British hybrid electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aviation company Samad Aerospace has launched its concept for Q-Starling, a high-end personal air vehicle (PAV), as luxurious as a private jet at less than half the operating cost.
The interior mimics high-end automotive comfort levels and will include transparencies and synthetic vision to enhance situational awareness.
The Q-Starling will seat two passengers and can be flown by licensed private pilots using a simplified side-stick control. The all-composite aircraft uses ultra-light carbon fiber for higher performance capability and increased strength.
A hybrid-electric turbo-generator will provide power for a large diameter hover and forward thrust fan in the fuselage and a fly-by-wire operated reaction control system (RCS) in the wings. Extensive, built-in safety systems include a ballistic parachute recovery system. http://www.samadaerospace.com
Flying car reaches take-off speed
The Switchblade flying sports car hit 88mph in runway test runs, its calculated take-off speed. Developer Samson Sky notes that’s the same speed the DeLorean had to reach before it could travel through time in the Robert Zemeckis movie “Back to the Future.” Switchblade developers call it a personal time machine because it could reduce a 10-hour, 500-mile drive to a 3.5-hour drive/fly trip.
The $150,000 flying sports car has reservations from 38 countries and all 50 states in America. Classified as a motorcycle by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Switchblade is powered by a turbo-charged, lightweight 200hp liquid-cooled 4-cylinder engine capable of 0-to-60mph in 6.5 seconds and a top speed of 125mph. In the air, it’s designed to cruise at 160mph with a top speed of 190mph.https://www.samsonsky.com
Biden Administration to favor electric vehicles (EVs)
On Nov. 23, 2020, two things happened that will likely drive electric vehicle (EV) adoption through 2024. The General Services Administration (GSA) began working with President-elect Joe Biden on his transition to the White House, and General Motors (GM) dropped out of a lawsuit supporting outgoing President Donald Trump’s efforts to weaken California’s regulatory powers.
Together, two major roadblocks to mandating EVs fell simultaneously. Biden promised to transition transportation to electric drive from fossil fuels. While he’ll need support from Senate Republicans on many issues, regulatory power rests largely with executive agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Former President Barack Obama tried to use executive authority to enshrine tougher standards by 2025, and Trump used the same power to roll back efforts.
Trump scrapped Obama’s entire program and directed the EPA to cancel a decades-old waiver allowing California to mandate tougher standards. Environmental groups and states that follow California’s rules – states that include more than half of the U.S. population – launched lawsuits. Ford and Honda sided with California’s tougher regulations. GM and Toyota sided with Trump.
Either because of Biden’s election or because it’s gotten serious about EV production (see cover story, pg. 21), GM reversed course, dropping its challenges and saying it will work with Golden State regulators.
Presidents always bring uncertainty when they enter office, and many in Washington and nationwide are waiting to see Biden’s plans. For automakers and suppliers, though, the change clearly favors battery-powered transportation.
How automation, connectivity will drive manufacturing
Features - Design & Automation
During two webinars focused on automation and the connected factory, panels of experts discussed trends and highlighted important steps companies can take to prepare for the future.
Automation is gaining momentum as manufacturers seek resiliency, flexibility, and connectivity. Panelists at two GIE Media Manufacturing Group webinars recently addressed how to implement automation and grab opportunities to become the factories of the future.
Today’s Motor Vehicles (TMV): What automation trends should we watch out for?
Randy Woolridge, global product manager for integration and automation/technical proposal manager at Ascent Aerospace: There’s a lot of discussion on Industry 4.0. As soon as a consumer makes a decision, it’s disseminated throughout the manufacturing process of that product, getting that closer to reality was probably very true for some businesses.
In the future, that can alter your SAP system, it can alter your manufacturing plan based on a given customer’s input at the very beginning. That’s a fascinating idea – being able to tie all of our processes, equipment, software, quality checks, all the way down to decisions for how much material to order.
TMV: How can automation help a company solve existing problems?
