In-Situ Measurement of Electrode Wear During EDM Drilling using Vision System

Machine vision system is an image-based technology used to perform automatic inspection and analysis such as process control and robot guidance. The aim for this project is to develop a fully automated electrode wear detection system in EDM by using machine vision system and apply this system in detecting electrode wear in EDM. This project was conducted using DSLR camera as monitoring device. The electrode undergo hole making process with a depth of 10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm, 40 mm, and 50 mm to observe the electrode condition. The image of the electrode will be remotely captured from the laptop and then will undergo image processing process using Matlab software to calculate and determine the electrode wear. The output of this project will show the images of the electrode wear and its wear value. Findings from the project showed that this system is suitable and applicable in EDM super drill machine to monitor the tool condition

Benchmarking Process and Its Relationship with Organizational Performance

Benchmarking is recognized as an essential tool for continuous improvement of quality.Nowadays, many public sector organizations have been encouraged to implement benchmarking asone way of satisfying the government's requirement that public organizations provide best valueservices. This paper begins with discussion of the literature that is integrated to point out the generalbasis of the topic. Then, this study will address the questions of whether the factors that affectingsuccessful benchmarking has relationship with benchmarking process as well as whetherbenchmarking process will lead to improvement of organizational performance. Therefore, the studyhad interviewed officers that involved in benchmarking project within 35 local authorities inPeninsular Malaysia. Finally, this paper also focuses on the methodology and data analysis of thestudy

CURING OF POLYMERIC COMPOSITES USING MICROWAVE RESIN TRANSFER MOULDING (RTM)

The main objective of this work is to compare the difference between microwave heating and conventional thermal heating in fabricating carbon/epoxy composites. Two types of epoxy resin systems were used as matrices, LY5052-HY5052 and DGEBA-HY917-DY073. All composite samples were fabricated using resin transfer moulding (RTM) technique. The curing of the LY5052-HY5052-carbon and the DGEBA-HY917-DY073-carbon composite systems, were carried out at 100 °C and 120 °C, respectively. Microwave heating showed better temperature control than conventional heating, however, the heating rate of the microwave cured samples were slower than the conventionally cured samples. This was attributed to the lower power (250 W) used when heating with microwaves compared to 2000 W used in conventional heating. Study of thermal characteristics as curing progressed showed that the polymerisation reaction occurred at a faster rate during microwave curing than in conventional curing for both the DGEBA and the LY/HY5052 carbon composite systems. The actual cure cycle was reduced from 60 minutes to 40 minutes when using microwaves for curing DGEBA-carbon composites. As for LY/HY5052-carbon composites, the actual cure cycle was reduced from 3 hours to 40 minutes. Both conventional and microwave heating yielded similar glass transition temperatures (120 °C for DGEBA systems and 130 °C for LY/HY5052 systems). Microwave cured composites had higher void contents than conventionally cured composites (2.2-2.8% and 1.8-2.4% for DGEBA and LY/HY5052 microwave cured composites, respectively, compared to 0.2-0.4% for both DGEBA and LY/HY5052 thermally cured composites). C-scan traces showed that all composites, regardless of methods of curing, had minimal defects

An Electronically Reconfigurable Patch Antenna Design for Polarization Diversity with Fixed Resonant Frequency

In this paper, an electronically polarization reconfigurable circular patch antenna with fixed resonant frequency operating at Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) frequency band (2.4-2.48 GHz) is presented. The structure of the proposed design consists of a circular patch as a radiating element fed by coaxial probe, cooperated with four equal-length slits etched on the edge along x-axis and y-axis. A total of four switches was used and embedded across the slits at specific locations, thus controlled the length of the slits. By activating and deactivating the switches (ON and OFF) across the slits, the current on the patch is changed, thus modifying the electric field and polarization of the antenna. Consequently, the polarization excited by the proposed antenna can be switched into three types, either linear polarization, left-hand circular polarization or right-hand circular polarization. This paper proposes a simple approach that able to switch the polarizations and excited at the same operating frequency. Simulated and measured results of ideal case (using copper strip switches) and real case (using PIN diode switches) are compared and presented to demonstrate the performance of the antenna

Is Halal Certification Process “Green”?

