Mechanics, construction and design of machines

The training is aimed at people holding various positions (design engineers, production workers, maintenance engineers, etc.).

The optimal personnel mix is ​​a team working within a single unit (including management and employees). This training structure allows for understanding employee limitations and knowledge gaps, as well as assessing any potential discrepancies in expectations between management and lower-level employees.

List of training courses: Maintenance

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Innovations in the mechanics and machine construction industry

Over the past 20 years, mechanical engineering has changed beyond recognition. While some of this is driven by new technology, much more is concerned with meeting today's vastly different user requirements while simultaneously fending off competition from low-cost market entrants.

Oczywiście the pressure is the priceand end users are more focused on speed, reliability, flexibility and costs throughout the entire period of operation. At the same time the requirement to stand out from the competition This means machine builders are building significantly more standalone and special-purpose machines, ideally without impacting development time and cost. These two sets of criteria seem contradictory, but they don't have to be, as the latest automation technologies provide machine builders with all the tools they need to develop significantly better designs, faster, and more cost-effectively.

The speed issue is interesting, because it means different things to different industries. Overall speed is certainly less important in individual sectors. No machine builder is ever required to develop a machine slower than the previous generation, which has become increasingly challenging over the years. Naturally, the builders themselves are determined to continually improve machine performance.

Speed ​​​​goes hand in hand with productivity – absolute cycle time means nothing if half the products coming off the line are defective. So speed is also related to reliability, and end users have become adept at monitoring uptime, availability, and productivity to obtain results on overall equipment performance (OEE), which compare the performance of different product lines in different plants around the world.

Flexibility is also a key issueMuch has been written over the years about the need to switch between product variants entering the production line at the touch of a button, but today, flexibility goes much further. End users are looking for machines that allow them to quickly and easily modify the capacity of their production line., for example, by adding a robot-based pick and place station as needed or by adding a specific machine module. Just as OEMs talk about "plug and play" when it comes to integrating automation technology, end users are developing a "plug and play" mindset when it comes to adding functionality to production lines.

Finally, there is the question of the cost of using the machine over its entire lifespan.Yes, the purchase price is important, but end users also want easy upgrade pathsto extend machine life, link operating costs to reliability, and consider support costs. The question then arises, how machine builders can offer all this – developing advanced machines in a cost-effective manner that meet all the criteria for performance and flexibility while being easy to operate. What are the opportunities to build even greater differentiation to develop a true competitive advantage??

Control and automation technologies

The key to success is today's automation technologies and control solutions, which have machine controllers at their heart but which embrace open communication and technologies such as servomotors and robotics, and take advantage of the ever-increasing capabilities and diagnostic functionality of drives, sensors and HMIs, connecting it all together through open programming and software standards.

Some machine builders will have the option of imposing their own automation platform standards or selecting best-of-breed components. Others will have a control platform requirement imposed on their specifications. Fortunately, thanks to open communication standards and open standard programming frameworks such as IEC 61131-3, no design effort is wasted. Function blocks developed in software for a single task can be easily transferred to another. Hardware systems deployed on one machine on a given platform can be easily scaled or even changed to a completely different platform on another. There is no universal solution to machine control, but open standards mean it is an opportunity rather than a constraint.

At the same time, open communication standards based on industrial Ethernet structures not only simplify the integration of machine components at the local level, but also the integration of the machine into the production line and the upstream enterprise. Industrial Ethernet It also opens up the possibility of remote access to the machine, benefiting end users who want to monitor and control different plants in different parts of the world, but also machine builders who want to add value by always offering better support while reducing the cost of that support.

Few machine builders can afford to dispatch development team members for service and support. However, remote access and advanced diagnostic capabilities mean that many seemingly complex machine problems can potentially be resolved remotely in minutes.

There are also many opportunities to add value in terms of machine performance.A recent PLCopen report analyzed the benefits of servo technology. The report emphasized that servos not only significantly increase machine performance but, importantly—and perhaps unexpectedly—also reduce machine cost and complexity. They examined the case of a specific food packaging machine in which traditional mechanical components were replaced by multi-axis servos. The new design reduced the number of pulleys from 45 to 0, the number of belts from 15 to 0, the number of drive sprockets from 15 to 0, the number of splined shafts from 2 to 0, the number of bearings from 18 to 3, and the number of rope shafts from 6 to 0, while the number of motors increased from 1 to 10. The result was an overall reduction of 81% in parts, from 118 to 23. The end result was a faster, better, cheaper and much more compact machine..

Servo drive technology can now be considered plug and play. – simple to integrate and program.

Is innovation dead in mechanical engineering?

The decades between 1970 and 2000 witnessed an explosion of innovation in the machine tool industryDesigners of that era will tell you that rarely were two machines built with the same control architecture. PLCs, HMIs, and servo controllers evolved rapidly, and control system designers were constantly inundated with new technologies. Change was imposed on them.

As machines evolved, so did the complexity of the documentation required to build them. New ways of presenting information entered design offices. Pencils gave way to keyboards, and drawing machines and their ammonia-smelling odors vanished in favor of floppy disks and hard drives.

In this chaotic environment, technology was evolving so rapidly that experience beyond a few years was of little value. It seemed that a year from now, nothing a designer worked on would be relevant. Imagination, initiative and the ability to work outside the comfort zone are the greatest assets a designer could have.

Many companies that entered the 1970s as strong and healthy organizations were unable to withstand the constant changes of that period and disappeared from view. It wasn't just the way machinery was controlled that changed; the machines themselves adapted to new technologies. One example is transfer machines. These gave way to CNC machines, and walking beams were replaced by robots. By the end of the 20th century, the automotive industry had been completely transformed.

The Death of Innovation for Machine Designers

And then it stopped! The automotive sector had reached a new level of innovation. Manufacturers no longer sought novel ideas. Machine specifications gradually became more rigid, and the inventive leaders of the past found themselves in a new, strange situation. Bound by strict standards that valued uniformity above all else, their greatest attributes became useless.

In this new world of standard panels, standard logic, and standard HMI screens, the answer to every new problem was the same: more standards, tighter controls and greater alienation for the free spirits of the pastGradually, without realizing it, companies that had survived the rigors of the last three decades began to show their strengths.

When innovation and initiative are discouraged, degeneration sets in, and companies stop investing in new ventures. Growth may continue for a while through acquisitions of smaller, more energetic companies, but this only temporarily masks the problem.

No matter what direction innovation takes, Companies need to give current customers what they want, but they also need to look for new customers, new ideas and new products to create.This gives hope that the spirit of innovation will survive.