Broken sensors that won’t stay fixed!

It’s another day at the plant, and the “Underside Clamp Retracted” sensor on Station 29, Op 30 is acting up again.  Seems to be intermittently functioning…the operator says that the line is stopping due to “Error: Underside Clamp Not Retracted”.

You think to yourself, “Didn’t we just replace that prox last week?”  A quick check of the maintenance log confirms it: that prox was indeed replaced last week.  In fact, that particular prox has been replaced seven times in the last six months.  Hmm….the frequency of replacement looks like it’s going up…four of the seven replacements were performed in the last two months.

What’s going on here?  Is it really possible that seven defective proxes just all happened to end up at Station 29, Op 30, Underside Clamp Retract?  Not likely!

Is Your Spidey Sense Tingling?

The July 2011 issue of Hydraulics and Pneumatics magazine featured an interesting application story about how hydraulics systems were designed and used in the “Spiderman: Turn off the Dark” Broadway musical.  The article describes some of the challenges faced by motion systems designers, and how those challenges were solved.

One particularly challenging aspect of the hydraulic motion systems was the requirement that multiple hydraulically driven platforms had to be raised and lowered simultaneously.  The motion of the platforms had to be very precisely controlled, making hydraulic component selection critical.

Vision sensors conquer 1D and 2D barcode reading applications

2D barcode example

Written by: Andrew Bollinger

Many industries are trending toward the adoption and use of two-dimensional barcodes and readers. Thus the growth in popularity, acceptance of use, and the positive track record; 2D code readers offer a better way to track data.