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In lugnet.build, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> In lugnet.build, Iain Hendry wrote:
> > "Nathanael Kuipers" <kuipers_n@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Once moderated click <http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=114736
> > > here> or on the pic for more...
> >
> > I can only echo what others have wrote - absolutely amazing work! You truly
> > have a talent and a feel for the brick.
> >
> > Iain
> >
> > (This is unrelated, and I don't want to steer this topic away from your
> > truck - if someone could email me, though, and let me know where this is
> > from: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=554242 , what it is,
> > or where I could find more photos, I'd love it.)
>
> That was from LEGOWorld, October 2003 in Holland. It was an automated car
> assembly line, consisting of RCX controlled work carriers that travelled from
> cell to cell across a number of cells. Each cell had a selection of parts that
> it added in several operations, then the carriers incremented. The goal was to
> get a whole car out the other end with a subsidiary goal being that you could
> reconfigure for different cars as long as they were buildable with the parts
> assortment at the workstation/cells.
>
> Try searching on BrickShelf using LEGOWORLD 2003 as keywords, or searching here
> on LUGNET.
>
> I saw it, and it was pretty darn cool, even if the two fellows working on it
> (italians IIRC but I forget) never got it to completely work right in the 5 days
> it was up. the potential was there though. It consumed an AMAZING number of
> RCXes and of long technic beams.
>
> Hope that helps. I didn't answer via email because others may be able to add
> more.
>
> XFUT lugnet.robotics.
>
> ++Lar
Yep Larry is right. It was a great piece of arts. It was actually built by two
dutch guys: Martijn Boogaarts and Gerrit Bronsveld. Correct me if I'm wrong but
it used 23 RCXes!!
Unfortunately it didn't work flawless but I think the main reason for that is
the car; it was quite hard to build with the 'factory'. The worst thing is they
asked me to design the car, so actually it's me to blame.... :-P
nate
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"Nathanael kuipers" <kuipers_n@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately it didn't work flawless but I think the main reason for that • is
> the car; it was quite hard to build with the 'factory'. The worst thing is • they
> asked me to design the car, so actually it's me to blame.... :-P
(Thanks Larry and Nate for the background on this project!)
You have to undestand how inspirational this is to me. For the past few
years, on-and-off I am working on building a little LEGO duck assembly
carousel. I haven't made much progress - I've played around with
4-posiotion, 6-position rotary dials, flirted with the idea of a pallet
conveyor (difficult) and a few other ideas running around in my head. The
duck only has 3 pieces and I had a hard time with that! I hvae no excuse
not to build something operational after seeing this creation... anything is
possible! :)
It is of espical interest to me becuase of the industry I work in - I will
have to take this in and show it to the other two designers at our company.
We design and build custom automation and robotics for handling of plastic
parts and assembly of the parts, so this is right up our alley!
Iain
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In lugnet.robotics, Iain Hendry wrote:
> "Nathanael kuipers" <kuipers_n@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately it didn't work flawless but I think the main reason for that is
> > the car; it was quite hard to build with the 'factory'. The worst thing is they
> > asked me to design the car, so actually it's me to blame.... :-P
I'm not sure I agree with that. There were, as I recall, some difficult
insertion steps but overall, it seemed buildable. The root problem in my view is
just that the mean time to failure of individual constructed components (given
reliability achievable with LEGO) and the high component count meant that at any
given time, something isn't working. That and the very high number of
component/component interactions that you have to program correctly.
> (Thanks Larry and Nate for the background on this project!)
>
> You have to undestand how inspirational this is to me. For the past few
> years, on-and-off I am working on building a little LEGO duck assembly
> carousel. I haven't made much progress - I've played around with
> 4-posiotion, 6-position rotary dials, flirted with the idea of a pallet
> conveyor (difficult) and a few other ideas running around in my head. The
> duck only has 3 pieces and I had a hard time with that! I hvae no excuse
> not to build something operational after seeing this creation... anything is
> possible! :)
>
> It is of espical interest to me becuase of the industry I work in - I will
> have to take this in and show it to the other two designers at our company.
> We design and build custom automation and robotics for handling of plastic
> parts and assembly of the parts, so this is right up our alley!
What I think is coolest about this project is that there is an RCX on board each
of the carriers and it communicates (via IR) with the workstation that it
arrives at to say what assembly sequences should be executed... in theory it
would be possible for different carriers to carry assembly requests for
different cars!
The carriers were used to reduce dependence on an overall conveyor working
correctly, I think.
(I find this stuff interesting as well because much of my HS summer work and
some of my during college summer work was at Control Engineering, a division of
Jervis B. Webb, which among other products, makes driverless guided vehicles...
since this was the 1970s and early 80s, the onboard control was done with small
scale discrete logic rather than a CPU, but the principles of vehicle/cell
communication are similar)
++Lar
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