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Friday Night Work Crew
ELECTRIC DRIVE
Mike Hummer, the Rockwell Automation salesman for the Traverse City area, donated a 10 hp, 3 phase, AC motor to AIM for us to experiment with electric drive for vehicles. A typical automobile uses about 25 hp to cruise at highway speeds so the 10 hp motor is a good size for experimenting. Two motors, one on each axle would produce a peppy 20 hp drive system. Four motors, one on each wheel would produce 40 hp for a sports car like performance. As you might have guessed, gasoline engines and industrial electric motors are rated a bit differently and their torque curves produce dramatically different performance for any given hp rating. I had the motor out of its crate again today, looking at how I might adapt it to one of the several test vehicles here. In the movie, Who Killed The Electric Car, the designer of GM's variable frequency drive explained its operation as a very powerful three channel audio system. I am glad to see that stock AC motor controllers are available now with most every feature I would ask for: regenerative braking, dynamic braking, soft start, soft stop, variable speed, and reversing are all features available in off the shelf controllers. This is a big change from just a couple of years ago when these features were custom orders.
Boston Gear: Intelligent Motor Controllers
FRIDAY NIGHT WORK CREW
Friday night is when the AIM support staff meets here at the shop to do all the things necessary to keep the operation running smoothly. They are responsible for cleaning floors, bathroom, straightening the shelves, organizing books in the library by subject, filing the technical journals that have arrived, organizing the tools and materials in the shop, the twice a year inventory of tools and materials ... "a place for everything and everything in its place." The new location and coordinate system, how far east from the west wall, how far north from the south wall and how high off the floor in whole feet creates a one-foot cube that should get you close enough to the item to find it. Boxes and bins are labeled with their location so once pulled from storage, they can be returned to where they came from. Some of the newer people do not see the point to this but are also the first to complain when they cannot find what they are looking for. There is a lot of overhead expense in making the shop an efficient place to work. A really well organized shop will allow us to make better use of one-time and short time volunteers. What is the value of being able to find the tool or part you need, when you need it?
WORK
The change in score keeping method - going to parts count seems to be a big improvement, everyone is suddenly interested in how much they can get done on their shift. The next step is to post the scores for everyone to see as is done in sporting events and makes them more fun. In the past volunteers often took the entire 4-hour shift to accomplish one task from the list of hundreds of tasks that need to be done. With this new program, it took 35 minutes to make the first sign and install it. Second, one took the same length of time. By the 18th sign, making the sign and hanging it was taking 6 minutes a sign. 18 signs in 4 hours is 13 minutes per sign on the average. Tackling a difficult task and getting it done should leave the person who did it with a great sense of accomplishment.
THE WEBSITE
Several suggestions on how to improve the AIM website have been made and the outline of what the new one will look like is starting to take shape. There are a few things people have asked to be explained, such as what is the relationship between ROBOT CLUB of Traverse City, MI and AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC also what is the legal status of each. This should be interesting to read about in the soon to be Untamed Desert colored, map based AIM website. It is not quite done yet so there is still time to offer suggestions or contribute artwork / diagrams / schematics, or become a sponsor and get your logo on the technology demonstration truck AGV WENDY DARLING and website.
2007 DARPA Urban Challenge
Photo by AIM Team member Linda Graham
This is a through the windshield view of typical interstate highway markings that the production version of the automatic guided truck will have to deal with when it drives the roads of the USA.
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org
Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html
Friday Night Work Crew
May 2, 2008
ELECTRIC DRIVE
Mike Hummer, the Rockwell Automation salesman for the Traverse City area, donated a 10 hp, 3 phase, AC motor to AIM for us to experiment with electric drive for vehicles. A typical automobile uses about 25 hp to cruise at highway speeds so the 10 hp motor is a good size for experimenting. Two motors, one on each axle would produce a peppy 20 hp drive system. Four motors, one on each wheel would produce 40 hp for a sports car like performance. As you might have guessed, gasoline engines and industrial electric motors are rated a bit differently and their torque curves produce dramatically different performance for any given hp rating. I had the motor out of its crate again today, looking at how I might adapt it to one of the several test vehicles here. In the movie, Who Killed The Electric Car, the designer of GM's variable frequency drive explained its operation as a very powerful three channel audio system. I am glad to see that stock AC motor controllers are available now with most every feature I would ask for: regenerative braking, dynamic braking, soft start, soft stop, variable speed, and reversing are all features available in off the shelf controllers. This is a big change from just a couple of years ago when these features were custom orders.
Boston Gear: Intelligent Motor Controllers
FRIDAY NIGHT WORK CREW
Friday night is when the AIM support staff meets here at the shop to do all the things necessary to keep the operation running smoothly. They are responsible for cleaning floors, bathroom, straightening the shelves, organizing books in the library by subject, filing the technical journals that have arrived, organizing the tools and materials in the shop, the twice a year inventory of tools and materials ... "a place for everything and everything in its place." The new location and coordinate system, how far east from the west wall, how far north from the south wall and how high off the floor in whole feet creates a one-foot cube that should get you close enough to the item to find it. Boxes and bins are labeled with their location so once pulled from storage, they can be returned to where they came from. Some of the newer people do not see the point to this but are also the first to complain when they cannot find what they are looking for. There is a lot of overhead expense in making the shop an efficient place to work. A really well organized shop will allow us to make better use of one-time and short time volunteers. What is the value of being able to find the tool or part you need, when you need it?
WORK
The change in score keeping method - going to parts count seems to be a big improvement, everyone is suddenly interested in how much they can get done on their shift. The next step is to post the scores for everyone to see as is done in sporting events and makes them more fun. In the past volunteers often took the entire 4-hour shift to accomplish one task from the list of hundreds of tasks that need to be done. With this new program, it took 35 minutes to make the first sign and install it. Second, one took the same length of time. By the 18th sign, making the sign and hanging it was taking 6 minutes a sign. 18 signs in 4 hours is 13 minutes per sign on the average. Tackling a difficult task and getting it done should leave the person who did it with a great sense of accomplishment.
THE WEBSITE
Several suggestions on how to improve the AIM website have been made and the outline of what the new one will look like is starting to take shape. There are a few things people have asked to be explained, such as what is the relationship between ROBOT CLUB of Traverse City, MI and AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC also what is the legal status of each. This should be interesting to read about in the soon to be Untamed Desert colored, map based AIM website. It is not quite done yet so there is still time to offer suggestions or contribute artwork / diagrams / schematics, or become a sponsor and get your logo on the technology demonstration truck AGV WENDY DARLING and website.
2007 DARPA Urban Challenge
Photo by AIM Team member Linda Graham
This is a through the windshield view of typical interstate highway markings that the production version of the automatic guided truck will have to deal with when it drives the roads of the USA.
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org
Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html
Posted by Paul Grayson on May 2, 2008 | Comments (0)
Industries: Machine Control
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