Information Control in Manufacture

Abstract

Production has a very high priority in our national economic development plan and information control by computer aided devices plays a vital role in furthering manufacture by adaptive control of machine tools. We are using powerful and growing multi-access computer systems and relatively slender numbers of staff with modern bands with communication links to other computer systems in various parts of the state of Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere in our country. This ensures planning and decision making in order to produce information to ensure correct manufacture and construction. A whole series of basic tools are shaped, consolidated and improved as experience grows of industry by interaction with research. The widest possible exploitation of results was obtained by making suitable arrangements for marketing and the provision of service by other organisations. The constant feedback of the computer system provided a powerful control in the direction of computer system development, thus ensuring that the total system evolved on the right lines. We were very much concerned with command processing. When using the tektromix terminal device, the input was largely keyboard oriented. Fortran, Algol, MAD, BASIC were used and new manufacturing devices and new materials have given rise to less expensive and more powerful computing equipment. Vertical circular indexing was used where the work was circle indexed automatically in a vertical plane. The work pieces were automatically clamped in the interlocked trunion fixture and were indexed through the various operations of spot drilling, drilling spot facing reaming, and counter-boring. An automatic time delay mechanism was arranged in the machine when the tools reverse. An automatic coolant system for cooling the tools and automatic lubrication to the drill heads and machine ways were provided. Automated broaching operations were recommended where a large volume of identical pieces was used with a number of independent machine units through them aided by specially designed handling equipment. A typical inline indexing transfer machine for high production of automotive parts was designed. The parts produced on this machine were torque converter adaptor plates. The complete machine was arranged as a group of single production units with all necessary controls in a central position, enabling the operator to manipulate from the main console. Other individual remote push buttons were also strategically located in various positions, assuring additional instant control and safety.Typically electronic phase-sensitive demodulators were also designed. The tubes acted as gating devices or switches that permitted the input signal to reach the output only during certain intervals. Both tubes were supplied with the same plate voltage which caused the anode potentials of both tubes to be positive with respect to cathode during a portion of each cycle and negative for the remainder of each.(1)