One Size Fits All
This may sound corny but we live in the land of plenty. As Michael Pollen, the author of “Cooked”, puts it “If you are what you eat, and especially if you eat industrial food, as 99 percent of Americans do, what you are is ‘corn.'” http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/we-are-what-we-eat
Eat your cornflakes
by Sarah Afshar – My love for Gatorade goes beyond
Operators need a lifting device to assemble skids of heavy product
Humans are all interconnected
A telegraph key and sounder
A lineman on a telephone pole.
Capture your full mileage deduction
Computer control will stuff the roads
KISS also applies to automation
A Spaniel fetches a stick by Kleuske
Capture your full mileage deduction
Artificial Intelligence
Back in my early engineering days I was using the largest Cray Research computers in the world to analyse the stress and mode shapes of cars and trucks. This only worked if we could simplify the finite element test to the point where the computer could complete the calculation starting at 7:00 pm and stopping at 5:00 am when its task changed to supporting CAD. When I discovered that one of my friends had a personally owned computer of this magnitude at his desk I was intrigued. He had discovered that neural networking programs that simulate the way your mind tackles problems could be used to make a 6 figure income on the stock market. I linked him into some university researchers who discovered that complex numbers were more effective within neural networking programs. He traded this improvement into a 7 figure income. This is where computerized artificial intelligence shines. Keeping track of enough of the whole economy to succeed at managing a stock portfolio is beyond our mental capacity.
The engineering community continued to advance its versions of artificial intelligence. We call it adaptive control. Early examples include electronic spark advance. By 1982, it was finally possible to purchase power transistors that were capable of handling the spark control task. Later advancements included electronic fuel injection, which continuously adapts to dirt buildup, wear. and driver behavior. In military applications, stealth bombers and Ospery aircraft are beyond the ability of pilots to fly without adaptive computer assist. Along the way, I invented an industrial process which an operator could not supervise without the help of my patented adaptive control.
Slurry on Demand
Dale Mahalko, Gilman, Wi USA
Anyone who has attempted to implement lean saving discovers that most companies operate inside little silos. The marketing department does not think that they need to link their actions to sales generated or prospects discovered. The engineering / product planning group believes that someone else should define the detail specs for the new product to be developed. The accounting group wants perfect projection of all future expenditures. The sales group wishes that the custom offerings desired by each customer can be delivered in the same time and same price as the standardized offering. We have all been around this merry-go round.
I started to wonder how we evolved to work in silos. I suspect that our upbringing is a factor. Our parents created a sheltered cocoon so that we could grow to the point that we could face all the challenges ourselves. Many of us first experienced swimming in the safety of a wading pool in our back yards.
Becoming a mermaid may be more exciting than we thought
pictures by ODDHARMONIC &AJCANN
There are high fliers in the business arena as well. In the successful start-up companies they are able to navigate in company size silos. Companies like GE have discovered that grouping high fliers into their own start-up silo is a effective formula to kick-start innovation. I am not sure whether the silo created for this purpose was an invention of the rest of the GE players. The jury is still out on whether it is possible to attract and retain a group of players who are comfortable in working in a company size silo. We will all be watching the Zappos experiment in holocracy
“Dirt Road -Fremont-CA”by Benefactor 123
We all cringe when we see a rough road sign in our path. The jagged accelerations chatter our teeth and shake us to the very bone. Immediately we want to get the road crews out there smooth the rough edges. A die casting machine reacts much the same way when abrupt changes of speed are commanded. We have all seen the “chatterbumps” in the shot traces as the control struggles to obey our commands.
I can remember making barbecue lids on a machine that effectively had a one speed shot. It was necessary to trigger the fast shot almost immediately to have any chance of accelerating to the 120 inches / second needed to fill the casting. I suspect that there are still some Lesters still working out there with a two speed shot.
Having experienced lots of “chatterbumps” it is refreshing to have the capabilities of a modern control. The Visi-Trak control
http://www.visi-trak.com/Media/Vann_Proof_withAd.pdf
running the rebuilt Prince at Cana-datum has up to 6 settable speeds and 6 settable accelerations. I was an old fashioned 3 speed shot proponent until I experienced a full speed launch of a transmission case. Applying targeted smoothing of the speed transitions made it possible to move the porosity out of the seal bores.
Acceleration control solved porosity issue
Having been trained to improve porosity issues by tuning gate and runner shape, I was excited to discover that tweaking of the fill profile actually was helpful and a whole lot easier and quicker to implement.
Shot profile for a transmission case
Since I published this post, my contacts at Visi-Track have given me this link because it is related.
