What projects are you engineering in 2012?

[jaking]

Happy new year! We hope you were successful in 2011 and can't wait to see what engineering solutions you're working on in 2012. Tell us what you're excited about working on this year and how you're using NI tools.

Jennifer King

NI Content Specialist

[Ray.R]

Will be working with the Wireless Sensor Nodes.  I'm sure there will be plenty of fun with that.

Also cRIO project.  And let's not forget an assortment of LabVIEW related projects of varying magnitudes.

[elset191]

Rebound Rumble

[Ben]

Calibrating cal gases and post-mortem tests on the equipment used by first responders (two projects at the moment). The first project is as boring as they can get. The second, well the customers never complain (but their next of kin may).

Ben

[JÞB]

A "DVT/ Functional test system for something that attaches to something else" is about all I can say except that you don't want to be there when it works.

[Ben]

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@Jeff Bohrer wrote:

A "DVT/ Functional test system for something that attaches to something else" is about all I can say except that you don't want to be there when it works.

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Which reminds me of another project...

When you pass by one of those huge ckt breaker panels that has a main breaker the size of a lawn-mower, have you ever questioned how those were tested?

Answer:

Starting with a dedicated sub-station... They can vaprize the wire inside the insulation faster than the insulation can melt. Brace yourself, it does sound like a gun going off.

Ben

[RobCole]

For me in 2012 - robots, machine vision and welding lasers. And that's the first couple of months. IT will be an interesting year.

Rob

[jcarmody]

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@Ben wrote:

[...] 

Starting with a dedicated sub-station...

[...]

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I used to work in one of those, although we were typically limited to 600V, 3-phase, 10,000 amps and never tested anything as large as a lawnmower. I was most impressed by the fact that, after the sparks died down and the smoke cleared, the circuit breakers still worked. It's why I switched from Electrical Engineering to Mechanical Engineering. 🙂

[rallen]

Presently developing and fabricating an automatic production tester for our Premix Blower line using LabView 2011.

These blower motors are available in 120, 208, and 240 VAC and 12 to 48 Vdc.  All with various speed control inputs both linear DC and Pulse Width Modulation.  All tests are automatically sequenced and have multiple programmable test specs IE. Voltage, RmsPower, RmsCurrent, RPM, Pressure, Vacuum, DC or PWM Speed Reference, Vibration, Temperature, Barametric Pressure, Air density ratio, Date and time of test, duration of test.

All test results are stored in spreadsheet (csv format) to the PC hard drive and backed up to our network drive.

[GuenterMueller]

Vision testing a spindle plus female screw for a parking break system.  We have already been doing so in 2004 (and this system is still in use), but now the same customer needs some more vision measurements and the tester must be much faster as quantity demands have raised.  Nice job.