TUT-microfactory – a small-size, modular and sustainable production system

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 78-83.Micro and desktop factories are small size production systems suitable for fabricating and assembling small parts and products. The development originates in the early 1990’s Japan, where small machines were designed in order to save resources when producing small products. This paper introduces the modular TUTMicrofactory concept, developed at Tampere University of Technology during the past 15 years, and its applications. The sustainability of miniaturized production systems is discussed from three perspectives – environmental, economic and social. The main conclusion is that micro and desktop factories can remarkably enhance the sustainability of manufacturing from all these three perspectives

Liiketoimintamallit ja sovellukset mikro- ja desktoptehtaille

The terms microfactory and desktop factory originates from Japan in the 1990’s. Small machines were developed to produce small parts and save resources. In the late 1990’s, the research spread around the world, and multiple miniaturized concepts were introduced. However, the level of commercialization remains low. More empirical evidence and business aspect is needed. This thesis discusses how the systems can be used and how the providers benefit of it, now and in the future. The research includes 18 semi-structured interviews in Europe. The interviewees are both from academic and industry, including equipment and component providers, and users and potential users. According to the interviews, research and the industry have different viewpoints to the miniaturization. Within the academics, miniaturization links to a general philosophy to match the products in size. In the industry, the small size is only a secondary sales argument. The main factors preventing breakthrough are the lack of small subsystems, the lack of examples and production engineers’ attitudes. It appears that the technology is in the beginning of the S-curve, and it has systematic development as well as slow technology diffusion. More cooperation and a large scale demonstration are needed. In the literature, there are multiple applications. The MEMS industry is stated as one promising industry. The research aims usually for high level of automation. Based on interviews, the systems are used as a semi-automatic tool for component manufacturing and assembly. In the future, educational and laboratory use as well as prototyping are promising. Local cleanrooms interest but questions arise. In addition, retail level personalization, home fabrication and the MEMS industry include problems. For providers, the technology offers two promising customer segments (Lean manufacturers and fully loaded factories), few additional segments (e.g. educational, laboratories and offices) and it eases some alternative charging models (e.g. leasing, and capacity sales)

Process automation for analytical measurements providing high precise sample preparation in life science applications

Laboratories providing life science applications will gain on improved analysis´ efficiency and reliability by automating sample pretreatment. However, commercially available automated systems are especially suitable for the standardized MTP-format allowing for biological assays, whereas automating analytical sample pretreatment is still an unsolved challenge. Therefore, the purpose of this presentation is the design, the realization, and evaluation of an automated system that supplies multistep analytical sample pretreatment and high flexibility for easy upgrading and performance adaption

Production and Characterization of Electroactive Polymeric Membranes by Electrospinning

In the last decades the development in miniaturization of devices has become a very important topic for the future of technology. Although the miniaturization of devices has been successful in de-creasing the size of devices, the same can not be said about their energy sources. Recent work in the nanomaterials filed has started to show some progress in the towards self-powered energy sources that generate power form the environment that surrounds them. This energy can be scavenged from solar, thermal, mechanical, etc. The advances in this area shows that is possible to generate this environmental energy using nanomaterials with different architectures: nanowires, nanofibers and films. In this work nanofibrous membranes produced by electrospinning were used as nanogenerators. Electrospinning is a low-cost, easy and scalable methods to produce nanofibers. The fibres and mem-branes produced can have different morphologies, thicknesses and are lightweight, therefore being good candidates for miniaturized devices and wearables, etc. The nanofiber membranes were produced with Poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-co-TrFE)), which is a polymeric electroactive material with good piezoelectric and pyroelec-tric properties, and is commonly used has an energy generator. The energy generation is highly associ-ated with the crystalline structure of its β-phase. Three different materials (Carbon Paint, PEDOT:PSS and Aluminium), were used to create the electric contacts of this nanogenerator. The contacts where deposited by electrospinning (PEDOT.PSS), airbrush (Carbon Paint and PEDOT:PSS) and by thermal evaporation (Aluminium). DSC, XRD, FTIR, Pyroelectric Constant, Impedance spectroscopy, Tensile Strength, etc. were used to characterize the behaviour and properties of the materials and device. The electrospinning process did not show any increase in β-phase fraction and the dipoles do-mains orientation. Airbrush deposition of PEDOT:PSS was the only process that produced an electric contact capable of being used on a device. After poling, the device displayed a pyroelectric response, thus showing that the poling process improved the electroactive properties of the polymer