Justin Via, global product manager for drilling & fastening technology at Ascent Aerospace: The biggest and the hardest thing is to define what your problem is because every company has different pain points. Automation can solve problems within a facility such as increasing productivity, eliminating waste, reducing workplace fatigue, minimizing human errors, and most of all, preventing bottlenecks from occurring on your shop floor…. Everybody’s going to have a different pain point, so once that’s defined, that’s when other personnel can come in and help you decide how automation will support you.
Frank Langro, director of product market management for pneumatic automation products at Festo: Automation... can mean a variety of different things, whether talking about automated retrieval systems, a 6-axis robot, or even a small assembly jig that helps in a manual assembly process. The key things are flexibility, minimizing downtime, and improving efficiencies. Automated solutions, whether big or small steps, really can address these.
TMV: What types of processes offer the best return on investment (ROI), when automated?
Jeff Tyl, North American sales manager for fabrication at Murata Machinery USA: Something that’s very labor intensive. With fabricated equipment like turret punch presses and fiber lasers and turning machines, you’re loading material on and off the machine. It’s very repetitive, boring, labor intensive work. Your automated system has great gantry parts loading and unloading systems, so all you’re doing is putting components on the side of the machine, and the machine is picking it up and doing all the work and dropping it off for the next process.
You can calculate the cost to make a part, the reduction of production costs, minimized errors, and product damage. However, you can’t calculate improving employee safety. The most important thing is retaining valued, tenured employees. If you are going to implement automation, don’t get rid of those employees. Retrain and revitalize them.
TMV: How can researchers and universities optimize automation processes?
Ed Johnson, vice president of sales at THK America Inc: One very significant thing in the marketplace is to be able to integrate mechanical and electrical components. A lot of folks like myself have some expertise in the mechanical side, but not so much on the electrical side. It’s really important to get the integrators involved, because typically, integrators are going to have the ability to marry those two technologies together – electrical, which controls vision, sensors, all that kind of stuff – and mechanical to be able to make the system get to a high level of precision.
There’s a tendency to be fairly siloed, where you have good electrical people, and you have good mechanical people. That’s an opportunity for our universities to bring students into the workplace and into industry who have the capability of understanding both significant components.
TMV: How can I streamline data collection to get the information to optimize automated manufacturing systems?
Brian Johnson, automation specialist at Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions: Newer software packages can take all the collected data and send it to a data system to be analyzed, offering visual indicators in instances when there could be something wrong in your process. But you also generate numerical data, and you can do automatic process control with it, and then have it available to you in reports that also can be automated and sent to your supply base or customers. Manufacturers can take some of the old, manual systems and implement automation. For example, various types of inspection equipment can be automated. Creating a feedback loop that gives a more robust, automated system allows you to go all the way from the planning phase through to delivery.
TMV: What is your definition of a digital transformation?
Sam Golan, founder and CEO of High QA: It’s the conversion of current manufacturing and quality into automation and integration. And integration is the emphasis toward a unified process enabling real-time information and decision making when it’s needed, either by a machine or a person.
Brad Klippstein, supervisor, product specialist at Okuma America Corp: Digitization helps you identify problems and enables you to make educated business decisions based on calculations, rather than any kind of perception.
It’s not entirely about the technology but also about change and change management. It’s just as much about that underlying technology as it is about a cultural shift for your company.
TMV: Why is machine connectivity essential, and how can Industry 4.0 or IoT help businesses?
Klippstein: The speed of business today, I think we all can agree, is much faster now than it ever has been. So, you need to be able to equip your teams to these changing environments, you need to store and use the data, you’re going to need to provide these tools so that they can react in a much quicker fashion.
Using and storing this data provides a means to anticipate conditions to project results for planning and forecasting. So, it’s a really valuable corporate resource that aids in decision making, maximizing profits, improving your products and services, as well as customer satisfaction.
Data is an asset. It’s one of the best things that you can do to encourage your employees to be more data focused, so that you can reap any rewards from using that data.
Photos courtesy of Okuma (top), High QA (bottom)
TMV: What core tools do manufacturers need to connect factories?
