Browsing by Author "Durkin, Robert J."

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    A Building-Block Approach to Industrial Controls Laboratories Using Programmable Logic Controllers
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2016-06) Durkin, Robert J.; Department of Engineering Technology, School of Engineering and Technology
    Industrial control systems design often incorporates reusable sections of prior design that can easily be adapted for new machine and process control systems. For instance, inclusion of a tri-mode control structure (Manual, Automatic and Set-up modes) often becomes a ‘cut and paste’ section from a previous control system design. The prior design is already proven, and development time is available for the newer aspects of the control system. This building-block method can also be used to structure university laboratory exercises for EET (Electrical Engineering Technology) industrial controls design courses. Reusing software sections from previous laboratories can enhance the student’s design capability by focusing lab time on the new problem instead of recreating the old structures. This paper describes a semester-long industrial controls laboratory using programmable logic controllers (PLC) as the primary lab equipment. It describes twelve increasingly difficult PLC laboratory experiments that generally build on the components of the prior labs. The final lab assignment is an open-ended team project to design a complete system for a typical industrial machine or process. All of the PLCs are networked to provide the students with communications content within the lab experience. The pedagogical features of the laboratory exercises are illustrated and results from student comments and numerical ratings of the effectiveness of the lab exercises and equipment are also included in the paper.
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    EET Senior Design Project - IMS Dynamic Display
    (2019-05-05) Elkins, Michael; Boggess, John; Weissbach, Robert; Lin, William; Durkin, Robert J.
    The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum has a display transmission that is still actively used in IndyCar today. The museum wants to incorporate this transmission into an interactive display, so guests of all ages can see internal gears spin as well as see the transmission shift between its gears. This project includes mechanical and electrical engineering technology students working together to mount wire motors and sensors. The transmission will have a user-friendly interface allowing the guests to change gears and to turn the transmission on and off. The transmission will be driven by a 24V DC motor and uses a 24V DC linear actuator to rotate a barrel cam to change the position of the forks, allowing the gears to get shifted up and down. A metal enclosure houses the electrical components that provide power and control to the system. The outcome of this project is a failsafe and robust system that will operate within the IMS Museum while being continually updated.
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    Statistical Methods Can Confirm Industry-sponsored University Design Project Results
    (ASEE, 2018) Durkin, Robert J.; Yearling, Paul; Mechanical Engineering and Energy, School of Engineering and Technology
    An industry-sponsored project was recently developed to automatically inspect soup mix packages. The industry sponsor had determined that its highest customer complaint was the absence of a flavor packet within the soup mix package. It partnered with Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) to develop an automatic system to detect the missing flavor packet and remove it from the production line before the package was bulk-packed for shipment. The system was designed, built and installed by a team of Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) and Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) students. A four-hour production test confirmed that the percentage of soup mix bags without flavor packets detected by the machine was nearly the same as the total percentage of bags without flavor packets returned by customers the previous year. But how reliable was the system over a longer period? This paper describes a semester-long IUPUI project to determine how well the inspection system performed on its production line for a ten-month period. An honors-student project was devised to use multiple statistical methods to determine whether the automatic inspection system actually improved the overall quality of the soup mix shipments; leading to reduced customer complaints. Customer complaint data for four-million units were analyzed to determine whether a significant difference of complaints existed between the production line with the inspection system and the one without. These data were analyzed using a Two Proportion Hypothesis Test to determine if there is a difference, and a Confidence Interval to estimate the size of difference. The student concluded with 95% confidence that customer complaints were significantly lower on the production line with the inspection system.