Our company makes conveyor belt machines that move/print/pack/label products. Each machine has a different function, length, and speed. The speed can be adjusted at each machine, but occasionally a customer wants to control the speed of all machines with only one machine. We have managed to get away with this by fine tuning all the machines, locking them in place, and routing speed through the one master machine (read "you just have to have the right touch"). This set up is real easy to mess up. Turn one knob on a follower machine and the speed is out of alignment. Big headache.
Recently we have discussed about and ordered an Arduino for prototyping. The thought is that this will allow us to run each machine at a constant speed with respect to the other without complicated circuitry as the Arduinos will communicate and adjust speeds to match. Looking through the catalog, we looked at their add-on (they call shields) and discussed what sort of connections and ideally the functionality of the end result. We could go pretty far, but the cost and our standard of machine integration may limit us to this one application. We will continue to develop the idea over the next month, and work with the programmers to come up with a usable prototype.
So you've actually used Arduino at your company? That's interesting. What industry are you in?
ReplyDeleteI work at a company that builds industrial size printers, and machines that stick labels on mail, and Monopoly stickers onto fry boxes. And we are getting into RFID stuff too. One customer wants RFID tags on all their clothing, so we built machines to RFID tags at 300 (or so) per minute.
ReplyDeleteWe have not used the Arduino yet. And we may not use it, but we are looking into it. Our parts guy wanted to order one, so he did. We know of one instance where it would be useful, but it would depend on if the customer needed that level of sophistication. I see a lot more uses for it, particularly cable management between machines, but it would eliminate the backwards compatibility of our machines, so that may cause more problems.
William, I truly enjoyed reading your blog on Arduino. This was new technology to me. It sounds like information for those majoring in Computer Information Science..
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