by Gary Mintchell | Oct 24, 2014 | Automation, Education, Technology
Much has been written and discussed about 3D printing, aka additive manufacturing, lately. One thing I never thought of with my mechanical “engineering” days behind me long ago was the thought of tolerances. I just never asked anyone about the tolerances you can hold with an additive production process.
I wrote something about the topic recently that drew the attention of a PR firm, and soon I was talking with Ola Harrysson and Rick Wysk of the North Carolina State University Center for Additive Manufacturing and Logistics. Our conversation centered on the progression from design for additive manufacturing to processes to material development to finished machining to logistics. They are obviously taking a holistic view of the system.
Dr. Ola Harrysson, NCSU
Dr. Harrysson is professor and Fitts Fellow in Biomedical Manufacturing at NC State. Dr. Harrysson is in charge of the Additive Manufacturing Laboratory (AML) in the ISE department which houses the first Electron Beam Melting (EBM) machine in the world. AML is currently involved in both aerospace and medical related research as well as providing faculty and students with prototyping services.
Dr. Richard Wysk, NCSU
Dr. Wysk is Dopaco Distinguished Professor at the university, whose research and teaching interests are in the general area of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) and medical device design and manufacturing. In particular, he is interested in: 1) lean manufacturing (waste elimination and setup reduction), 2) product/process engineering, 3) Computer-Aided Manufacturing, 4) Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) planning, design and control, and most recently 5) the engineering and manufacturing of medical products, including regenerative medical products.
They told me the center is working on an automatic finishing system—software that works between the additive (3D printing) and subtractive (machining) processes.
Rick said, “Ola saw the potential and got funding for the first electron beam layering machine. He went on to develop one of the first titanium processing processes using the electron beam technology.”
Interestingly, they told me although geometric limitations of this process are almost nonexistent relative to casting or machining, the accuracy of building with an e-beam is about that of casting. Says Ola, “So I came with idea of knitting together processes. We then create holding components and put in a CNC machine.”
The Center is currently working with a company building parts for the aerospace industry. Parts can be built within 24 hours, but then it may be days to weeks to do the machining. The idea is to reduce that. Rick—”Imagine putting a system in a submarine where they could build replacement parts on the spot. John Deere is interested for custom building spare parts and reducing the need for costly warehouses full of spare parts that may never be used.”
The Center has funding from National Science Foundation and America Makes. They should show capabilities of software within a year.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 8, 2014 | Automation, Education, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Technology, Wireless
Starkloff, Fettweis, Salvo, Hatch
The third day keynote session at NI Week always features the achievements of students, academics and futurist thinkers. Eric Starkloff, National Instruments’ executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, introduced the session by reminding us of the “Engineering Grand Challenges:” health, sustainability, security, and joy of living. “How do we inspire and train future engineers to tackle these problems?” he challenged the audience.
Dave Wilson: director of academic programs for NI, took us back to issue of time first introduced in CEO James Truchard’s Day One keynote. “Time pieces are infinitely more complex today,” he noted. “And look at transportation. Early automobiles were fundamental systems; new ones, such as the Tesla S, are significantly more complex.”
Do Engineering
So how do we train engineers to keep up and expand on these increasingly complex problem? “Do Engineering” is the theme. We get better through practice. Especially practice with something that maintains consistency over time. NI’s graphical programming system is used by young people with Lego Mindstorms up through engineers solving complex problems. NI’s new MiniSystems help students continue to learn. Over time, NI has reached 4,000,000 “future systems designers”.
Research competition using MyRIO has involved students in 65 countries, 850 universities, 20,000 students. This year 3,250 teams 25 countries entered the student design competition. Three finalists were invited to NI Week. A team from UNC Charlotte developed a NASA launch project for reusable rockets. Students from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology developed the EureCar, a self-driving car. Introducing the winner, Wilson noted that today’s engineers often take cues from biology such as the study of geometries of soles of frogs for designing tires. This finalist, students from ETH Zurich, took cues from marine life. Studying cuttlefish, the winners build a submarine propulsion mechanism enabling study of marine life without as much disruption as current robots submarines using myRIO and LabView.
Turning to academics, Wilson introduced a trio of professors from MIT. One led a team that developed the world’s largest range high-speed atomic force microscope. Another took the NI technology used in that project and scaled it down for graduate engineering student labs. And the Engineering Impact Award, which attracted 120 papers, went to the third MIT professor who developed “Portable Labs” a small FlexRIO board and with a vibrating strip of metal and magnet for undergraduate students to learn mechatronics. “We know that students want to do engineering not just sit and listen about it.” Amen to that. And, you, too, can own a FlexLab for myRIO for <$50 from MIT.
