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All right, now on Alabama STEM Explorers.

Welcome to Alabama STEM Explorers.

I'm and this is my friend Andy.

Andy, what are we learning about today?

So today we are at Ellison Technologies and what we do is we provide equipment and services to the manufacturing industry.

And manufacturing is the making of any parts.

Now, most of what we do concerns metal.

So parts that are made of metal and those parts can go into a variety of industries.

So automotive, the car that you rode here in today, the the plane that you might fly into your next vacation, as well as things like power generation.

So that means the power plant that's down the road that's keeping our lights on.

So what we have on the table in front of us is kind of an example of a wide variety of all the different types of parts that we can make on our D and solutions and and all of our different partner machines that we sell and support out of this location.

Okay, so I'm an applications engineer and what that means is I support our customers engineering staff in understanding how to use and implement the machines that we sell to the best of their ability, right?

We need to make their part fast and accurate as good as we can.

Sometimes that means holding a really tight finish or size or shape of a part.

But as an example of a lot of the things that we do, so we have basically a starting material, right?

So check that out.

That's that is aluminum, a type of metal, and it's very basic grade.

It's it's just a round chunk of metal, not too much to it.

But our goal is to take something like this and turn it into something more like this.

So a little widget that has all these different holes and cavities and slots and shapes.

Now what's that part for?

I'm not sure.

It might go in a car, might be a pulley, might be a pump adapter.

But whatever our customer needs, they come to us and say, Hey, we need to to buy a machine that can make this part.

Maybe we make 3000 of these part in a month.

So we need high speed machining to make something like this.

So our goal is to take the customer from kind of a starting point like this into an ending point like this.

Okay, cool.

So that's that's manufacturing and that's what we do here at Ellison to help our customers.

Now, you may say, cool.

This this part is aluminum, right?

Well, check it out.

This part's aluminum, too, right?

So a nice fancy pump housing.

So the machine that makes this part, you know, might not necessarily be able to make something like this part.

It's it's super complex.

We have a lot of curves and shapes and valleys.

So we have a wide variety of different types of machines to make a wide variety of different types of parts.

Right?

Yeah.

Awesome.

So I wanted to talk to you today a little bit about something that we deal with on a regular basis too, which is materials science.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm an applications engineer, right?

So that's the E in STEM But being an engineer, we have to have a heavy understanding of a lot of the other aspects too.

So materials science is understanding that something that's made out of aluminum doesn't act exactly the same as something that's made out of steel.

Okay, So different types of metal.

Both metal, both hard, but feel that aluminum part again, right?

Not too heavy.

Pretty light.

Now feel this part that's made out of steel.

Right.

A little heftier.

Okay.

So we have to understand when our customers come to us that we can't just use the same machines or the same tools to make a part that's made out of aluminum, to also make a part that's made out of steel.

All right.

So understanding the different types of materials that go into all of the different parts and manufacturing helps us to better serve our customers and answer their questions.

Okay.

So check this out.

Another part made out of steel, right?

So this is actually an aerospace part.

This goes into an airplane, right?

A cargo airplane.

It straps down cargo in the back of the airplane.

Very complex part.

A bit more simplistic on the outside, but we're actually making a gear surface on this part.

So this would go into some kind of a pump drive to actually drive something forward.

Another part made out of steel.

This one's been black coated and this is actually a part of a hand tool.

So a tool that we would use to to work on a car or work on something else.

But all of those parts made from steel, all three of those parts made on completely different machines, right.

It's up to us to to be able to figure out and diagnose and understand what machine platform makes sense for our customers and the types of materials and the types of parts that they're trying to make.

Okay.

Okay.

Could your customers send in a code based on what they want or do they have to send like a picture or a variation of the part pictures worth a thousand words, right?

So we love getting pictures of parts, but more than likely what we're getting from our customers are called prints.

They're drawings or schematics of the part, showing all the different dimensions and shapes and sizes, all different viewpoints.

So when we look at this part right here, that part looks almost completely different when we look at it from this angle versus looking at it from this angle versus looking at it from this angle, right?

There's features all over the part.

So we need to understand what size is that hole right there?

What type of spec is on this gear, How big is this outside diameter?

How big is this inside diameter?

And the engineering prints really show us all of that information.

So we love any kind of information that our customers can share with us.

Usually that comes into us in the form of a engineering print or even an engineering CAD model.

So a CAD model is like a three dimensional model that we can look at on our computers, and we can also feed that CAD model data into software that will create our machining program for us on our machines.

It's very neat though.

The Sheens use a very complex language inside of them called G code or N code.

And it's one thing to understand and be able to read that code, but the more complex of parts that we get coming across our table like this, impeller like this impeller, we need more and more complex code.

And that's something that a human like me or you couldn't write on our own.

So we have to rely on our on our softwares, our computer software to be able to write that code for us.

Yeah, good question.

So when we look at a few more of these parts, so we see this one looks a little bit different.

This is brass, a similar deal.

This is actually two components to a fire hose.

Okay, So not just cars, not just planes, but even something as important and life saving as the fire hoses that our firefighters use on a regular basis, those things have to be made.

And we want to make sure when we make those things that they're going to work right.

