Taking a Walk on the Wild EV Side – A Supplier’s Observation of Tesla Motors

If you’ve ever visited Greenfield Village or the Henry Ford museum, it’s easy to mentally thrust yourself back in time, as you stand in the midst of the carefully preserved yet functional, living artifacts that exist in this jewel of a living museum in the middle of busy Dearborn, Michigan.  It’s quite easy to imagine what early pioneers like Karl Benz, Ransom Olds, and Henry Ford experienced as they tinkered with the internal combustion engine or toyed with the idea of automated assembly.  It’s a little harder to imagine how these people fought through and endured the negativity created by those who didn’t share the vision.

Those early “car people”  had the intestinal fortitude to resist staying in the grips of a transportation paradigm involving the horse and buggy, to fight the status quo and to stand fast to their beliefs that hydrocarbon powered vehicles would replace animals pulling wagons as the prime mode of transportation.  They did this in the face of the naysayers, extraordinary resistance from the media, and in general, people who wished them ill-fated ventures.  It’s safer to throw stones at people who try new and different ways of doing things; just to be safe and just to be “right”.

Is it much different today with those change agents who pioneer new ideas in technologies?   With a wobbly economy and people still worried about having a job in a shaky election year, it becomes easier to just stay in where it’s warm and fuzzy.  $500 million flubs like Solyndra, a flood of PV chips on the market, and global alternative energy competition in all forms make it easy to take the low route or throw stones. It also makes for a gray, grumpy, pessimistic outlook.

What’s an Artificial Lift?

Artificial Lift

An artificial lift is a device used in the oil and gas industry when there is insufficient pressure necessary to lift fluids from a oils well to the surface in already-drilled wells or in new wells, to increase the flow rate above what would flow out naturally.  You can see what an artificial lift looks like in the picture to the right.

Hydraulic cylinders are used in the valve systems of artificial lift systems to move fluids in and out of the process. An explosion-proof transducer is the perfect choice for mounting inside the cylinders for valve control, as it is a Class 1, Division 1 Certified unit that can be used in these potentially explosive environments (pictured at bottom).

 Artificial Lifts are replacing on shore “Horse Head” pumps (a.k.a. nodding donkey, thirsty bird, pump jack or grasshopper pump), and is the overhead drive for a reciprocating piston pump that is used to move liquid out of a well if there is not enough pressure to move it out naturally to the surface.  Approximately 5 to 40 liters of liquid is moved with each stroke of the horse head pump (different sized pumps will move different volumes of fluid).

 

For more information on explosion-proof transducers, click here.

 

Balluff TA12 Explosion-Proof Transducer

”Well Jack Me Up!” – Error Proofing a Car Jack Kit

Picture this scenario.   You, your spouse, or one of your kids happens to be riding one night in the middle of nowhere when a tire blows on the car.  First, we can only hope that your loved one remembered the lesson they received on how to change a flat tire in a pinch (if we gave it to them in the first place), because on this particular night, there’s no cell coverage where they’re at, AAA isn’t going to get to them very quickly, there isn’t a can of Flat Fix in the trunk, and there isn’t much traffic on the road they’re traveling on for a good Samaritan to likely show up any time soon (the scenario is extreme, but not impossible).  The jack kit sitting under the spare tire is going to seem pretty doggoned important, don’t you think? 

We take a lot for granted these days and for those of us who have been involved in the world of factory automation for many years, getting to work with customers to help solve Error-Proofing challenges on the plant floor is like one big “Class Trip” every single day!   It’s kind of like providing our customers with “toys for adults”.  And it’s a real hoot.  We get to see how stuff is made, get the opportunity to help manufacturers build better products through our Error-Proofing sensing technologies and learn over time which end products to buy and which ones to shy away from!  We also quickly realize the extreme importance of the DETAIL!  Like the components in the emergency jack kit!  What if the main handle was missing when you or your relative went to jack up the car?  What if there wasn’t any grease on the main lift shaft threads and the car couldn’t be raised?  What if other parts were missing from the kit? Not a good scenario.

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.

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. 

Why would anyone pay more for an M18 Inductive Proximity Welding Sensor?

Answer: Because it has the extreme potential to save a lot of money.   The general mentality these days, with regards to inductive proximity sensing, has been, “Lowest price wins the business”.   Some manufacturers and industrial consumers alike have been accused of treating these devices as true commodities.  Some salespeople have also caved in over the years with regards to price pressures in exchange for the big win.  We’re all guilty to a degree, for leaving money on the table and hastening price degradation for this category of automation device over the years!

Maybe a little of this is justified.  As electronic device manufacturing volume increases, prices for sub-components used to make these sensing devices decrease while manufacturing methodologies become more streamlined.  The result is that cost comes out, prices drop and the game becomes more globally competitive.   But with regards to application specific, hostile sensing applications, there must be a paradigm shift otherwise consumption can become gargantuan, both for material and for labor costs in the real world of factory automation. Using “generic” non-application-specific sensors in rotten environments, like welding for parts presence or Poke-Yoke applications, creates a problem.  “Generic” sensors fail with regularity, change out becomes a massive maintenance issue, machine down time becomes costly and even bad parts can potentially be made (a really bad problem….audits and everything associated with shipping bad parts must obviously be avoided as much as possible).