Future of Engineering
Starkloff introduced the three technology leaders, Mark Hatch, Joe Salvo and Gerhard Fettweis, who each had a short presentation followed by one of the few good panel discussions I’ve seen.
Leader of maker movement, Mark Hatch, CEO of TechShop, author of “The Maker Movement Manifesto”, and recipient of many awards for leading innovative maker communities in many cities, asked attendees, “What will you make? It’s cheaper now than ever before to innovate and make new things.”
Joe Salvo heads GE Global Research, which founded the Industrial Internet Consortium that NI recently joined. The goals of IIC are to break tech silos, bring physical/digital worlds together, and realize promise of M2M. Industrial Internet evolving manufacturing from the systems age. The global community is now connected both in business and socially. First people connected through cellular phones. Then he asked, “How many friends does your computer have? My computer has an active night life after I go to bed getting updates, etc. We have formed enormous value by connecting people, now include all the “things” think of the value that will be created. We are in a New Industrial Revolution with advanced manufacturing using the digital thread. FIrst we replaced back breaking work, then replaced routine work, now brilliant machines and brilliant minds coming together to work jointly.”
Technische Universitat Dresden professor Gerhard Fettweis has cofounded 11 startups. He is now researching wireless for the development of 5G cellular. Showing juxtaposed pictures from the introduction of Pope Benedict to the introduction of Pope Francis just a few years later reveals how the wireless community has changed the planet and glimpse of future. In the first picture one mobile phone is seen in the crowd. In the second, it seems everyone has a smart phone or tablet taking pictures of the event. He is researching a tactile internet where man and machine can meet in real-time control. This will require network latency down to 1 msec.
What are you doing to advance the world?
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 25, 2014 | Education, Leadership
The past few months have found me swamped with work. And then I had a severe seasonal allergy attack that left me without energy for a few days last week. I can’t believe it’s Thursday afternoon already this week.
I’m just not seeing a lot of news lately. It was so bad that I asked a friend at a PR agency if I had dropped off their list. “No,” she said, “there just hasn’t been much news.”
A lot of training I’ve had in manufacturing is about how to think. Take a look at some of the facets of Lean training: getting away from your desk and observing; asking “why” five times; imagining the process.
That intrepid character from the fertile mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of the nineteenth century has suddenly become popular again showing off his unique skills of thinking. There have been a couple Sherlock Holmes movies, some BBC mini-series, and an American TV drama, “Elementary.”
Science/psychology writer Maria Konnikova has leveraged the resurgence of popularity with readable, yet deep dive, into Holmes’ mind. “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes” should be the essential reading of today’s young engineers much like “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was for a previous generation. It’s a guidebook on thinking and problem solving.
She talks about how we start out “thinking like Watson”, that is, seeing but not observing. “What Holmes is really telling Watson when he contrasts seeing and observing is to never mistake mindlessness for mindfulness, a passive approach with active involvement.”
Just like we would train an engineer to pay attention to facts and processes when troubleshooting a manufacturing problem, Konnikova says, “Choice of attention–to pay attention to this and ignore that–is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences. As Ortega y Gasset said: ‘Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are.’ ”
So how can we train our brains to think like Holmes? This question occupies Konnikova’s book, and her answer can be summed up in one word: mindfulness. Mindfulness is “staying in the present moment and learning how to concentrate and how to focus your mind so that it really can avoid any distractions, can avoid anything that might kind of get it off track.”
This “scientific method of mind” makes use of the brain as an “attic” in the sense that the space in the brain is a finite resource. To think like Sherlock you need to optimize your mental resources and then figure out how you can take the things you’ve stored and access them in a way where you can “see the bigger picture and not just these random components” that you put there.
Sherlock Holmes is what you would describe as a lifelong learner. The scientific method doesn’t have an end. “It’s going to be a constant feedback loop,” Konnikova tells us. Sherlock approaches a situation with a prepared mindset, but his method requires thousands and thousands of hours of practice. Our brains have an extraordinary ability to grow and expand. The key to thinking like Sherlock is to train your brain in ways that expand your imagination.
But this whole process is much more than attention to detail (the right details) and accessing your “attic” storehouse of information.
To make everything work, you must have powers of imagination. You must quiet the mind and let the imagination go to work weeding out the obviously bad answers and then combining the remaining facts into new ways that eventually lead to a solution.
Konnikova concludes with this very important thought, “If you get only one thing out of this book, it should be this: the most powerful mind is the quiet mind. It is the mind that is present, reflective, mindful of its thoughts and its state. It doesn’t often multitask, and when it does, it does so with a purpose.”
