With permission- Mr. Gail R. Hirschy
Pre-Engineering, Mechatronics Instructor
CHESTER
COUNTY CAREER CENTER, CHESTER, SOUTH CAROLINA INTEGRATES THE OWI, INC.’S
ROBOTIC ARM EDGE INTO MECHATRONICS CURRICULUM
At the Chester County Career Center in Chester, South
Carolina a Mechatronics course is offered to students under a
high school Pre-Engineering program. One
of the requirements for a capstone project is for high school seniors to
design, assemble, program and troubleshoot an industrial robotic automated
assembly line and to be highly skilled in the area of robotic automation. Without constructing an actual robot in their
prerequisite courses, students have found the troubleshooting aspect of the robot
quite difficult, especially when working with the various joints and the
movements of the joints. The robots
used on the simulated assembly line are used strictly for programming due to
the need for accuracy and working with close tolerances. Constant disassembling and reassembling the
robotic arms on the simulated automated assembly line would cause the accuracy
and tolerances to lose their calibration.
Students can remember the various joints and parts of a robot when they
have the opportunity to actually construct and have hands-on activities with an
actual robotic arm.
For the past several years, the Career Center has been
researching various educational robots on the market that could be used in the
prerequisite course to teach the students about the various parts and construction
of an industrial robotic arm. OWI, Inc.
offers the best robotic arm on the market and the robotic arm is very
representative of the robotic arms used in industry. Learning can take place on the OWI Robotic
Arm Edge and can be transferred very easily to the real-world robotic arm. The OWI, Inc. Robotic Arm Edge is a robotic
arm that is identical to the robots that the Chester County Career Center uses
in the classroom on the industrial robotic automated assembly line. South Carolina is the home to BMW Automotive
Manufacturing, Boeing Aircraft, Michelin Tire, Bosch Industries and other major
manufacturing industries that require highly skilled employees trained in
robotic automation. The OWI, Inc.
Robotic Arm Edge is the perfect solution for a learning tool for understanding
the inner workings of a robot that is identical in nature to the robots being used
in industry today. We, at the Chester
County Career Center in South Carolina would like to thank OWI, Inc. for
providing a solution to our missing link in training students to work for highly
skilled robotic automated industries.
The OWI, Inc. Robotic Arm Edge will be put to excellent use as students
will advance from the Robotic Arm Edge to the automated robotic simulated
assembly line to an actual industrial robot to on-the-job training and a
career.
Mechatronics 1 students will be provided
with an OWI Robotic Arm Edge when entering the classroom for the first
time. The students will be required to
assemble the arm, label each joint, describe the rotation of each joint, be
familiar with all parts on the robotic arm and all students will be required to
operate the robotic arm to perfection.
The student will also program the robotic arm using the Images Serial PC
USB Interface. The instructor will also
provide problems for the robotic arm that the students must troubleshoot and
fix in order for the robotic arm to function properly.
Upon completion of the Robotic Arm Edge
activity, the students will then proceed to programming a single robot on the
simulated industrial assembly line. The
students will be required to program not only the robot but also the
electropneumatic section of the assembly line along with a conveyor system and
a quality control system. Learning about
the robotic automated assembly line will involve a real-world problem that
requires the students to design, assemble, wire, program and troubleshoot the entire assembly line. The completed project must be completed
within a ten hour time frame in order to keep a company’s non-production time
to a very small amount of time.
Transferring knowledge from the Robotic Arm Edge to the simulated
automated assembly line is very important for the students.
When the second section of the required project is completed the
students will now start adding various robotic stations into the automated
assembly line. The entire assembly line
will require three robots to produce one product and for a fourth robot to
check for final product quality. All
four robotic stations must be synchronized to perform an operation on the
product without allowing the remaining three robots to become idle during
production.
The knowledge that has now been gained
from the robotic arm activity and the simulated robotic automated industrial
assembly line activity can now be transferred to the ABB IRD 140 actual life
size robot which was donated to the Chester County Career Center by one of the
major industries in South Carolina. The
students will now design, test and build a working end effector for the ABB
robot. Once the end effector has been
installed on the ABB robot, the students will program the robot to use the end
effector in a real-world situation. This
end effector can be a gripper to move product, a welding arm to weld parts, a
paint nozzle, or any other device the students choose to invent. The ABB robot must have the end effector
installed, must be programmed, must operate flawlwessly and must be able to
operate continuously.
Robotics is a very comprehensive and a
very important part of the overall Mechatronics curriculum. Robotics is only one of the six areas the
students will study in order to become certified and a completer in
Mechatronics. The World needs highly
skilled and highly trained workers for the industrial workforce. The Chester County Career Center in Chester,
South Carolina is very appreciative of OWI, Inc. for playing a very vital role
in helping us to educate students to
become highly skilled workers for the future of the World by providing us with
the Robotic Arm Edge.