These days, the environmental perspective on operations is becoming more common. In fact, any effort in improving efficiency in the organization is closely related to sustainability of our environment. The Environmental Management System (EMS) certification such as ISO 14001 has been accepted as the world standard. In addition to these ISO standards, there are other certifications such as Halal certification. There is no research that investigates the relationship between Halal Certification process and its effect on our environment. Hence, our main research question is that is Halal Certification process can be considered as environmental friendly? In this paper, we argue that Halal Certification also contributes towards green initiatives. We used EDC-UUM as our case study. EDC-UUM is actively seeking the Halal certification from Malaysian authority agency or JAKIM. In this study, we assessed the perception of the EDC-UUM staff on the issue of going green. The findings and implications are discussed in the paper

Continental copepod biodiversity in North-Eastern Borneo, Malaysia

To obtain a relevant information on copepod biodiversity/distribution in continental Borneo water bodies in June 2011 about 30 different sites in Malaysian state Sabah were visited and more than 50 alcohol and formalin preserved samples in nine rivers, 10 ponds, and six near-road ditches and canals, rice fields and forest leaf litter environment were collected. In literature 16 copepod species were referred for Borneo and 10 other species for Kalimantan (Indonesean) states. After the Sabah sample analyses, the copepodspecies richnessin the Borneo island increased more than twice. The most abundant with species number genera were ranged as: Mesocyclops (13), Elaphoidella (6), Microcyclops (5), Eucyclops (4), Thermocyclops (4), Halicyclops (3) and Paracyclops (3). Species biodiversity in different sites plotted against type of water body and several environment parameters revealed significant positive correlations for number of species and both for depth and temperature in sampling site (Pearson non-parametric tests 0.6 and 0.5 respectively at p < 0.05). One way Kruscal-Walise dispersal analysis confirmed significant relationship between copepod biodiversity and water transparence/ turbidity (p < 0.05). The highest copepod biodiversity values were found in ponds (23 species), near road ditches (15), rivers with transparent water (12), lowland or swamp areas related with rivers (9). The lowest number of species were found in rivers with turbid water colored in orange with soil-erosive matter where the average number of copepod species (0.2 ± 0.08 species per site) was about 20 times less than in waters without silt particles (3.8 ± 2.8 species per site). This indicates a strong negative effect of soil erosion resulting water land-used activities and deforestation in the watershed on the biodiversity of aquatic organisms in Borneo. In one sub-urban population of Mesocyclops cf. thermocyclopoides, a trans-sexual mutation of female-sized but constructed as male armed with genicu late antennule organisms was found that possibly reflect a negative result of wide artificial hormone-based pesticide usage in this area. Keys for Harpacticoida species for Borneo and for Eucyclops species known for SEAsia, Australia and India are provided. Within practically each copepod genus studied in Borneo there are forms with problems on species identification by existing faunistic keys. This possibly indicates a necessity of new species description from this area in the nearest future

Photo-inhibition Effect from Strong Electron Withdrawing Nitro Group in N-[(E)(4-Bromophenyl)Methylidene]-4 Nitroaniline

Light induced effect of N-[(E)-(4-bromophenyl)methylidene]-4nitroaniline was investigated using UV-Vis spectrophotometer. This study revealed that the presence of strong electron withdrawing nitro group inhibited the photo-reactivity of the compound. Mainly, molecular structure and functional groups have tremendous influence on chromophoric compounds. The photoisomerization effect was not found in this compound, due to the photo-inhibition of nitro group present in the molecular system

Khaya Cellulose Supported Copper Nanoparticles for Chemo Selective Aza-Michael Reactions

We prepared a highly active Khaya cellulose supported poly(hydroxamic acid) copper nanoparticles by the surface modification of Khaya cellulose through graft copolymerization and subsequently amidoximation. The Cunanoparticle (0.05 mol% to 50 mol ppm) was selectively promoted Aza-Michael reaction of aliphatic amines to give the corresponding alkylated products at room temperature in methanol. The supported nanoparticle was easy to recover and reused seven times without significance loss of its activity

Multi objective machining estimation model using orthogonal and neural network

Much hard work has been done to model the machining operations using the neural network (NN). However, the selection of suitable neural network model in machining optimization area especially in multi objective area is unsupervised and resulted in pointless trials. Thus, a combination of Taguchi orthogonal and NN modeling approach is tested on two types of electrical discharge machining (EDM) operations; Cobalt Bonded Tungsten Carbide (WC-Co) and Inconel 718 to observe the efficiency of proposed approach on different numbers of objectives. WC-Co EDM considered two objective functions and Inconel 718 EDM considered four objective functions. It is found that one hidden layer 4-8-2 layer recurrent neural network (LRNN) is the best estimation model for WC-Co machining and one hidden layer 5-14-4 cascade feed forward back propagation (CFBP) is the best estimation model for Inconel 718 EDM. The results are compared with trial-error approach and it is proven that the proposed modeling approach is able to improve the machining performances and works efficiently on two-objective problems