Golan: Before getting into tools for connecting the factory, you may need to map data flow. It’s not just about the connectivity on one piece of the process. The idea is how to connect all of it. The question is how the data flows from the point of a quote request until it’s out from the warehouse and going to the customer. Map your process before picking up any tool. We need to look into software that enables creation of instructions, either recording or downstream for CNC machines and quality machines.
With connections, you have lots of data, but where do the data go? You should have a tool or a software that can collect in real-time and convert it to real-time valuable information to enable you or a machine to make a real-time decision. This is not a theory, it’s working very well. I wish in 100% of the industry, but I would say today, maybe 10% or 15% of the industry.
TMV: How can software be optimized to cut costs and boost uptime?
Rob Longfellow, director of IIoT at TechSolve Inc: We like to focus, in the beginning, on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), which is basically a utilization of the factory floor assets, in addition to the quality of the parts being produced. If you ask management what they think the utilization of this machine is, typically they’ll say, 80%, 90%, or we don’t have any time in between anything, so it’s completely utilized. But in most cases, when you start to measure how much they’re using that system, it’s anywhere between 40% and 60%.
For a machine generating about $200,000 of revenue per year, improving productivity just by making sure that it’s running 5% more often, that’s going to be an additional $10,000 in incremental revenue per year. If you’ve got 100 assets in the plant, then you know, that’s a 100x increase on just that one machine.
You may think, “I don't have any more capacity, and I’ve got five machines doing one process.” But, you can go back and figure out that you’re only running at 60%, you’ve got 40% additional capacity. So, better managing production and people, gives you a chance to avoid investing.
TMV: How will technology continue to evolve?
Klippstein: You’re already seeing this with 5G technology. 5G is crazy fast. It’s something like 10x faster than 4G, it’s got almost zero latency with about a 1ms lag time, which is pretty close to real-time. It also allows you to connect multiple devices, or smart devices simultaneously.
We can create faster reaction times with real-time data obtained from sensors. We’re going to see examples where we’re tying into blockchain technology. In machine tools, you’ve got workholding to fixture stock material, and when we’re clamping, the workholding is going to ask for proper authorization by the operator that’s performing that action. That added security access point is going to need to be read very quickly, through a control system to unlock that clamp.
We’re also going to see enhancements in digital twin technology, so maintenance models, process analysis, things like that for better reliability of your process. And then last, I’ve seen some examples with interesting camera feeds and being able to predict operator movements before they happen, letting them know they should be using two hands instead of one hand to properly tighten that bolt during the assembly process.
About the author: Michelle Jacobson is an assistant editor for TMV. She can be reached at 216.393.0323 or mjacobson@gie.net.
Between the skilled labor shortage and the recent economic turmoil, manufacturers are constantly tasking employees with greater challenges, making it critical to identify opportunities that will allow them to run facilities as efficiently as possible.
Proactively approaching operation improvements can have several long-term benefits, especially during challenging market conditions. One operational improvement to consider is streamlining cutting-fluid management with advanced, automated systems.
These systems continuously remove tramp oils and suspended solids from contaminated cutting fluid, control bacteria, and can adjust fluid concentration, enabling the fluid to be recovered and returned to service.
Advanced automated fluid management systems minimize operator intervention, yield lower annual fluid replacement costs and haul-away expenses, and extend tool life – all while improving part quality and maximizing uptime.
Centralized systems for recycling used cutting fluid can reduce fluid waste up to 90%, lower new fluid purchase costs up to 75%, and extend tool life up to 25%. In addition, automation during the process minimizes manual intervention and allows the workforce to focus on other tasks.
Minimize operator intervention
Even before the 2020 economic downturn, multiple studies showed the skills gap could cause an estimated 2.5 million manufacturing jobs to go unfilled. Considering ongoing operational challenges, facilities must also rethink work cell layouts to ensure fewer people are concentrated in a particular workspace. This highlights the importance of finding opportunities in which automation makes practical and financial sense.
Turnkey recycling systems, such as PRAB’s Guardian, are easy to operate and require minimal operator involvement and training. Systems constantly work and feed uncontaminated cutting fluid onto tools, allowing existing personnel to allocate attention to other tasks.
