What does the term 'mechatronics' mean? Doug Harriman, CTO at Simplexity, tells you how it's more than just the blend of mechanics and electronics, and of one instance mechatronics was needed to help solve a problem. Read more at [ Ссылка ] or visit us at [ Ссылка ].
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The term mechatronics was coined in the 1960’s in Japan to describe the synergistic blend of mechanics and electronics in machines.
Mechatronic systems include everything from planes and trains to printers and robots.
Now, the term mechatronics has come to mean more than just the products themselves but the design approach of combining: electronics, mechanics, computers, algorithms, and sensors all into one system.
With that synergistic blend you get more optimized designs.
A simple example of this is a printer I worked on at one point.
This was a copier system, an all in one, where there was a scanner and printer working together.
The problem was the scanner had a motor that could start moving at the same time the printer portion had a motor that would start moving.
This would cause a surge of power required from the power supply that would overload that supply.
The electrical engineer approached the problem the only way he was allowed to, by changing the electronics.
His solution was just to add a larger supply and that added significant cost to the product.
When I joined the program, I approached the problem differently, from a mechatronic perspective.
It was a simple approach and we just changed the algorithm, so that we made sure that if one of those motors was accelerating, the other wouldn’t until the first one was done.
That dropped the power spike down significantly and allowed us to move back to the earlier cheaper power supply.
It’s a simple example, but it shows the power of mechatronics.
To find out more about mechatronics, check out our website at www.simplexitypd.com
Simplexity provides engineering design services across a range of industries. Our "simpler is better" engineering approach reduces costs while improving the lifecycle of your product, saving you money in development, manufacturing and product sustainability. We understand the most important challenges which is why we have mastered cost reduction while maintaining the most innovative industrial, consumer, and biotech engineering solutions.
