Author: Jenny List / Source: Hackaday
Have you ever considered the manufacture of candles? Not necessarily manufacturing them yourself, but how they are manufactured in a small-scale industrial setting? It’s something that has been of great concern to Michael Schuldt as he grappled with the task of automating a simple manual candle production process.
It’s not just an interesting subject, but the topic of manufacturing automation is something we can all learn from. This was the subject of his Adventures in Manufacturing Automation talk at the recent Hackaday Superconference which you’ll find below the break. Let’s dive in and see what this is all about!
How Complex Can a Simple Process Be?
The candle making process was simple enough, a hopper containing molten wax was positioned above a conveyor along which candle jars were sent, with the wax was dispensed into the jars from above. Periodically the hopper would need refilling, and all tasks were performed by an operator.
Michael’s first prototype automated the machinery with pneumatic components and attacked the whole process in software, with a MicroPython loop holding all possible functions. The problem he found with that approach was one that no doubt many engineers have grappled with: it quickly becomes unwieldy. The monolithic solution fell short on his essential criteria: that it be reliable, debuggable, repairable, and easy-to-use. In essence, the lesson is more hardware, less software.
There were some obvious simplifications, replacing excess software associated with simple tasks with hardware built for them. In the candle process for example there was no point in having a wax tank selection step in software when…
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