Archive for December, 2007

Thoughts on the Coming End of Year

Steve Meyer
December 17th, 2007.

End of year is coming. I’m sure you’ve noticed. Christmas shopping is in full swing. I enjoy the end of year pause. Its a great time to reflect. Sometimes a great opportunity to reflect on the big issues of life that take a back seat during the rush of the urgent daily events that occupy our time.

End of year in the business world has its own peculiarities. I’ve gotten a couple of notices from motion control equipment vendors. Spend your budget before the year ends. Special pricing available.

The rationale is to spend the funds you have been allocated so that you don’t get shorted in next year’s budget cycle. Use it or lose it. This may not be the best logic for purchasing something, but it is sometimes a reality in our business processes.

I have been a part of this process in the sales division of a couple of large companies. A directive comes out that we need to pull in every order we can in December to make the sales revenue for the year as large as possible.

But the one-year business planning and evaluation process leaves something to be desired. Frequently driven by stockholder perception about our business, management is compelled to achieve performance. Is this reality, or someone’s wish of what reality should be? Are financial analysts running the business, or are the stakeholders running it?

How do we integrate long term strategic objectives in an environment where monthly sales goals are all that matters? How do we insure adequate investment in new product development so that sales revenue can grow? How do we insure timely product development cycles when revenue growth is at stake?

Let’s take some time this end of year and think about new ways to run things, let’s figure out different ways to plan for, and measure success. And let’s take time to reflect on all our blessings.

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What is Mechatronics?

Steve Meyer
December 17th, 2007.

It seems as if one of the “new” buzzwords in the industrial controls arena is mechatronics. What was for years, motion control, was reinvented as mechatronics for a variety of reasons. In part, the motion control term didn’t communicate the mechanical nature of the problem. And that is a very important distinction to consider. Good motion control solutions come from good mechanical design. It is almost impossible to fix a mechanical design with high performance motion control hardware. But an elegant mechanical solution with good motion control technology is a beautiful thing indeed.

So the new definition helps to make some important distinctions. I think it also suggests the possibility of integrating pneumatic and hydraulic technology as well. I have worked on solutions that incorporate air or hydraulic, and the neat thing is that through the electronic or electrical control systems, these technologies can be seamlessly integrated into one working solution leveraging the best solution for each part of the process.

But somehow the more we try to define, the harder it is to put a fence on what field of endeavor we are in. Its fairly easy to identify mechatronics when looking at a robot or a machine tool. Specialty machinery in all the major fields, medical packaging, food industry applications, large data storage systems, are all identifiable as applications of mechatronics.

But what about engineering a better clothes washer, dishwasher, refrigerator? Does the definition fit? Yes. Its all about engineering better mechanical solutions and building better electrical and electronic controls to enhance the performance. The biggest difference being that once a solution is arrived at, it has to be produced in hundreds of thousands of systems.

Most CD and DVD players have a mechatronic solution for loading the disk, a spindle drive to spin the disk and a mechanism to move the read head across the tracks of the platter to read the information and controls to coordinate all those activities. Audio or video.

The electric car? Mechatronic? You bet! The design challenge is to find the maximum driving range based on the efficiency tradeoff of a 2 speed load requirement. High torque at low motor rpm to start the vehicle and low torque and high rpm to run the vehicle at highway speed. The big difference is this is a portable system, so the power source has to go with you. Batteries? Well, the Tesla roadster with over 7,000 lithium cells has the situation under control, but don’t try this with lead acid. GM tried it with the EV-1 and it took 1500 lbs of batteries to make it work.

Wind Power? Mechatronic. Find the ideal turbine or blade configuration to turn a gear train that spins an electric generator. The lower the minimum wind speed that the system will operate at and the higher the efficiency, the more energy that can be harvested from the wind.

So in addition to all buzz about mechatronics’ contribution to industry, there are emerging markets and applications that will make a difference in our energy consumption patterns, national security interests and improve our environment. All at the same time.

Makes this mechatronics stuff downright appealing. Al Gore notwithstanding.

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Energy and Politics

Steve Meyer
December 08th, 2007.

Yeah, we’re going to get into the “Green” technology issue. But I want to consider the public policy side of energy conservation. This is at least as big a topic and will require several installments, but for today, we’ll talk in terms of motors and controls.

