Mechatronic Circus 4 April, 2019

Digi Breakfast: Digitalisation in Manufacturing at 8-10

venue: Otakaari 4 (K1 building), seminar hall 213 

The Mechatronic Circus morning begins with Digi Breakfast where the focus is on how digitalisation is changing the manufacturing industry. Breakfast will be served at 8am and speeches start at 8.30am. Check out the programme and register by 1 April at this page. 

Mechatronic Circus at 10-16

venue: Puumiehenkuja 5 E

The Mechatronic Circus is an annual event presenting smart devices made by Aalto University's students at the mechatronics courses. The event is open to everyone interested and no registration is required. You can pop by anytime between 10-16. There will be soup lunch (in Finnish soppatykki) during 11-14.  

We also warmly welcome high school pupils with their teachers. You can register your class here. 

Student projects 

Large-scale multi-material extrusion

Multi-material extrusion is a 3D printing technology offering great new opportunities. Two components, resin and hardener, are mixed in an extrusion head and then cured by chemical reaction. In this project, a system to mix and extrude two component materials and to control the process in 3D printing of large-scale objects is developed.

AnaKConda

If a crane hook could be replaced with a universal gripper, it would make it possible to grab and lift irregular shaped objects fast without traditional fastenings. This project presents results of experimentation on different granular jamming based techniques aiming to lift heavy objects.

Direct drive hydraulic actuator

New direct driven hydraulic system can be more efficient and compact compared to the traditional valve-controlled systems offering also improved controllability. This project presents a test setup for direct driven hydraulic actuator. 

Dimensiometer

Accurate measurement of the tree volume is necessary for developing methods to estimate the amount of biomass in forests. In this project a device that measures the branch volume by plunging it in water and measuring the change in buoyancy and water level is developed. 

LiMotronix

Numeric control systems are widely used for controlling machine tools in industry. In this project, a control for classic inverted pendulum is developed using Siemens Sinumerik 840D sl control system and Simotics L-FN3 linear motor.

Paper roll loading machine

Dynamic behavior of a rotor depends on the loading case and damping effect of the environment. This project presents a point loading device for a paper machine roll to simulate paper track load for research purposes.

Laboratory Pressure Former for Nanopapers

Nanopaper is made up of much shorter fibers than regular paper giving it many advantages compared to traditional paper. In this project, a nanopaper machine was constructed to provide a more efficient way of creating different nanopaper samples.

Automated crane system

Today’s intelligent cranes can be used almost like robots for many tasks in industry. In this project, a LIDAR laser scanner was used for scanning the surroundings and detecting obstacles around an overhead crane system.  

Don't lose focus!

Vision-based driver-assistance systems have already made traffic safer for us. In this project, a smart camera system for a passenger car is developed. System is capable of detecting 360° surroundings of outside of the car (tracking other traffic, pedestrians, etc.), as well as inside of the car by monitoring the drivers state (drowsiness, sudden illness, etc.) and objects not supposed to be in car.

Wet spinning machine

Wet spinning is one method for producing environment friendly cellulose nanofibrils. This project presents a prototype of a wet spinning line for CNF that might allow the production to be scaled up to industrial quantities.

In addition, we have quite a set of more or less useful or fun projects ranging from automated pancake maker and chess-playing robot to industry-grade bandsaw station for bar steel.