Project Vision
This project aims to teach students about factory equipment and processes like robotic arms, conveyor belts, and PLC control systems. It uses a variety of different mechanical components, such as belts, pulleys, and bearings, as well as a wide range of electrical components like relays, microcontrollers, stepper drivers, and a PLC.
Project Requirements
- Use industrial components and practices
- Manual and programable box movement, identification, and sorting
- Scalable for use in labs
- Safe to operate and be around
- Demonstrate simple building and design concepts, math and robot kinematics, real life IOT experience
Table of Contents
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Computer Aided Design using SolidWorks and Matlab
Overall Project
The industrial automation project consists of an array of conveyors centered around a robotic arm, as pictured below. The belt system can move boxes in a square loop where they can be identified and diverted to a waiting area as appropriate. This can be done remotely with code created by students via the Opto 22 PLCs or manually with the control panels. The robotic arm can then move the boxes from the waiting areas as instructed, with its 3 degrees of freedom, in addition to its base rotation, gripper rotation and clamping. The robotic arm is directed by programable inverse kinematics, driven by classroom tested Nucleo STM32 microcontrollers, industry level PLCs, and X-Nucleo-IHMO2A1 stepper driver boards.
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| Industrial Automation Complete Assembly |
A video of the conveyor array and robot arm working in conjunction can be found below. As shown in the video, the boxes are automatically moved conveyor-to-conveyor, identified, and only boxes coloured green are diverted to the waiting area. From there the robotic arm picks up one of the green boxes and moves it to a different waiting area.
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| Automated Box Movement and Sorting |
Manufacturing
Machining
| Parts Made on the Milling Machine | Parts Made on the Lathe | Tapping Aluminum Extrusions on the Flex-Arm Tapping Station |
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| Conveyor Motor Mount | Robotic Arm Rod End Connector |
The conveyor motor mount could not be machined using the waterjet as it required thick material to withstand the motor torque. A mill was used to cut slots on the mounting face to allow for the motor mount to have adjustable positioning to aid in the assembly of the drive train. A mill was also required to place the through holes as tight tolerancing was required to interface with the threaded holes on the motor itself. A lathe was used for the rod end connector as the part is rounded, symmetrical, and constructed from an easy to machine aluminum alloy.
Waterjet and Laser Cutting
| Parts After Waterjet | Parts After Cleaning | Parts After Bending |
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| Robotic Arm Grabber Components | Robotic Arm Motor Mount | Conveyor Ramp |
A multitude of sheet metal parts were used in both the robotic arm and conveyor projects, namely for the motor mount in the caser of the robotic arm and the guide rail, ramp, motor sensor, and belt plate for the conveyor. Sheet metal was used when cheap cost, quick manufacturing time, and component simplicity was more important than precise tolerancing or material strength. Use of the waterjet allows for high accuracy feature placement, however, relative precision of these features on different faces is lost when the bends are made by hand.
Electronics Prototyping
| Pullup Resistor Array | Crimped Faston Connection for Limit Switch | Linear Regulator and H-Bridge Switches |
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| Conveyor Control Panel |
Industrial Automation Showcase Meeting with Brock Solutions, Opto 22, and Inductive Automation Notes
Digital Twin
Brock Solutions recommends using Ignition to create the Digital Twin. This could be an excellent project for software students- it involves scripting, measurement of physical features, and testing. A digital twin can be useful for a number of things- simulating throughput, testing failure cases, and simulating machine events. For a system like the Industrial Automation project, things happen quickly, so a fair bit of optimization is required to accurately model the system.
Long Term Projects
Involving chemical engineering students is a long term goal - there are many employers in the region, and chemical engineering is not a current strong point of the ideas clinic. Additionally, several design and tolerancing improvements must be made in order to implement a more reliable and robust system. For example, the current ramp system is difficult to adjust which can interfere with box movement.