Automation Resources Group Blog

New office construction

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:50:36 -0500

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.

Got leaks?

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:36:00 -0500

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

Just in time for snow season

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:27:00 -0500

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 wrong. The removal of excess material after the pressing process and the careful grinding of the ski tips, for example, are two steps that continue to be completed manually.

These steps have typically been considered too complex to allow efficient automation. Yet this is exactly what the Upper Austrian company Fill, leading provider of ski and snowboard production systems, has been able to accomplish. The main attractions of the new solution are its mechanical automation, with sophisticated multi-axis kinematics, and its electrical innovation, with a clever combination of drive and CNC control technology from B&R.

Here’s the link to the automotion magazine article

How to survive the recession

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:12:47 -0500

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 need to make sure that you have a positive free cash flow. Or to put it another way, avoid burning cash. That’s very fundamental. [You must be able to] still generate cash, even with a market as treacherous as the one we’ll be facing. There is an end to any crisis, and this one is no exception. There will be an end. And you want to be ready. You want to have innovative products, strong fundamentals, a team that believes in the brand and believes the company will be ready to fight again.

Check out the rest of the interview here.

B&R at CSU Chico

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:26:28 -0500

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 the B&R Power Panel (PP35), designed as a controller and operator panel, as the main controller. Peripheral devices can be connected via standard integrated B&R CAN interface. Students control pneumatic actuators, read sensors, control stepper motors, and in one project read analog voltage of a battery to determine its condition. “We are now able to teach critical technologies that all engineers should know,” said Repanich.

Check out the full article here: Fill the skills gap: Chico State students learn with donated power panels

Why is there so much silicon in the valley?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:45:10 -0400

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 industries concentrate in certain locations, except that in such cases the logic involves things like a deep labor market for specialized skills and a good market for suppliers of specialized inputs. What determines which industry locates where? Often, accident: Silicon Valley owes its existence in large part to a couple of guys named Hewlett and Packard, who started some stuff in their garage, New York is New York because of a canal that only pleasure boaters use today.”

Link

This video is an intersection of two great passions of mine:...

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:52:33 -0400

This video is an intersection of two great passions of mine: automation and bacon.

My apologies to any vegetarians who might be watching.

Field Service

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:20:27 -0400

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 about it?

The Big Picture tells the story through some amazing images of the process.

Large Hadron Collider

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:12:00 -0400

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.

B&R at Semicon West. (Pardon the cameraphone)

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:23:26 -0400

B&R at Semicon West. (Pardon the cameraphone)

Semicon West

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:58:00 -0400

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!

-David

Video

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:37:45 -0400

Priorities

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:06:41 -0400

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 against other important things is entirely different. Many people chicken out of this process. They hedge, delay and deny the tough choices, and the result is that they set up projects to fail. No tough choices means no progress. In the abstract, the word important means nothing.

Link