Zebra ZE500 Printer

ZE500 is an industrial label printer. As a former employee of Jabil design services, Yu-Hsiu Lee was responsible for mechanical related issues of control panel module for the OEM client Zebra Technologies.

Fig. 1 Zebra ZE-500 series label printer (courtesy of Zebra Technologies)

iRobot Roomba 700 Series

Roomba 700 series are high-end household vacuum cleaning robots (see Fig. 1). As a former employee of Jabil design services, Yu-Hsiu Lee was responsible for proposing possible cost reduction opportunities.

 Fig. 1 iRobot Roomba 700 series (courtesy of iRobot)

Measurement and Mechanical Engineering Laboratory

Measurement and Mechanical Engineering Laboratory is a required course for junior students in the department of mechanical engineering at National Taiwan University. This course consists of miscellaneous topics of different fields such as material science, solid mechanics, thermal science, control, and fluid mechanics (see Fig. 1). Students can access equipment (or even build one on their own) which measures/demonstrates displacement, velocity, acceleration, force, torque, pressure, temperature, vibration, and other meaningful physical quantities.

Mechanical Design Theory Semester Project: Ground Robots

Ground robot design and realization was a semester project of Mechanical Design Theory. Students were asked to build their own robots (no wheels allowed) to pass 3 predetermined stages as shown in Fig. 1. Stage A was a rectangular tunnel, stage B was a little hill, and stage C was a pair of cylindrical rods. Weight, successful rounds, total mileage, and time consumed were all performance indices taken into scoring.

Fig. 1 Racing field of ground robots

Virtual PID Experiments Using LabVIEW

In class of Automatic Control, students learn a lot of tools like root locus and Bode plot to analyze the plant under study. However, even with the aid of software simulation like MATLAB, students who first reach this subject usually wonder how simple control scheme like PID is implemented when it comes to real-world applications. PID control, though pretty fundamental, plays an important rule in industrial applications. When reaching such topic, professors usually asks those who are interested in this to build a circuit like Fig. 1 to get some insights.

Design And Research of a Miniature Pneumatic Vibrator

Most conventional high-frequency vibrators used in ultrasonic applications like machining or welding processes generate the working power based on principles of piezoelectric or magneto-strictive effects (see Fig. 1 & Fig. 2). After entering the transducer, the time-varying electric input energy will then be transformed into solid-body vibration; however, the heat dissipated during energy transduction and the high-frequency electric input source has made them more complex of such transducers. Hence, in this work the use of pneumatic excitation was proposed as an alternative, which aimed to utilize the self-cooling property of gas and the availability of such phenomenon under constant air pressure.

Fig. 1 Common Langevin type piezoelectric transducers (courtesy of Tamura Corp.)

Design and Realization of a Whiskey Ice Feeding Machine

Fig. 1 Whiskey ice ball

The idea of this work was intended to build a whiskey ice feeding machine which stores and feeds ice balls (see Fig. 1). The marketing research of such machines was done and shown with great potential by the marketing management students of National Chung Cheng University. Collaborating with mechanical engineering students of National Taiwan University, the prototype was built and proved applicable. With the compelling demonstration and thorough marketing analysis, the group won the 1st prize of TiC100 Campus Entrepreneurship Competition in the final.

Design and Realization of a Long-Stroke Displacement Sensor Using Hall Elements

In this work magnetically sensitive electronic components called Hall elements were used to realize a long-stroke displacement sensor (see Fig. 1). Output voltage of Hall elements are induced by magnetic fields, and hence are sensitive to the proximity of ferromagnetic objects like magnets. By creating flux change in the magnetic circuit (see Fig. 2), induced voltage can be read out and used to calculate the actuated displacement.

Fig. 1 Illustration of a displacement sensor         Fig. 2 Possible magnetic flux change design

Parametric Study of a Typical Rocker Switch

Rocker switches are common electro-mechanical components used to close or open electrical connections. Solteam Electronics Corporatoin, a famous electronics manufacturer in Taiwan, sought cooperation with mechanical engineering students at National Taiwan University in order to get more insights of the design parameters of a typical rocker switch MR22 (see Fig. 1). This project mainly focused on two subjects, the first was the effects of geometric parameters on mechanical performance indices like maximum force required and stroke length, the second one was the validation of a simplified mathematical model predicting electrical contact resistance and the equilibrium temperature.

Fig. 1 Partially sectioned model of rocker switch MR22

Dynamic Behavior of an Arch Structure Under Moving Point Loads

An arch structure under single moving point load had been previously studied (see Fig. 1). This project was intended to understand the dynamic response, especially the snap-through behavior over time, of such structure under two moving point loads toward each other (see dashed line in Fig. 1). Using Mathematica software package, it is possible to study the characteristics and determine the dangerous zone where snap-through would occur under certain combination of different load magnitudes and load speeds.

Fig. 1 Problem description of an arch under moving point load(s)

(courtesy of Solid Mechanics Laboratory, NTU)

Simulation of a Micro Electro-Thermal Actuation System Using ADAMS

A micro electro-thermal actuation system called BETV (Bidirectional Electro-Thermal Vibrator, see Fig. 1 below) is commonly used to control the inductive property of a micro magnetic circuit (see Fig. 2 below) or as a switch to turn on/off of an optical signal through slider output displacement. BETV utilizes alternating electric input applied on the terminals as energy source to generate the oscillation of the impact head due to repetitive contraction and expansion of different cross-sectional areas of the electric path under Ohmic heating (see Fig. 3). The impact head then collides with the slider and the slider moves accordingly.

           Fig. 1 Configuration of BETV                Fig. 2 Use BETV to change inductive property

YAMAHA YZF-R1 3D Modeling Using CATIA

Complex mechanical system design like motorcycles, automobiles and airplanes require collaboration of multiple engineers. CATIA provides an interface for concurrent design, and its flexibility of geometry construction is intuitive and easy to get starting with. Fig. 1~3 below are from a computer aided design course project accomplished by Lee, Y.H., Wang, W.R. and Chang, T.W. in 2007.

Fig. 1 Computer graphic rendering of YAMAHA YZF-R1 with natural scene background