Automated Manufacturing and the Homebrewed Engineer

I think I mentioned earlier, that while I was at welding class, at my local Technical College, I met the  instructor from the Automated Manufacturing (AM) program. I found out that they have Bridgeport mills and lathes available for training in the intro to AM class. Next Monday evening I get to sit-in on the class when they work with those machines.


Earlier this week I joined the AM class on a field trip. We went to the Generac Power Systems plant in Eagle, Wisconsin, mainly to see their robotic welding set-up, but Holy Cow!  It was a great experience for a (wannabe) Homebrewed Engineer like me. We saw  stainless steel exhaust tubing being bent on a mandrel bender, a CNC laser cutting table with a whopping 4' x 25' cutting table (my gestimate). We saw the engine line, where we saw everything from 4 cylinder Ford natural gas fueled engines to huge Mitsubishi industrial diesels. We also saw a CNC water cutting table where they cut insulation panels with a 10,000 psi jet of water.


The robotic welding cell was what we really came to see. This is where they weld up big diesel fuel tanks. The tanks we saw looked like they had a fuel capacity couple of a couple of hundred gallons.  Because the tanks are made of sheet metal the bodies are not perfectly symetrical, so you could never program the robot to run a plotted course for the welds. Instead the robot "feels" the tank first to gauge the positions of some key landmarks on the areas to be welded.  Then when the welding is underway the robot can sense how close the welding head is to the metal by measuring changes in the electrical circuit that vary with the distance of the electrode in the welding "torch" head from the work. It was fascinating.


As usual, I was the geek who asked questions about everything, and I was only a guest of the AM class!


One of the things I came away from the experience with is that there really is a bottom line in these operations.  The company really seemed to be trying to make the most out of every penny it invested. I learned that the engineers have a wish list of equipment that goes unfulfilled because of cost constraints.  I found out that they even shop the used machinery markets for deals. The industrial engineer that guided our tour, and the experience of seeing things firsthand, put a human face on what was only a big corporate name to me before the tour. Of course I'm always pulling for the entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial spirit and always have been throughout my adult life.


All of this makes me want to build a CNC router and/or a CNC plasma cutter from some of the plans and parts that are circulating on the internet.  More on that  later ;-)  -- Mitrik Spanner