Following is a link to where you can download the Ohio State University paper called “Experimental Determination of Slow Shot Velocity Position Profile to Minimize Air Entrapment”:
The rugged individualistic digital landscape is being fenced in
Mileage Trakker verses
Fanuc ARC Mate 120iC/10L taken by Phasmatisnox
I have to admit that many years of installing robots to reduce labor has blinded me into thinking of automation as robots to be installed. This matched the marketplace because the $200,000 robots morphed into $50,000 robots opening the door for new applications with each price drop. Shop floor manufacturing cost which was $.50 of every sales dollar in the 1950’s has steadily declined to $.20 of every sales dollar today. Since 80% of the current business costs are not on the manufacturing floor, it is not surprising that the best opportunities for reducing cost by automating are no longer on the shop floor.
It would be naive to claim that no automating activity has occurred off the shop floor. The PC, then smart phone revolutions, have brought the efficiency of software to our fingertips. We would not even consider typing and mailing a letter anymore. PC Office suite software is now available as “free” open source downloads. The more recent smartphone market is equally mature. Even as early as 2010, 90% of the smart phone apps sold less than 100,000 copies, which suggests that they failed to cover their development costs.
The 80% share of business cost off the shop floor shows that the current opportunities are still away from the shop floor. The developers agree and the latest excitement is centered around innovations that combine software and hardware. This is consistent with what I am seeing. Somewhere in the future your cars will have enough connectivity and spare computers or your cell phone will have enough battery capacity to handle extra tasks. In the short term dedicated devices such as the mileage trakker http://mileagetrakker.com that I market are good examples of the latest trend. Business people who travel are happy that a device plugged into the car handles most of the assembly of an IRS format mileage report so that they can receive their significant mileage deduction at income tax time
The introduction of new electrical users such as electric cars are keeping electrical rates on the radar screen. I tend to agree with Elon Musk that this will cause the electric utility industry to expand their infrastructure. Usually changes like this are accompanied with an increase in rates. Most businesses will be pressured to consider actions that will control the cost increase. Reducing demand charges is one of the best ways to continue to obtain the energy needed at a more affordable cost.
“Saving Money by Understanding Demand Charges on Your Electric Bill” — This Tech Tip explains demand charges, how they are calculated, why we need to monitor them, and what we can do to lower them. Demand–related charges usually represent 30 to 70 percent of most commercial customers’ electric bills. Electrical demand in some parts of the Nation stretched the capabilities of electrical generating and transmission systems during the summer of 1999″ Dave Dieziger, Project Leader US Department of Agriculture
Many process cells have a spike load which is much higher than the average load. This fact opens the door for reducing demand charges
Leveling the peaks- The size of the wires (and generating equipment) is directly related to the maximum demand that your equipment requires. Historically we had few affordable options for reducing the peak. With the advance of modern computerized electronics, better options exist. In a recent installation a soft start on a 200HP motor proved very cost effective. 
Even discounting the future energy saving, it was possible to cover the extra cost simply by reducing the size of the wires feeding the machine. It is interesting that more than the power company is concerned with wire size.
Automation is becoming a popular business survival technique. Virtually all automation requires electric power. The wires feeding an existing cell (or transformer feeding the plant) may not be sized to support added automation or robots and handle the spike loads. In many cases it is cost effective to reprogram the PLC computer running the cell to level out the spikes. This frees amperage to run the added automation. In the die cast rebuild I accomplished last year this turned out to be nothing more than adding program steps to insure that all users did not grab power simultaneously. 100 amps out of 450 amps became available for auxiliaries. Yes a slight increase in cycle time for this change occurred. After I was done, this cell in total had a quicker total cycle time because I overlapped other actions.
Filling in the valleys – We are seeing process controllers, software, tooling and equipment evolve to the next technology level. In mold making this can be disruptive. Historically we we pleased when the cutter path software could simply create the shapes. We used large margins to insure that power demand did not exceed the supply. Most of the time the mill motors were barely off of their minimum power. 
Recent advances in milling cutters and driving software have made it possible to stay at 70% spindle power instead of 10%. The reduction in time from 3 days to 1 for removing the 6000 lbs of chips to create a mold holder is disruptive to the CNC build marketplace. The CNC machine builders will have to adjust to selling less machines.
Storing energy – Many hydraulic powered machines use accumulators to store energy and balance demand. The original equipment builders in many cases did not work with the end user to optimize this storage. 
My recent rebuild at Canadatum showed that it is possible to level the power usage of the machine by paying careful attention to the timing of the recharge.
Combined together engineered power management has can knock 10% or more off of the power bill.
Oleg-Little bike mechanic Greyson
Photo courtesy of Colin&Claire
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/