﻿ MANU2230


17 April 2017


1 March 2017


This course teaches the principles of automation in the context of a design and build project. In lectures, the students learn about basic components and subsystems of pneumatic and hydraulic systems, their conventional control systems, the programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and fundamentals of digital signals and digital control systems. In the lab, they are given sorted boxes of components such as valves, various sensors, coneyor belt systems, links and connections, and a PLC that can be programmed on a PC. Each team of students is assigned a separate table on which they build a fully automated electro-pneumatic systems that receives workpieces (small cylinders) and physically sorts them into different groups according to their sizes and materials.

Watch a demonstration of one of the designs that sorts the workpieces into four classes:

  1. short and plastic;
  2. short and metal;
  3. tall and plastic; and
  4. tall and metal.