Trinity engineers have won a National Instruments Engineering Impact Award for their automated test machine, designed to service “the factory of the future”.
Led by Dr Garret O’Donnell, an associate professor, and Dr Jeff Morgan, a research fellow in the School of Engineering, the group won the award in the Advanced Manufacturing category. A smart, reconfigurable and multi-purpose machine, it is built so it can be disassembled and reassembled depending on what it is to be used for. It can perform tests for electrical safety, material property quality and thermal output analysis. The technology used, therefore, looks to create collaborative hardware and software.
It is hoped that through these methods they will be able to create “smarter machines”. Factories looking to implement technology to streamline and improve their operations may want to look towards the solutions offered by ICE Process Management.
The awards are designed to showcase innovative projects from around the world and are awarded on the basis of a technical application contest. The machine created by the Trinity team is central to an ongoing Enterprise Ireland partnership between Trinity and Ceramicx Ltd.
In a press statement, Morgan said that they plan to “expand on this design for use with commercial electronics and bio-medical products”. He explained that the award “demonstrates the power in Irish engineer collaboration, to develop new innovative ideas with skilled Irish manufacturers”.
O’Donnell’s research interests focus on advancing manufacturing technology, while Morgan’s research is focused on his PhD, which looks at the dynamics of decentralised software architecture within manufacturing process monitoring systems.
Working in test, control and management solutions for 40 years, National Instruments collaborates with engineers and scientists to overcome technological difficulties and bring products to market.