My clothes washer quite recently. The centrifugal switch on the dual winding ac motor got clogged and the motor burned out. It would cost about half the price of a new machine to replace the motor if I did the repair. And we would still have a 12 year old washing machine that had some problems.

So we bit the bullet and replaced the machine with a new one. GE claims that the washer will save 1/3 of the electricity that would be required to run the old machine. Nice. And the new machine has no transmission, REALLY nice. It makes almost no sound while running.

I am guessing, and will try to confirm for a future article, that the new system is based on the switched reluctance motor and drive which has the virtue of being totally programmable. You can program on the fly the desired speed torque curve for low speed/high torque or high speed/low torque, eliminating the need for mechanical transmissions in many two speed applications. In the past, this approach was considered too expensive, but in the presence of declining costs of permanent magnet materials and cheaper power semiconductors, the trade off was probably positive.

So here are the facts:

In the US we manufactured 9.4 million washing machines in 2005. The average energy cost has been reduced by 30% on a baseline of 480 kw/yr. That would be an estimated saving of 1.5 Trillion kw (terawatts?) if 1 year’s production of energy saving washing machines replace older machines.

In recent years, the US Department of Energy has spent about $7B a year looking for ways to improve energy consumption patterns and fund alternative energy programs. So when DOE puts $50M into a competitive program to improve refrigerator efficiency, or similar amounts into the creation of the Neptune washing machine, is this proper use of taxpayer funds, or is DOE subsidizing private enterprise. Surely the Westinghouse corporation could afford the development if they were convinced that it would sell lots of new washing machines.

Consumers have typically had very limited impact on product performance issues. Look at the US car market. US buyers have asked for higher mileage vehicles for decades. US manufacturers have refused to develop them. The US Government has legislated increased mileage standard, and the car companies have avoided responding with the excuse that its too difficult or will take longer than the Government mandate allows. The result is that we have lost at least 1/3 of the US car market to foreign suppliers. That’s a lot of American jobs lost, and lost to poor corporate leadership.

American manufacturers do not seem to be listening. The old philosophy was to resist change because new designs cost money. DOE seems willing to underwrite some of those costs. So why are so many of our key industries stagnating? The electronics industry gets it. They are too new to have learned the old way. Instead they keep inventing new things to peak our interest and get our dollars.

America needs our industrial base in order to prosper, to provide employment and produce goods that people want. American manufacturing needs leaders who understand the role of innovation as the engine of progress.

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profits and progress

Steve Meyer
December 01st, 2007.

Consolidation in the motion control industry has been very significant in the last few years. Many smaller suppliers have been bought by larger companies. Thomson Industries, once the largest supplier in the actuator market, was purchased by Danaher, now the dominant supplier in the overall motion control market.

After an intense period of mergers and acquisitions, things may be slowing dow. Maybe there’s nothing left to buy for the giants. But in the race to build empires, who wins and who loses? One man’s opinion on the value of a brand or product may result in the demise of a valuable technology if it is deemed to have poor growth potential or a lower rate of return than other products.

Rockwell Automation divested Reliance Electric. As an interesting side effect the venerable Electrocraft brand emerged as its own company again, providing some unique products in the mix of the motion industry.

The “shell wound” or “moving coil” servo motor has been in production by Electrocraft for many years. Its primary virtue is the extremely low rotor inertia. This technology grew out of the need for controlling 1800 foot long reels of magnetic tape, 1/2″ wide, so that they could be read by computers at, what was at the time, incredible speed. This branch of motor technology stills provides high cycle rate performance that is difficult to achieve any other way.

What a pity it would have been if the Electrocraft brand had been abandoned as was suggested in meetings that I attended some years ago. How many poor choices are made in rationalizing resources in the giant corporations where maximizing profit is the only criterion of evaluation.

Real innovation comes from solving problems and serving customers. Not from financial analysis. Every company needs to make money in order to insure its continued existence and to meet its obligations to its customers and employees, first and foremost. But we need to strive toward better balance between profit and value.

Innovation costs money. Will we reach a point where financial evaluations stifle the very creativity that drives our industry? I hope we can find a better balance.

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