Micro and Desktop Factory Roadmap

Terms desktop and microfactory both refer to production equipment that is miniaturized down to the level where it can placed on desktop and manually moved without any lifting aids. In this context, micro does not necessarily refer to the size of parts produced or their features, or the actual size or resolution of the equipment. Instead, micro refers to a general objective of downscaling production equipment to the same scale with the products they are manufacturing. Academic research literature speculates with several advantages and benefits of using miniaturized production equipment. These range from reduced use of energy and other resources (such as raw material) to better operator ergonomics and from greater equipment flexibility and reconfigurability to ubiquitous manufacturing (manufacturing on-the-spot, i.e. manufacturing the end product where it is used). Academic research has also generated several pieces of equipment and application demonstrations, and many of those are described in this document. Despite of nearly two decades of academic research, wider industrial breakthrough has not yet taken place and, in fact, many of the speculated advantages have not been proven or are not (yet) practical. However, there are successful industrial examples including miniaturized machining units; robotic, assembly and process cells; as well as other pieces of desktop scale equipment. These are also presented in this document. Looking at and analysing the current state of micro and desktop production related academic and commercial research and development, there are notable gaps that should be addressed. Many of these are general to several fields, such as understanding the actual needs of industry, whereas some are specific to miniaturised production field. One such example is the size of the equipment: research equipment is often “too small” to be commercially viable alternative. However, it is important to seek the limits of miniaturisation and even though research results might not be directly adaptable to industrial use, companies get ideas and solution models from research. The field of desktop production is new and the future development directions are not clear. In general, there seems to be two main development directions for micro and desktop factory equipment: 1) Small size equipment assisting human operators at the corner of desk 2) Small size equipment forming fully automatic production lines (including line components, modules, and cells) These, and other aspects including visions of potential application areas and business models for system providers, are discussed in detail in this roadmap. To meet the visions presented, some actions are needed. Therefore, this document gives guidelines for various industrial user groups (end users of miniaturized production equipment, system providers/integrators and component providers) as well as academia for forming their strategies in order to exploit the benefits of miniaturized production. To summarise, the basic guidelines for different actors are: • Everyone: Push the desktop ideology and awareness of the technology and its possibilities. Market and be present at events where potential new fields get together. Tell what is available and what is needed. • Equipment end users: Specify and determine what is needed. Be brave to try out new ways of doing things. Think what is really needed – do not over specify. • System providers / integrators: Organize own operations and product portfolios so that supplying equipment fulfilling the end user specifications can be done profitably. • Component providers: Design and supply components which are cost-efficient and easy to integrate to and to take into use in desktop scale equipment. • Academia: Look further into future, support industrial sector in their shorter term development work and act as a facilitator for cooperation between different actors

Design and implementation of double H’-gantry manipulator for TUT microfactory concept

This Master of Science thesis depicts the mechanical design and physical implementa-tion of double H’-gantry manipulator called DOHMAN. The H’-gantry mechanism is belt driven, two dimensional positioning device in which the belt is arranged in capital “H” form, and enables one linear and one rotary movement. The Ball-Screw Spline, in addition, is mechanism that consists of Ball Screw Nut, Ball Spline Nut, and Lead Screw with screw and spline grooves that fit both nuts. This mechanism enables linear and rotary displacement along the same axis. The DOHMAN robot is made of two par-allel kinematic H’-gantry structures linked with a miniature Ball Screw-Spline mecha-nism. The resulting structure is capable of performing four degrees-of-freedom (DOF) displacements along the three Cartesian axes X, Y and Z as well as a rotation W around the Z axis. The size and the other geometries of the DOHMAN robot aim to fit into the microfactory concept (TUT-μF) developed at Tampere University of Technology. For position control and visual servoing of the robot, an additional module was de-signed and implemented. Custom design of mechanical parts along with the selection of off-the-shelf components was done for building the robot prototype. The chapters and the appendix of this thesis thoroughly explain the design decisions and the implementa-tion. During the design development a new innovative homing strategy for linear Z and angular W axes was suggested and later implemented. This innovative homing provides efficient use of space for mounting the limit switches, avoiding huge loss in the overall Z-axis movement, and significantly reduces the cabling issues in the moving structure. Besides the innovative homing, other advantages of DOHMAN are distributed actuation and homogeneous workspace. The distributed actuation decreases the overall mass of the moving structure and also reduces the cabling within the overall mechanical system. The consistency in the workspace eases the control of the robot because there are no regions to avoid while moving the end effector

Implementing additive manufacturing in microfactories

This thesis presents two technologies with the potential to radically change the way we manufacture, design and recycle products in the future. The two technologies in question are additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing, rapid prototyping, solid freeform manufacturing, and a variety of other names) and the microfactory concept. In this work, the technological basis for both these technologies and their status in industrial manufacturing is briefly examined. The aim of the microfactory concept can be described simply: to miniaturize production equipment to roughly the same size as the product. This reduces the energy consumption and factory floor space of the production process. The benefits of the concept also include faster setup times and improved usability. On the other hand, some barriers also exist, these being mainly the lack of examples and components. TUT’s Department of Production Engineering has been active in the field, demonstrating a modular microfactory concept suitable for a variety of cases. Additive manufacturing, or 3d printing as it is more commonly known, refers to a group of technologies which allow fabricating parts layer-by-layer, eliminating the need for subtractive shaping of the parts. A CAD model is “sliced” so that each cross-sectional slice equals one layer of the part built by the additive manufacturing machine. This allows producing parts with geometries impossible to manufacture using traditional methods, e.g. a sphere within a sphere. In practice, two types of additive manufacturing are happening currently: industrial production, characterized by expensive machines, materials and parts and low volumes, and peer production, in which consumers are purchasing or building their own low-cost machines and producing customized products at home. Some synergies and potential applications for combining the concepts have been found. Additionally, some technical concepts were developed and presented in the thesis. Finally, the validity of these ideas is briefly discussed in the conclusion of the thesis

2U CubeSat Structural Design and Integration

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science, Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Yevgeniy Byeloborodov on April 18, 2017

Automation strategies for sample preparation in life science applications

Automation is broadly applied in life science field, with robots playing critical roles. In this dissertation, a platform based on a Yaskawa industrial dual-arm robot (CSDA10F) is presented, which is to automate the sample preparation processes and to integrate analytical instruments. A user-friendly interface has been provided by integrating the platform with SAMI Workstation EX Software. For automating the sample preparation processes, the robot needs to use various commercial tools, including pipette, syringe, microplate, vial, thermo shaker, ultrasonic machine and so on