A new option, automatic coolant concentration control, uses an economical in-line process refractometer. Instead of interrupting the process, the system’s embedded processor tests for Brix continuously. Such systems control concentration ratio to ±1%. When the levels drop below the required ratio, the system adds more chemicals and less water to bring the level back up and vice-versa.
Systems such as Guardian also provide a healthier work environment for employees by reducing sump maintenance and removing tramp oils and suspended solids from contaminated cutting fluid, limiting exposure to lubricants that could potentially cause health problems and lead to medical claims.
Lower fluid replacement, haul-away costs
Labor-focused efficiencies are only part of why automated fluid filtration systems typically have a return on investment (ROI) within nine months. Advanced systems can significantly lower fluid costs and haul-away expenses while maintaining higher quality cutting fluid for a longer period – extending the life of the cutting fluid 2x-to-5x.
Valuable options for these recycling systems include coolant managers – ozone injection modules prevent rancidity, a major cause of cutting-fluid failure. This bacteria-control system eliminates the need for biocide and is a safe, economical way to kill bacteria, yeast, fungus, and mold. In addition, foul odors and skin irritations decline.
One manufacturer saw a significant decrease in the amount of haul-away waste after installing an advanced recycling system. Their previous recycling system consumed 4 drums (832L) of new cutting fluid oil and disposed of 4,500L every seven-to-eight days. With an advanced system, the company consumes that amount of new cutting fluid every 28 days and disposes of the same amount of waste every 83 days.
By reducing waste fluids up to 90%, costs to haul away hazardous waste can be lowered dramatically and help with the system’s ROI.
Extend tool life, improve part quality
Protecting high-level capital investments can have a direct impact on a manufacturer’s financial health. Cutting tools can account for 3%-to-5% of total manufacturing costs for some operations.
Cutting fluid management is a major driver for extending the longevity of tool life. One worldwide manufacturer of complex metal components experienced dramatic increases in tool life from the automated filtration of its cutting fluid, including:
Drills: 209%
Turning: 78%
Form: 66%
Boring: 47%
Reamers: 26%
Extending cutting tool lifespans and more efficiently using cutting fluid can earn the payback in less than a year.
Conclusion
By investing in back-end equipment, manufacturers can efficiently reallocate labor, often their largest operational expense, more effectively and efficiently. A proactive approach to operational improvements, such as advanced recycling systems, can be especially helpful for shop managers trying to reduce financial strains during difficult market conditions.
As automakers increase electronic content in vehicles with advanced safety systems, autonomous driving modes, and electrified powertrains, critical systems require advanced cleaning technologies.
Vapor degreasers use two sumps, a boil sump, and a rinse sump to clean parts with high-purity cleaning fluids.
All photos courtesy of MicroCare
Applications for automotive printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA) are growing as more vehicles are designed with control and information systems, satellite navigation systems, near field monitors, and multimedia devices. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) will only increase the industry’s need, so electronic assemblies must be highly reliable and operate without fault as the potential consequences to human life are too high without this assurance.
Automotive electronic devices must have long-term functionality and withstand rigorous regulations. Procedures established during design and manufacturing should guarantee component reliability. An important step to ensure electronic device reliability is using consistent, high-quality cleaning.
Reliability at risk
Failing PCBAs could become more common as use increases. The global automotive printed circuit board (PCB) market is expected to reach more than $14 billion by 2024. Rising applicability of rigid-flex PCBAs, penetration of in-vehicle infotainment systems, arrival of new energy vehicles, and use of PCBs in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are all driving growth, according to China-based PCB manufacturer and distributor Pcbcart.
Miniaturized PCBAs that facilitate these applications have extremely complex assemblies, incorporating delicate components on compact, densely packed boards. If cleaning isn’t planned and executed properly, devices can become a reliability risk.
Furthermore, boards have to withstand varying environmental conditions from extreme temperature and humidity, to rain and snow. Add to this exposure to vibration and the potential for failure rises. These threats are why designing for reliability is key to a PCBA’s functionality, and an essential element is cleaning prior to conformal coating.
