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March 18th 2011
For my senior project, I wanted to create an electro-mechanical project that would best encompass a variety of aspects learned throughout my curriculum at Cal Poly Pomona, as well as my internship which I have participated in for the past year. It was suggested that I make a motion control system. This system could take a 2-D CAD file, convert it to G-code, and create the outline desired. I felt it was a good project and encompassed a lot of electrical/mechanical/software design.
The software tools that I used in the design of this project are AutoCAD Electrical and SolidWorks. AutoCAD Electrical helped generate the schematics for the inital design of the electrical panel. These schematics aided in the wiring of our electrical components and provided an overall layout for our panel ( 28.5″ X 28.5″).
Figure 1- Panel Layout
This panel layout shown in figure 1 is a perfect 1:1 ratio for all of the components we used. It was printed using a large plotter. Using this we (more…)
Project Scope: To prototype a marketable mobile access ramp for pontoon boats. This ramp will accomodate wheelchairs and like apparatus.
General Design: The design will incorporate a steel constructed ramp designed to withstand 800 lbs of load. The ramp will be actuated by an electric gear motor. The gear motor being utilized is a modified off the shelf auto winch. The winch provides the power necessary to actuate the ramp from a vertical (retracted) position to a horizontal position that would be able to engage any boat dock or platform that is +/- 8 inches of the pontoon boat platform level. While there is plenty of torque from the modified winch, the speed of rotation requires a 20:1 gear reduction. Automation Direct offers a large selection of wormgear reducers. A wormgear has been selected for this application that will be supplied by Automation Direct. There will be more to come as this project progresses.
Pleasantville High School Solar Array (and it’s creators!)
The Industrial Technology students at Pleasantville High School in Pleasantvile, Iowa (southeast of Des Moines) are building a multi-mirror solar hot water heater. The main assembly is now complete, and the next challenge for the students is to motorize and automate the array so that it can track the sun throughout the day.
The above picture, taken last semester, shows most of the students that designed and started building the solar panel over a year ago. The project is now in it’s third semester, and many new students have designed parts and incorporated them into the panel. When the project is complete the (more…)
My name is Trevor Hughes and I am a student at Nampa High School located in Nampa, Idaho. My friend Mason Trowell and I are working with the high school science teachers to design and build a coil accelerator. A coil accelerator uses copper wire wrapped around a non-metallic tube and high voltage/current going through the coil to propel a metal object through the tube. We are using a 1.1” diameter aluminum pipe and some high…
VIDEO: Humanoid Robot \”Hubert 2010\”
I am creating a stationary multi-axis Humanoid Robot that I call the “Hubert 2010.” Here are the details:
Humanoid robots have been in development for many years and with advances in closed-loop industrial automation technology (Sensors, motion control, pneumatics, PLC’s, & PAC’s) the possibility of using household humanoid robots to help us with daily tasks is becoming an ever closer possibility.
Thanks to companies like Automation Direct, some fortunate finds on Ebay, and company contributions it has been possible to create a potentially advanced and expensive project like mine on a reasonable budget. I originally was going to (more…)
This ITT-Tech student surveys the conveyor project that moves products from three locations and sorts and delivers those products to three separate locations based on color codes.
To move the items, we use a main conveyor with two infeed and two outfeed conveyors attached to it. The two infeed conveyors transfer cargo to the main conveyor as long as cargo in not coming along on the main. (more…)
Capstone Project in Electrical Engineeering at Kettering University
As an electrical engineering senior design capstone project at Kettering University located in Flint Michigan, we were required to build a pinball machine. The machine was to utilize a PLC to control scoring inputs, light outputs, reset button, and control the electromagnets and doorbell. The PLC my group selected was the DirectLogic DL-06, and we planned to use the freely downloadable DirectSoft100 programming software to program it. We were able to program basic features, but when we tried to program more advanced features we found that we were exceeding the 100 word limit. We contacted Automation Direct and they were kind enough to donate a full version of DirectSoft5 to Kettering. With the unrestricted programming package we were able implement all the features we desired – such as the doorbell and flashing lights when the game is won.
Check out our YouTube video to see (more…)
Dead-by-Dawn is one serious “scenario paintball” team (check out this article in Wired Magazine). These guys built a tank from a turf loader, but hey – other teams have tanks – DbD decided to put a double-barrel auto-loading cannon on theirs – and they used an AutomationDirect DL06 PLC to automate the loading and firing of that cannon.
They have promised to post a write up here soon. Until then here’s a link to their site, be sure to check out the “Tech” page, with YouTube vids and much more about the Necronomicar, and the cannon: “Boom, Boom”.
Sam Flournoy has built a Biodiesel Processor and now he’s working on automating it using lots of Automation Direct components, including a DL06 PLC, C-more screen, and many others. He submitted this picture:
His website and YouTube videos … (more…)
I wanted a way to rip my CD collection automatically. I have over 2000 “store bought” CDs, and I wanted to get them into I-tunes (or winapp, etc.) without having to sit at my PC for a month moving the CDs in and out of the PC CD drive. There was an old automated CD burning device at the office, and they said I could borrow it – as long as I didn’t break it, or prohibit it from functioning as a CD burner. Here’s the donor device:
It’s a “Composer plus” from Primera. It was originally sold for limited mass production of CDs. You fill up one of the hoppers with blanks CDs, and it transfers them one at a time into the CD drive (at lower right), where they are burned (via an attached PC and some custom software), then the arm fetches the burned CD back out of the CD tray and puts it in the completed hopper, and repeats. My company has outgrown it; we got a larger unit with multiple CD drives and an attached printer. At first I thought that it might work as an automatic ripping device without modification, but the software only works for burning, there was no way to get it to rip. I’m sure it might be possible to reverse engineer the device driver, and create such software from scratch, but I thought I could find an easier way… (more…)
We had some Automation Direct parts left over from a system integration job: an LED stacklight, a 18mm capacitive sensor, and several others. I got bored one day and put some of them together just for fun. With a couple of tiny 12 volt batteries inside, this stack light will now illuminate when ever it’s placed on a metal surface. We’ve had lots of fun placing it on various surfaces around the office. People assume we’ve drilled a hole in their credenza or other office furniture to run the wiring. Then they pick it up, and the lights go out.
Funny to us geeks anyway…
The sensor is mounted in the base of the stacklight, pointing down of course. We put a small radio shack switch under there also, to turn the unit on and off. (more…)
Our Homeowner’s Association (HOA) wanted some lights at our beach area that members could easily turn on at night, but which would automatically go off after a couple of hours. I put together this project with three timers and some pushbuttons from AutomationDirect
that solves the problem nicely.
The timers have dials on the front, and can be adjusted from .05 seconds, up to 60 hours. We decided on 2 hours for our application…
Users simply push the appropriate button to turn the lights on.
The lights automatically turn off after 2 hours (duration is selectable).
The reset button allows users to turn-off all the lights on demand. (more…)