around a long time, but they have been too expensive for all but the most exotic applications because they use platinum as a catalyst That could change, thanks

to an advance made by scientists at Los Alamos

National Laboratory They have come up with a

nonprecious-metal catalyst for the part of the fuel cell that reacts with oxygen

The new catalyst consists of carbon, iron, and cobalt, and fuel cells using it displayed high power output, good efficiency, and promising longevity These fuel cells also generated currents compa-rable to the output of platinum-based fuel cells and held up favorably when cycled on and off, an ex-ercise that quickly damages many other catalysts Moreover, fuel cells with the new catalyst almost completely converted all the hydrogen and oxygen into water, rather than producing large amounts

of hydrogen peroxide Incomplete conversion can reduce power output by up to 50% and destroy the fuel cell membranes

“For all intents and purposes, this is a zero-cost catalyst in comparison with platinum, so it directly

addresses one of the main barriers to hydrogen fuel cells,” says Piotr Zelanay, a scientist who helped de-velop the catalyst MD

A radiation detector, one of dozens of such devices from Libelium deployed around Japan’s damaged reactors,

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IT’S NOT NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY

IF THE DELIVERY SKIPS A FEW GENERATIONS.

Design Now, Deliver Now.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

Tiltable head lets

robot maneuver

through debris

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of

Tech-nology have developed an articulated, snakelike

robot that could one day maneuver and navigate

through complex environments, including the

rubble and debris left after earthquakes,

bomb-ings, and other disasters They modeled their

robot after the sandfish lizard, a reptile that can

“swim” through sand, thanks, they thought, to its

wedge-shaped head

To test that theory, researchers added a

wedge-shaped head to their robot and

actua-tors that let them control its inclination, or

verti-cal tilt The body of the robot consists of seven

articulated segments powered by servomotors

All these parts are packed in a latex sock and

wrapped in a spandex tube For test runs, the

robot was submerged in a test chamber filled

with small plastic balls that replicate a complex,

granular environment

After several tries, the engineers found they

could make the robot “swim” up, down, or

hori-zontally through the spheres by changing the

angle of the head They now plan to investigate

strategies of head movement to find the best

way to travel through sand Next will

come tests of the robot’s ability to

maneuver through material similar

to debris found after natural

disas-ters and bombings MD

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REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

BEHIND THE WHEEL

The Mazda6 four-door sedan is

a good-looking car that won’t

break the bank And if the

i Touring Plus version is

too expensive at $24,240,

you can bump down two

trim levels and get a base

version for a hair under

$20,000 Of if you want

more luxury and performance,

there are three more trim levels

above the one we tested Just for

comparison, the top-of-the-line

model, the Grand Touring version,

costs just under $30,000 So

con-sumers have a fairly wide choice

just among Mazda6’s

The front-wheel-drive Mazda6

sedan we drove was powered by

a 170-hp in-line four coupled to

a five-speed automatic, giving it

plenty of smooth acceleration

with-out guzzling too much gas (EPA

estimates: 22/31 mpg) The engine

carries an aluminum block and

head, chain-driven DOHC, and

coil-on-plug electronic ignition with

platinum-tipped plugs The

trans-mission uses adaptive-shift logic

and a manual shifting option

Some of the smooth

accel-eration and ride is thanks to the

MacPherson strut and stabilizer

bar up front and a multilink rear

suspension and stabilizer bar It’s easy to drive, comfortable, and responsive

On the inside, there’s room for four, but the two in the back better not be too tall or wearing top hats

— not a big surprise with today’s

se-How they compare

2011 MAZDA6 I TOURING PLUS

2011 HONDA ACCORD

EX 5-SPD AT

$24,240 Price $24,905 2.5-liter I4 Engine 2.4-liter I4

170 @ 6,000 Horsepower 190 @ 7,000

167 @ 4,000 Torque (lb-ft) 162 @ 4,400 22/31 EPA fuel economy

RS# 129 JUNE 23, 2011

MACHINE Design.com

30

Copyright © 2011 Rockwell Automation, Inc All Rights Reserved AD RS2201-R1/3P

Advanced proximity sensing.  Rugged, reliable, flexible Easy

to spec, source and apply

• Fully configurable product line

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• Nickel-plated brass, stainless steel and plastic housings

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Robots coming on strong

This year, North American robotic companies enjoyed their best opening quarter since 2007, according to recent statistics released by

the Robotic Industries Assoc.

(RIA), the industry’s trade

group A total

of 4,021 robots valued at

$263.5 million were ordered

by North American manufacturing companies through March, an increase of 31% in units and 27% in dollars over last year

“We’re encouraged by the strong start to 2011 as a follow-up to the unit growth

of 39% in 2010,” said Jeff Burnstein, RIA’s president

“However, we are a bit cautious about the next few quarters due to interruptions in the supply chain caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.”

