July 2011
1 post
April 2011
4 posts
Weird Software Bugs →
I especially like the Heisenbug: a bug that changes its behavior when you try to investigate it.
January 2011
1 post
How Flash Memory Is Made
This video from Lexar shows what it takes to go from raw silicon to a flash drive. As you can imagine, the amount of automation involved in this process is pretty incredible. Pick and place, labeling, packaging, wet process, wafer dicing - all of these processes involve intense amounts of extremely precise control.
Just the kind of thing that makes an automation engineer drool…
-David
February 2010
1 post
A simple explanation of why magnets attract, from...
Seen on kottke.org
January 2010
1 post
Candy Canes!
A little late for the holidays but very interesting anyway. Some of the techniques shown here are so clever and yet so obvious in retrospect. Bend the canes after they’re packaged! Of course!
December 2009
3 posts
World Cup Soccer Ball Manufacturing
This is an amazing video of how the soccer balls for the 2010 World Cup are manufactured.
Meetings
Do the robot!
November 2009
1 post
Automation Studio Video
This is a cool video showing the benefits and ideas behind Automation Studio.
October 2009
5 posts
A Sense of Scale
At Automation Resources Group we often find ourselves in very detailed discussions about mechanical accuracies, repeatabilities, and scales. It can be easy to lose track of orders of magnitude when dealing at the micron or sub-micron level. How long is a micron anyway?
Enter “Cell Size and Scale” from the University of Utah.
It starts with the scale of a coffee bean and moves down...
Training Room!
So this slightly gray and drab looking cell phone shot does not nearly do justice, but we’ve just completed the conference and training area in the Emeryville office. It features a custom built conference table, whiteboards, a B&R Industrial PC, and a 46” flatscreen TV for presentations. We’ve used this several times now for internal training and brainstorming and we’re...
Letter to Micromanagers
Ever since I read “Making Things Happen: Mastering the Art of Project Management” by Scott Berkun I’ve been following his blog.
Today he wrote “A Letter to Micromanagers” which I thought was funny:
Owners of thoroughbreds never stop their horses during a race, every ten seconds, to remind the horse and jockey how to run, where the finish line is, or that it’d be a...
Computer Assisted Design!
They Might Be Giants put out this great song about Computer Assisted Design. I agree: Computer Assisted Design and manufacturing is AWESOME.
UI Fundamentals for Programmers
Although this talk is very heavily focused on web application development, I found the presentation of his design process very informative, with many parallels to automation.
What I found most interesting is that his entire design process starts with modeling, which is coming up with a fundamental description of how a system works, what components it is made up of, and what they do, and how they...
September 2009
3 posts
"Vandal Proof Keyboard"
For all those machines you build that you expect to be attacked by punks and anarchists, there’s the “Vandal Proof Keyboard” from Rafi.
I found this image (which I love) while browsing their website looking for a very elusive contact block part number. They really have thought of everything.
Very Important Addition To The Office
New whiteboards!
This may seem like a very insignificant development.
It is not.
They are porcelain-on-steel, top-of-the line, and my brain is already storming with excuses to get up and diagram some new systems. Awesome!
New ARG Engineer: Josh Polansky
We’ve been really busy growing the last 6 months and a part of that has seen the addition of a new engineer to the team. Here’s what Josh had to say as a greeting:
Hello all! I am proud to be the newest member of a great team here at Automation Resources Group. I recently graduated from the Mechatronics Engineering program at CSU Chico. In my four years at Chico State I worked on...
March 2009
1 post
New office construction
In case anybody’s noticed some occasional outrageous noise in the background during a conference call, this ought to satisfy any curiousity as to what’s going on.
February 2009
1 post
Got leaks?
The largest vacuum chamber in the world. Try to imagine finding the source of your leaks in a chamber 12 storeys high that pulls 1E-6 Torr.
NASA Images
Sent at 11:36 AM on Friday
January 2009
1 post
Just in time for snow season
This machine looks incredibly cool. B&R technology applied to CNC grinding of excess materials in ski production. What some people would do to get their hands on the pile of “not quite right” skis that probably stack up next to this machine during testing!
If you think that every step in the production of skis has already been taken over by machine automation, you’re...
November 2008
2 posts
How to survive the recession
I read an interview this morning with Carlos Ghosn, head of Renault and Nissan, with his perspectives on the car industry and the economy in general. The words seem pretty wise, almost encouraging. Here’s something that resonated with me:
What must a carmaker do to survive and prosper?
First, you need to [weather] the next two years. That’s a basic condition. To get through them, you...
B&R at CSU Chico
Interesting article written about B&R Industrial Automation hardware being used at the mechanical engineering department at CSU Chico. Friend of the company Nick Repanich heads up the efforts there, teaching students the real skills they can use right out of college in automation applications.
Each semester students build different machines with automated solutions. In each project they use...
October 2008
2 posts
Why is there so much silicon in the valley?
I was interested in understanding a bit about why Paul Krugman won the Nobel prize for his work in trade, and although some of the stuff, as he says, seems obvious now, it was not so obvious in the past. Consider, for example, why companies in certain industries tend to cluster around each other, and why those places are where they are:
“The same sort of logic explains why particular...
September 2008
1 post
Field Service
I hate to link right back to the same site twice in a row, but in this case it’s too good to pass up.
We’ve all heard about (or personally experienced) those times when some maintenance issue or software bug causes someone to hop on a flight across the country at a moments notice to take care of a problem.
Now imagine that the problem machine is in outer space. What are you gonna do...
August 2008
1 post
Large Hadron Collider
As a group of automation engineers we have a unique appreciation for beautiful wiring on large machinery. So this photo essay on the building of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland was pretty inspiring.
July 2008
4 posts
Semicon West
We’ll be at the B&R booth all three days at Semicon.
Directions to B&R’s Booth:
Get to the North Hall of Moscone Center on Howard St, between Third and Fourth St.. Here’s what it will look like:
Google Street View of Moscone, North Hall
Then go down the long escalators, take a left, and wrap around the corner in the main open room:
We’ll see you there!
...
Priorities
I just came across a very interesting essay on priorities at Lifehacker:
Prioritization is always more emotional than intellectual, despite what people say. Just like dieting to lose weight or budgeting to save money, eliminating things you want, but don’t need, requires being disciplined, committed, and focused. Saying “exercise is important” is one thing, but ranking it...