Tech
For an upcoming robot install, I was reviewing the process equipment in the paint robot arm. I found quite a “head scratcher” with the compressed air lines. I traced everything through and found that 3 compressed air lines are merged into 2 and then both the lines come into 1 inlet. I can’t understand why this wouldn’t have been designed to be 1 larger compressed air line?? It would be cheaper, reduce the need for adapters and clear up space in an already busy process arm.
For this winter I setup a automated grow tent to finish off my peppers and keeping my ficus/rosemary healthy. System was fully automated including watering and I went with a radiant heater to manage temperature (I find this much safer than trying to use a space heater). This let me harvest peppers deep into winter when there was snow on the ground. I think this system is great for extending the growing season.
I setup a watering system for my grow tent over the winter. I modified an cheap watering system with a nodemcu for a controller and a simple mosfet to run the pump. I tied into the existing system so I can use the battery. Overall it was a relatively simple modification and was able to set it up in esphome to run at 7am in the morning each day.
I finally setup a monitoring system for my reverse osmosis system. I have 1 pressure sensor to track mainline water pressure, 2 flow meters to track usage and efficiency and 2 TDSsensor to track concentration. This was a pretty fun project and it was the first time I was working with a pulse based water flow meter, I had to calibrate it to match the measurements I was getting in reality. I even got a good video with the oscilloscope of the pulses while the system was running. Using this to set PMs so I am back flushing and replacing filters when efficiency starts to drop.
Had some production issues today where I was called for paint adhesion issues. I started looking into it and found that it wasn’t paint adhesion but rather plastic cohesion that was failing. I had a look at some other parts and was able to capture this amazing photo of complete peeling.
We had some solvent exposure at work that made for a good picture of solvent embrittlement on PC/ABS. You can see that that once the solvent flashes off you can see the plastic swells up and leaves opaque spots. I started doing some trials where any time there is some molded in stress I run some solvent rags over the part and it directly shows any surface issues. I also did some trials where I left PC/ABS in a can of paint solvent and the plastic completely deteriorated and turned into the consistency of wet cardboard.
While training the new student we started having some production issues with material pulsing that made for a great teaching opportunity. We reviewed the labview monitor and saw significant instability in the flows with overly aggressive controls. During troubleshooting I was able to catch a nice screenshot that showed different control patterns in decreasing aggressiveness. Obviously we still made some adjustments to get it tuned to prevent overshooting at all.
I was on a tour of one of the oldest distilleries in Poland. It was an interesting setup where they had a plate distillation column for their high volume high proof production and a copper pot still for niche product distilling. It was cool to see the “back room” where they had their SCADA system and showed me some of their operation process when they load form a new fermentation tank. We talked about their CIP processes and product changeovers, it was great to talk with the actual technical team and definitely a lot of passion for their process. They mentioned that they have a dedicated flow meter that tracks how much product is produced and all of it has to be accounted for with the government and “every drop is tracked”.
I had a great opportunity to tour a small vineyard and was able to get technical with the owner. Most the equipment was all on triclamps so it was nice to see standardization across the world. It was also the first time I was able to see a tracking sheet used to monitor fermentation progress. It was cool to see how they track specific gravity and seeing it drop as fermentation progresses. Additionally you can see all of the additions done during fermentation and the chemical analysis when fermentation finished.
I have recently been on a quest to find the water pressure in my house for a reverse osmosis project I have been working on. This has proven quite difficult as the city doesn’t publish their values and pressure would obviously vary throughout the city based on elevation and not only that vary in the house itself depending on the floor and pressure drop.
For the sake of my own curiosity I got a pressure gauge and measured the water pressure in my basement with no usage in the house (no flow). I got a reading of 90psi but I will be investigating this further as I have a suspicion that water pressure changes over the day and year based on water usage in the city.