Much of the growth in quarter orders came from the automotive industry, where sales jumped 64%, says the RIA Meanwhile, orders from the metals sector climbed 73%, and life sciences/

first-pharmaceutical/biomedical industries orders rose 61%

“The automotive industry remains highly cyclical and right now we’re riding the upsurge in automotive investment in robotics and automation,” said John Dulchinos, chair of RIA’s Statistics Committee

RIA estimates that some 203,000 robots are now working in the U S., and more than 1 million industrial robots are used worldwide MD

a nice touch, they are far from

necessary, as this car proves

And if you need a new

gad-get to explore, the i Touring

Plus version comes with BSM,

aka blind-side monitoring

Radar transmitters/detectors

mounted on the rear bumper’s

outboard leading edges check

for moving vehicles to the rear

and sides of the car When they

detect one, a lighted car icon

appears in the left or right

out-side out-sideview mirror, depending

on which side the other

vehicle is on If the driver

then signals for a turn

toward the same side, a

warning beeper starts

sounding BSM only works

when the car is going faster

than 20 mph, and drivers can

switch it on or off

The car earned a top

govern-ment rating for rollover

protec-tion, but the other categories

— front and side crash safety

— have not yet been tested

But the Insurance Institute,

a private agency, is ahead of

the government’s National

Highway Traffic Safety

Ad-ministration and gives the car

its highest rating for frontal and

side impacts

Mazda equips the car with

a pollen filter on the air

condi-tioner, a tilting and telescoping

steering wheel, and front and

side air bags, along with side air

curtains, traction and stability

control, ABS, and fog lights

The only option our car

had was satellite radio ($430)

But the i Touring Plus trim

level added the following

to the base model: a power

moonroof, power side mirrors,

slightly large wheels and tires,

Bluetooth phone and audio

capability, an eight-way power

driver seat, upgraded stereo,

electroluminescent gages, and

some small touches of leather

and interior trim I couldn’t find

anything wrong with the car,

other than I had to give it back

1990 Russell Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95054 Tel: 408.919.0200 Fax: 408.919.0201 sales@linengineering.com

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RS# 131

Copyright © 2011 Rockwell Automation, Inc All Rights Reserved AD RS2205-R1/3P

Ethernet connectivity.

Industrial Ethernet media

Rugged construction Easy tospec, source and apply

• Up to 600V-rated

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REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

Laser sintering helps build

a hot electric motorcycle

The lack of suitable off-the-shelf parts

forced Mission Motors, San Francisco, to

develop its own components for early

pro-totypes of its high-performance electric

motorcycle “We had to move fast to be

first in what we thought would soon be a hot field — the

in-tersection of motorsports and green technology,” says Mission

Motors cofounder Edward Green “So we relied on

rapid-man-ufacturing services from Solid Concepts Inc., Valencia, Calif.,

to build a functional front subframe and dashboard as a single

part out of glass-filled nylon using selective laser sintering.”

Mission Motors engineers designed the one-off component

in 3D CAD software and ported the CAD data into an STL file

for use with SLS “The dash had several complex elements

which would have been almost impossible to produce any

other way, including machining the part out of metal or

plas-tic,” says West The finished part underwent Solid Concept’s

special coloring process to make it black Mission Motors

deliv-ered the component with threaded brass inserts so it could be

attached directly onto the bike frame

The finished bike, called the Mission One Premier Limited

Edition, is one of the highest-performing electric motorcycles

on the market, with an AMA record-setting top speed of

150 mph and a range of 150 miles on a single charge. MD

The Mission One R

racing bike has an SLS

dash supplied by Solid

www.solidconcepts.com

RS# 407

RS# 132 JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com 33

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REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

LOOKING BACK

10 YEARS AGO — 2001

Robotic refueling for fleets: An automated

fuel-tank filling robot targets urban public transit

networks and vehicle fleets From Robosoft in

France, the Oscar MK6 has a dripless and

vapor-less rubberized coupler for 31-gallon/min fueling

that eliminates spills The robot has an extended

travel run to fill up buses with low floors It can fill

from the left or right, as well as adapt

to different types of fuels and nozzles And, for safety, the nozzle withdraws if the vehicle moves during refueling

30 YEARS AGO — 1981

Pershing II hypersonic-tunnel tested: A heavily instrumented 25%

scale model of the forward

reentry-ve-hicle segment of the Army’s Pershing

II has been tested in a hypersonic wind tunnel at the Air Force’s Arnold Engi-neering Development Center Pershing

II is designed to improve the range and accuracy of

the Pershing I/1A now in the Army’s inventory The im-proved ground-to-ground, nuclear-armed missile is currently

in the ing-development phase Tests at the Arnold Center de-termined control-surface effective-ness and aerodynamic loadings on tail-panel surfaces at speeds to Mach

engineer-10 and simulated pressure altitudes to 150,000 ft Thirty-three aerodynamic configurations of the missile were tested with the model subjected to angles of attack and yaw from –2 to 26°and a roll range from –180 to 180°

