Even the Large Hadron Collider hasn’t managed to upset these laws and they have now been in place since 1687. They form the very basis of mechanics. Anything that has to be moved a certain distance in a given time and speed obeys these laws. The only thing that has changed in the intervening centuries is that the means of applying the force and measuring results is not as it was in the seventeenth century. Read more
Aug 012012
Jul 182012
I have talked about a number of aspects of motion control in my blogs so far, speed, inertia, torque and so forth, but generally speaking they have all been time focussed. After a recent trip to help a client in Italy I have position, or gear based controls, top of mind. The beauty of a gear based relationship is that time is irrelevant. There is a direct relationship between input and output. The ratio between Read more
Jul 012012
I am writing this during Wimbledon fortnight, which is appropriate as this is all about assessing the power of tennis racquets in a way that is quantifiable and repeatable. The International Tennis Federation is the ultimate body regulating the sport. It operates the three major team competitions, the Davis Cup, Fed Cup and Hopman Cup and sanctions the four Grand Slam competitions – the Australian, French, Wimbledon and US Open. As such it needs to Read more
In the first part of this blog I went on a bit of a rant about waste and how one can so easily save tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds a year just by paying attention to better control systems. Hydraulic pumps are another area where the application of relatively inexpensive control systems can yield great results. Typically hydraulic pumps work on a cycle with a pump to build pressure on oil to Read more
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