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 3, 2014 | Education, News
Companies are trying many methods and programs to get university students involved in manufacturing and production. Here are details of one from Honeywell.
Honeywell has launched the annual UniSim Design Challenge, a series of process design competitions which recognize young talent from across three regions: Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa).
Each regional competition will reward innovative concepts that use Honeywell’s UniSim Design process simulation software, which is freely available to anyone teaching at a university or college. Students are tasked with creating a new design or model showcasing a process problem and their UniSim Design-based solution. The top entries from each competition will win a trip to their regional Honeywell Users Group (HUG) event, taking place in the United States for HUG Americas, Australia for HUG Asia Pacific, and The Netherlands for HUG Europe, Middle East and Africa, later this year.
The HUG events give students a unique insight into the process industries, as well as the opportunity to network and present their projects to attendees and potential employers. Sponsoring tutors also receive the opportunity to attend the event, as well as a training course at one of Honeywell’s world-class automation colleges. The prize covers travel, accommodation and registration costs for the event.
Vimal Kapur, vice president and general manager for Honeywell Process Solutions, said, “Each year we look forward to offering a global arena for students to debut their talents to a variety of process companies, and are always exceptionally impressed by the caliber of candidates who take part. With a need for talent across all parts of the industry, Honeywell aims to provide a platform to nurture and inspire students about the opportunities in the science, technology and engineering disciplines. The UniSim Design Challenge is an excellent opportunity for students to develop their skills and learn more about the industry.”
Competition details
- All entries must use Honeywell UniSim Design Suite software, available free to professors teaching at students’ universities and colleges.
- Final entries must be submitted by 25 April for the Americas, 27 June for Asia Pacific and 30 September for EMEA.
- Further information, including entry requirements for all regions, signing up details and information for professors wishing to obtain the UniSim Design software for free can be found on our UniSim Student Competition Web page.
- Sample entries and previous year’s competition winners are available from our UniSim Student Competition Web page.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 8, 2013 | Automation, News, Organizations, Technology
Dr. James Truchard, NI CEO
The bags are packed and the driver is on the way. I’m leaving Austin and my 16th NI Week–the user conference of National Instruments. Attendance probably was greater than 4,000. Only a few years ago, the number floated around 2,000. This is tremendous growth.
Let’s look at some important factors in NI’s growth.
Stable leadership with vision
James Truchard and Jeff Kodosky founded the company and continue to lead it. They are geniuses (in my humble opinion) in science and engineering. Yet, quite humble gentlemen. They have had a vision of creating a platform and products to help engineers solve ever larger engineering problems that continues to this day.
Not only are they technical gurus, but they also have tremendous organizational skills. They have loved to hire young engineers and turn them loose on problems that stretch their talents. On the other hand, they add a healthy mix of experience and wisdom on the teams to balance the inexperience. Oh, and another important ingredient that has made NI one of the top companies to work for as Truchard told me this week in a conversation is to have fun. Every NI person I’ve met over the past 15 years (with only a few exceptions who self-selected themselves out of the company) has embodied intelligence, creativity and the joy of work.
These concepts extend to the senior leadership team that is also a mix of older / younger members.
There are a few other companies I cover that have had stable leadership. They also are doing well. Maybe not the same audacious vision, but focus all the same. Then I think of the companies I cover with constant turmoil in the executive suite, no real vision, good employees who struggle for meaning. Success for these companies despite having tremendous talent within remains elusive. There is definitely a leadership lesson to be gained.
Putting it all together
Keynotes on Day 2 traditionally feature Kodosky, the father of LabView, expressing some thoughts on computer science and things LabView could be doing. This is followed by featuring people who have accomplished big, hairy, audacious goals using the LabView platform and NI hardware.
Deviating somewhat this year, Kodosky discussed some of the major big science projects (such as CERN) using LabView. He did pitch one thought–the challenges NI (and everyone) face with communication and synchronization. Imagine synchronizing mobile devices on a project. Difficult, but necessary for many problems.
NI Fellow Mike Santori followed with many demos of projects that should spark the creativity of the rest of the audience into accepting new, big engineering challenges.
Day 3 keynotes focus on education. VP Ray Almgren, the Day 3 fixture, brought out a 10-year-old master LabView programmer, a robotic team that developed a robot that could fling frisbees with incredible accuracy, a NASA astronaut who now leads the agency’s education outreach program and the leader of a team that intends to land a robot on the moon in 2015 and explore a deep hole. All featuring LabView and NI hardware based upon its “reconfigurable I/O” or RIO platform. NI has done more to exploit the power of FPGA technology than anyone else I’ve seen.