50 YEARS AGO — 1961

Freezing of bearing lubricant in a

liquid-oxygen missile is prevented by a

special heater built by General Electric

Co for Aerojet-General Corp The

bearing is part of the Lox pump drive

in the Titan missile Its two heaters use small-diame-

ter mic-needle tubing for sheaths, and resistance wire

hypoder-is encased in rocklike insula-tion Fitting into machined grooves on the bearing sleeve, they have an output of

40 W/sq in of heater surface MD

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RS# 134

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

Resources:

National Institute

of Standards and Technology,

www.nist.org

Technicians at the National Institute of Standards

and Technology found that icemakers consume 12

to 20% of the electricity used to run new refrigerators

And about three-quarters of that additional energy

goes into running electric heaters that let the devices

release ice cubes from molds With refrigerators accounting for 8% of the total electricity consumed by over 110 million households in the

U S, that amounts to a lot of energy

spent on ice cubes

Currently, regulators don’t consider icemaker energy consumption when setting federal minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators

Researchers at NIST wired up several icemakers to determine how much electricity they use.

Nor is it factored into the voluntary Energy Star pro-gram, which requires energy use to be significantly lower than the regulatory limit But

the Dept of Energy says

it will boost the minimum efficiency standard by 25% over current levels starting

in 2014 DoE also intends to include the electricity used

by icemakers in regulatory tests after it studies the situation In the meantime, DoE will add 84 kW-hr to the efficiency rating of every re-frigerator equipped with an icemaker But once a reliable, straightforward test is avail-able, DoE will eliminate the

“placeholder” value and use actual icemaker test results

in efficiency ratings MD RS# 135

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

36

Make no mistake

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• Powerful and affordable inspection capabilities for a wide range of applications

• Sophisticated features without complex hardware or confi guration

• Intuitive interface for easy confi guration and monitoring; no training required

• Compact, robust housing for installation anywhere

• Choice of models for bar code and general inspections

40-plus years of engineering, support and cost-effective solutions:

• Banner quality with global availability

• Rapid customization with most products shipping in 3 days or less

• Industry’s largest application team

• Over 3,000 factory and local fi eld representatives to serve your needs

© 2010 Banner Engineering Corp., Minneapolis, MN USA

NEW iVu Remote Touch Screen

RS# 136

The Driving Force.

line of Precision Motion Control

components through Minarik Corp., Los Angeles Nexen is

a manufacturer of precision motion-control solutions including linear-drive systems, precision rotary indexers, linear locking components, and power-transmission products

FIRST ROBOTICS SUPPLIER

The FIRST Robotics Competition

welcomes Haydon Kerk Motion Solutions, Waterbury, Conn., as a

Silver Supplier The Silver Supplier level designates a contribution between $10,000 and $50,000 Haydon provided leadscrews and antibacklash nuts for the 2011 FRC Kit of Parts

ACQUISITION Stratasys Inc., Minneapolis, has

acquired New Hampshire-based

Solidscape Inc Solidscape

manufactures 3D printers serving

casting applications

investment-in the jewelry, medical, dental, and industrial markets Stratasys makes additive manufacturing machines for prototyping and producing plastic parts

Kaydon Corp., parent company

of Ace Controls Inc., Farmington Hills, Mich., has acquired Hahn- Gasfedern GmbH, Aichwald,

Germany Hahn manufactures high-quality gas springs, tension springs, and dampers MD

COMPANY NEWS

Electronic-components distributor

Digi-Key Corp., Thief River Falls, Minn., added 3M Twin Axial

Ribbon Cable – SL8800 Series

to its product line 3M produces thousands of innovative products for dozens of diverse markets

It also now distributes

Dallas-based Orion Fans‘ entire

thermal-management portfolio, including

ac and dc fans, fan trays, fan accessories, and blowers

Digi-Key also entered into

a distribution agreement with

Carclo Technical Plastics PLC,

Berkshire, England, U K Carclo manufactures various products, including lighting for the transport, medical, and electrical industries

PRODUCT MERGER ASCO Numatics, Florham, N J.,

will merge all of its ASCO and

Numatics miniature valves

products under the ASCO Brand

The products include 25 Series of direct-acting miniature solenoid valves and manifolds

PERSONNEL Phillips Plastics Corp

(“Phillips”), Hudson, Wis., named Matthew

J Jennings President

& Chief Executive Officer Phillips Plastics manufactures highly engineered injection-molded plastic and metal products

DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT Nexen Group Inc., Vadnais

Heights, Minn., will distribute its RS# 137

JUNE 23, 2011 MACHINE Design.com

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