The Best Way to Communicate with Smart Sensors

When I am discussing with customers the use of smart sensors and smart devices in industrial automation, I always get posed with these questions:

• How do the smart sensors interface with the controller?
• How do you configure the device?
• How do you get diagnostics out of it?
• What other information can it provide?

This is sort of solved in a muddled world of proprietary communications or expensive network enabled sensors.  But John and I have been talking for a long time about IO-Link, which can easily and cost effectively answer all these questions!

The Intern Perspective – My First Tradeshow

Last week I took part in my first business trip and trade show event: FabTech in Chicago. I am still very much in the processing phase of this event but I know it has had a large influence on my life.

On Sunday, Paulina (a Balluff colleague) and I left the Cincinnati area around 9:00 AM. We arrived around 1:30 or 2:00 and checked into the Hyatt. We then went over to the McCormick building to finish setting up the Balluff booth. The vastness of the building itself was inspiring. Carpets were rolled up, displays were being manipulated in several booths, and I was experiencing slight sensory overload.

After a few hours running around, cleaning, wiring, and finishing up all the final touches, the power was cut and we called it a day. The evening brought some slight exposure toChicago.

I’ve got the Feeder Bowl Blues (not to be confused with “Feed Bag Blues”)

Honestly, every day we run into one of the most commonly seen and vital categories of automation equipment imaginable on the factory floor – the good old automation stalwart servant, the feeder bowl.

These devices are imperative to successful automated assembly processes and are used in hundreds of applications in factory automation.   But the successful and timely, synchronous delivery and individual of components provided by the feeder bowl from the bowl itself through the feed track system, is dependent on reliable sensing.  If “clogs” or traffic jams occur anywhere in the pathway, it interferes with the overall timely assembly of goods, regardless of the industrial discipline.  We see a wide array of sensing technologies from manufacturer to manufacturer, regardless of the country of origin, regarding sensing in these machines.

Inductive proximity sensors, ultrasonic sensors, photoelectric types are all integrated into the tracking of screws, nuts, washers, and a wide array of other metallic and non-metallic sub components fed into the manufacturing stream. One of the most common products used in sensing components being supplied through feeder bowl tracks even today, is the separate amplifier and armor jacketed pair of fiber optic emitters/receivers.  Do they work? Absolutely.  Do they fail?  Absolutely.

Faster Than Light Particles? Slow Down a Minute…

I have been fascinated by all the media hoopla following the stunning announcement last month by scientists working at the OPERA project in Italy. Scientists there think that they may have discovered particles called neutrinos traveling at speeds faster than light.  That is, the particles arrived at the detector earlier than light would have arrived when traveling in a vacuum.

Needless to say, if true that would appear to stand modern physics and the universe as we understand it upside down!  So much of modern physics is based upon Einstein’s theory of relativity, which holds that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light.

There was an immediate spate of reporting and opinion declaring that “Everything we know about the universe is wrong”.

I thought to myself, “Really?”

Ever since the media hyping of “cold fusion” back in the 1980s, I have learned to be cautious when hearing reports of stunning new scientific discoveries.  We all want to believe in amazing new revelations and the happy fact is that credible reports of fantastic advances in science and technology arrive on an almost daily basis.  But when something is reported that seems “too good to be true”, or that doesn’t at all fit into our current understanding of the world…open-minded but healthy skepticism is warranted.

Heading to Fabtech? Read this first.

Balluff has the opportunity to share some of the company’s proven Error-Proofing Techniques in a Seminar at Fabtech on November 14, 2011 in McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.  The session is segmented into two areas:

1.   Automated/Robotic Weld Cell Process Improvement. We continue to see a great deal of need in this arena.  When the economy tanked in 2007/2008, many companies inside and outside of the Automotive Industry were on the edge and many good, talented people were let go.  In some cases, the people whose jobs were eliminated had many years of experience in maintenance and in manufacturing engineering.  When volumes of work came back, so did the problems associated with weld cell nesting, Poka-Yoke, clamp sensing because of loading impact, weld debris hostility and other issues related to peripheral sensing devices in weld cells; in many cases, without the experienced personnel to reduce time in consumption used to address a wide range of problems.  In this session, we will discuss and provide examples of proven techniques aimed squarely at these productivity and time-wasting problems that will return significant ROI for many customers.