Alina Spanu

Hardware Structures for High Precision Pneutronic Systems

Pneutronic systems come with a series of advantages that are natural to working with compressed air, such as the large power/weight ratio of pneumatic actuators, easy and affordable installation and maintenance as well as being clean working systems. However, due to working with compressed air, there are a series of issues, such as static and transient nonlinear behavior, mostly due to the high compressibility of air. Thus, the behavior of such systems is hard to control, especially in terms of precision positioning. The paper deals with proposing three hardware configurations of pneutronic positioning systems in order to assure the imposed positioning accuracy in the presence of disturbances and the preservation in time of the obtained position.

Applications of Additive Technologies in the Food Industry

The article presents a new concept that can be used in the food industry by manufacturing customized food products with 3D printers. This technique allows the production of personalized food products both as shape, colour, aroma and even as a nutritional value. Applications in the food industry can offer an engineering solution for new products and a tool for design specialists by creating food products with complex shapes that cannot be obtained by classical processes. Also, this technology can be a solution for researchers exploring cosmic space and long-distance space missions.

Evaluations and geometrical measurements of the human eye in order to establish the design parameters for the customized contact lens

The paper presents the usual methods and means for geometrical evaluation and measurement for the anterior pole of the eyeball applied in studies conducted on real patients. The results were centralized, evaluated and presented in a summary in the paper. The purpose of the studies is to determine the range of dimensional values of the anterior pole of the human eyeball for the parameterization of the devices and checking tools when manufacturing the contact lenses.

Method for designing and controlling compliant gripper

The compliant grippers are useful for high accuracy grasping of small objects with adaptive control of contact points along the active surfaces of the fingers. The spatial trajectories of the elements become a must, due to the development of MEMS. The paper presents the solution for the compliant gripper designed by the authors, so the planar and spatial movements are discussed. At the beginning of the process, the gripper could work as passive one just for the moment when it has to reach out the object surface. The forces provided by the elements have to avoid the damage. As part of the system, the camera is taken picture of the object, in order to facilitate the positioning of the system. When the contact is established, the mechanism is acting as an active gripper by using an electrical stepper motor, which has controlled movement.

Gripper System for Handling the Book on the Library Shelf Out

The paper deals with a method applied for handling the book on the library shelf out by using a specialized gripper. The main advantage is the gripper positioning along the symmetry axis of the founded book spine, so that the fingers controlled with high accuracy could retrieve it. The vision camera has been used for processing the information, so that we have written the software using Microsoft Visual Studio. The proposed method may find out the room existing between nearby books as well as the one needed along the vertical axis. The required room for movement has the minimum value due to the bottom finger thickness and the vertical displacement is proposed mainly.

Improving the Image Accuracy for Grasping

The paper concerns with a method based on Microsoft Visual Studio for processing the image received from the vision camera working on the gripper of the librarian robot. Based on the information converted from the accurate image, the gripper has to identify the book on the bookshelves. Moreover, the outer edges are the most important due to the working area required by the fingers. Meantime, the method should analyze the outer edge on the top too, so that the gripper should have enough room for working by pushing up the book. We have used the dynamic method for setting aside the computer memory. The image processing was focused on improving the contrast quality due to its importance for setting up the outer edges of the book, which should be retrieved.

3D CAD, CAM and Rapid Prototyping Applied for Cam Fabrication

In this paper, a comparison between CNC manufacturing and Rapid Prototyping technology (FDM – Fused Deposition Modeling process), applied for a cam fabrication, is presented. In the products development area, a substantial support is offered by models, as intermediate between product configuration and technology design. The CAD/CAM/CNC technology is a widely used technique for creating prototypes, as well as production parts, using a subtractive type material-removal procedure from a semi-manufactured article. The rapid prototyping (RP) technologies are additive processes, where the part is built up layer by layer until done, directly from the 3D CAD model, within the precision limits of the chosen process. Similarities and differences between these two coexisting computer driven prototyping processes, the subtractive CNC 3 – axes milled part production and the additive RP/ FDM technique, are pointed out for a disk cam manufacturing as sample part.

CAD Analysis Applied to Self-Centering Compliant Grippers

The self centering grasping mechanisms aim to improve the positioning accuracy of the object movement. The paper presents the FEM method applied to such mechanism using compliant joints with elastic properties. We have studied the tensions and displacements for the three dimensional model and the experimental results achieved the goal of our work.

Improvements on Positional Accuracy by Using Mechatronic Device

Nowadays, the best positional accuracy has become a greater demand, due to the various technical requirements of the mechatronic systems. The imposed position shoul be found easily and repeatedly. The paper presents a method for controlling the positioning of the robot actuated with electrical motors. After the theoretical position computation, the software for Arduino board should compare the signals sent by the accelerometer with the imposed critical theoretic values. The measuring method takes into account the inertia forces for higher accuracy. The speed variation law for the electric motors provides better positioning, following dynamic conditions.

CAD Analysis of Mechatronic Device Used for Orthopaedics

The paper goal is to perform CAD analyze of the mechatronic device used for orthopedic measurement, whose accuracy should be higher. The computation has been done for the entire assembly, taking into account all the forces and mechanical torques acting during the process. Meantime, kinematic relationships have been provided according to relative movements between elements. The material characteristic properties have influenced the results. The active measurement surface, which is a spherical one, should cover a various and wide range of spatial shapes, due to the human bone profile. Finally, the results were verifiable by experimental practice.