2. Importance of Mechatronics in automation

Figure 1.1.3 Operations involved in design and manufacturing of a product

 

Today's customers are demanding more variety and higher levels of flexibility in the products. Due to these demands and competition in the market, manufacturers are thriving to launch new/modified products to survive. It is reducing the product life as well as lead-time to manufacture a product. It is therefore essential to automate the manufacturing and assembly operations of a product. There are various activities involved in the product manufacturing process. These are shown in figure 1.1.3. These activities can be classified into two groups viz. design and manufacturing activities.

Mechatronics concurrently employs the disciplines of mechanical, electrical, control and computer engineering at the stage of design itself. Mechanical discipline is employed in terms of various machines and mechanisms, where as electrical engineering as various electric prime movers viz. AC/DC, servo motors and other systems is used. Control engineering helps in the development of various electronics-based control systems to enhance or replace the mechanics of the mechanical systems. Computers are widely used to write various softwares to control the control systems; product design and development activities; materials and manufacturing resource planning, record keeping, market survey, and other sales related activities.

Using computer aided design (CAD) / computer aided analysis (CAE) tools, three-dimensional models of products can easily be developed. These models can then be analyzed and can be simulated to study their performances using numerical tools. These numerical tools are being continuously updated or enriched with the real-life performances of the similar kind of products. These exercises provide an approximate idea about performance of the product/system to the design team at the early stage of the product development. Based on the simulation studies, the designs can be modified to achieve better performances. During the conventional design-manufacturing process, the design assessment is generally carried out after the production of first lot of the products. This consumes a lot of time, which leads to longer (in months/years) product development lead-time. Use of CAD–CAE tools saves significant time in comparison with that required in the conventional sequential design process.

CAD-CAE generated final designs are then sent to the production and process planning section. Mechatronics based systems such as computer aided manufacturing (CAM): automatic process planning, automatic part programming, manufacturing resource planning, etc. uses the design data provided by the design team. Based these inputs, various activities will then be planned to achieve the manufacturing targets in terms of quality and quantity with in a stipulated time frame.

Mechatronics based automated systems such as automatic inspection and quality assurance, automatic packaging, record making, and automatic dispatch help to expedite the entire manufacturing operation. These systems certainly ensure a supply better quality, well packed and reliable products in the market. Automation in the machine tools has reduced the human intervention in the machining operation and improved the process efficiency and product quality. Therefore it is important to study the principles of mechatronics and to learn how to apply them in the automation of a manufacturing system.