Typically, it’s much easier to pinpoint cleaning problems and resolve them prior to prototyping and production, so designers and manufacturers are taking steps to research cleaning to ensure they are proactive in their approach before mass production, specifying cleaning details in the early stages of PCBA design for clean, reliable boards.
Contaminated PCBAs
One of the main causes of electronic device failure is PCBA contamination. Even the smallest amount of contaminant can form a barrier between electrical contacts. If not cleaned sufficiently, PCBAs are susceptible to a host of problems – electrochemical migration and delamination, parasitic leakage, dendrite growth, and shorting. The cleaning process should be performed to guarantee longevity of the electronic assembly and must meet exacting standards, such as those stipulated by the Automotive Electronics Council.
All automotive PCBAs require cleaning during production to remove contaminants such as flux, dust, marking inks, oils, or inorganic contamination resulting from the manufacturing process. However, this is becoming more difficult due to reduced PCBA size and complexity. For example, Pcbcart notes that the volume of an electronic control unit (ECU) used in vehicles was approximately 1,200cm3 at the beginning of 2000. Today it is less than 300cm3.
Condensed assemblies housing small PCBs with denser spacing and hard-to-reach areas makes PCBA cleaning extra challenging. If the contaminant isn’t cleaned, particularly with hard-to-remove white residue left behind from no-clean fluxes, the risk of board malfunction grows.
Conformal coating applications create another reason to effectively clean PCBAs. Delicate electronic assemblies used within vehicles must withstand harsh environments, so automakers and suppliers typically add a conformal coating protective layer that also electrically insulates the PCBA. If cleaning isn’t successfully completed before conformal coating, any contaminant left on the board can inhibit sufficient bonding of the coating to PCBA substrates. For example, flux residue or process oils left on boards can cause defects in the conformal coating such as delamination, de-wetting, uneven coverage, pinholes, and air bubbles that result in craters and small circular flaws called fish eyes.
After cleaning, PCBAs should be dry and free of residue.
Attaining critically clean
Finding a cleaning process that ensures critical cleaning can be a challenge and requires consideration of many factors. The process must easily and reliably clean miniaturized electronic assemblies and meet specific cleaning standards. It must also be a sustainable and cost-effective method.The answer lies with vapor degreasing.
Extremely effective at cleaning PCBAs, vapor degreasing uses a closed-loop system with a boil sump and a rinse sump. Cleaning fluid is heated within the boil sump and the PCBAs are immersed and cleaned in the fluid. Once cleaned, the boards automatically transfer to the rinse sump for final cleaning in clean, uncontaminated fluid. Finally, the PCBAs are lifted and held inside the vapor blanket, allowing the parts to dry and cool.
Low viscosity and surface tension ratings of modern vapor degreaser cleaning fluids, combined with their volatility, allow them to easily remove all inhibiting particles and contaminants, even from tightly packed, small assemblies.
The fluids are easily removed from small, closely packed PCBAs whereas slower-drying fluids, such as water, cannot clean or may become trapped. PCBAs exit the process dry and without any residue or spots left on the component.
Small printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) have dense spacing and hard-to-reach areas that make cleaning a challenge.
Reliable electronics
Vehicles are becoming more dependent on technology and the electronics for easier driving, and their importance is growing as new advances and innovations are applied. Producing anything less than 100% reliable PCBAs is not an option. They must perform as they were intended as any malfunction could be catastrophic.
Effective critical cleaning can help achieve this. Cleaning experts recommend a method that is flexible enough to adapt to any future changes, such as regulatory and environmental changes, or changes to specific cleaning requirements.
Vapor degreasing is established, sustainable, and efficiently and effectively cleans PCBAs quickly and economically. When used with progressive next-generation cleaning fluids, it provides excellent cleaning performance even on the most difficult, complex assemblies and contaminants.
About the author: Emily Peck is a senior chemist at MicroCare LLC. She has been in the industry more than 6 years and holds a MS in Chemistry from Tufts University. She can be reached at 800.827.0626.