So we need to use some very good, accurate machines to make these types of parts.

Talking about our material science is, again, going back to how heavy and how light parts can be.

We have a very small part here, but this part is actually made from a material called titanium.

So titanium, they're actually starting to make a lot of things out of titanium that need high strength and and very rigid, but also extremely light.

So feel that part.

It's very light in your hand, right?

Yes.

So this is actually a part that goes into a race car.

Okay.

So race cars have to be fast.

And to be fast, we want to be light.

We can't be putting steel inside a race car.

It's too heavy.

Might not be strong enough.

So we go up to something like titanium.

But man, titanium can be really hard to machine in the machines that we sell and support.

So we have to know a lot about material science, a lot about manufacturing, and a lot about the way these parts are made so that we can actually make these parts in a good manner for for our customers.

So we talk about life saving as well.

Here's another titanium part.

Now.

It looks pretty interesting, right?

So grab a hold of that.

Now, think about that thing being screwed through your elbow.

That's a bone screw for when somebody might break their arm or break their leg.

We have to screw those bones back together.

As much as I don't want to think about that, we have to have that kind of technology in our medical fields.

So even those things like bone screws and life saving devices have to start somewhere, right?

They have to be made and they're being made in manufacturing shops across America, right?

Yeah.

So another great part that we use, titanium, very lightweight, can go inside the body and not cause any problems inside your body.

Right now, when we talk about making these parts, you asked a great question earlier today, which was what are the tools look like to actually make these parts right?

If steel and titanium are so strong and so durable, how are you cutting these big holes inside these parts?

Right?

Yeah.

Awesome.

So I've got, for an example, a very large drill, right?

We have to bop that hole right through the middle of this part.

And we actually use something like this insert drill to do that inside of a machining center.

And on the end of this insert drill are special things called inserts, and they're made out of another very strong material called Carbide.

So Carbide is a pretty expensive, very heavy duty material that we use in a lot of our machining tools that actually cut this metal away.

Remember, we have to go from something that looks like this to something that looks like this with all those holes and pockets, right?

So we have to use tooling that is made to to basically rip and tear that that metal away.

And we use Carbide inserted tools most of the time for cutting a lot of these parts out.

So that's just an example of a couple of the different types of drills and in mills and turning tools that we use inside of our machines to be able to make these parts.

So if there's something simple, something simpler like this, it it is it still harder to cut if it's larger?

Definitely.

So Alison represents a wide variety of machine tools from machine tools that are very small, making small parts like this ten machine tools that are much larger, making larger parts like this.

We make things as large as the wheels that go on trains, right?

So he's seen trains in the train yard.

How big those wheels are.

The bigger the part is, the bigger the machine has to be.

The heavier duty of the machine has to be.

We can't use a tiny little tool like this when we're trying to machine something that's on the scale of a big train wheel, right?

So we have to scale up our machine, scale up our tools.

Great question.

It is very difficult sometimes when you're talking about cutting away all that material on such a large piece, but we do sell some very large machines, machines that are bigger than your room at home, write machines that you can walk your whole body onto and stand in and look around and say, Wow, that's a huge machine, Right?

To be able to walk on to something like that is is pretty spectacular, right?

Even down in places like Texas, in the oil industry where we're generating a lot of the oil, that that goes into a lot of our production here in America.

Those machines are very large.

So Texas tends to have a lot of the larger sized machines that we sell, whereas a lot of the medical guys, you know, they're making things that go inside of humans so they can be a lot smaller.

We'll be back with more of this on Alabama's STEM Explorer's.

In the applications department, we manage communications between Ellison and our customers to make sure that all of their needs are met for their engineering aspects of their jobs, making sure that the machines that we sell to our customers are running correctly, being programmed correctly, that they're being used in the right manner.

And so it's mainly about supporting our customers on all of their engineering needs.

I had a wonderful science teacher in 7th grade that really got me interested in chemistry.

So that was my first big love of science and entry into engineering.

I like cars as a hobby, working on cars, watching car racing, whether it's NASCAR, formula one.

So I actually went into college thinking that I was going to become an automotive engineer.

I actually really enjoy going on site to a customer because we have customers all over the nation.

We get to see customers in all different industries.

So it may be cars or airplanes or anything like that from day to day, could be very different.

So it's very enjoyable to go into a customer's site, get them trained up on a new machine, see how excited they are to receive this new manufacturing technology and put it to good use.

Being able to take apart from concept.

So maybe it's a drawing on a customer's sketch pad and they say, hey, this is kind of what this needs to look at.

And then stepping through the process of designing that into 3D CAD models, putting that into a manufacturing software that actually makes that part on the machine.

Probably the most exciting aspect is finally being able to see that part take shape in real metal.

So actually pressing the cycle start button on that machine, watching the tools go to work, chips fly, and out comes a finished part.

So that's really exciting to be able to see that kind of come to life.

Starting from an early age, just try to focus on what you think, your end goal you want to do, and through the help and the guidance from others, always be willing to listen to those around you and to take that advice and move forward with it.

Welcome back to Alabama STEM Explorers.

So Andy, what do we have here?

So, Brielle, another thing that Ellison Technologies handles for all of our customers is automation.

Okay?

Automation is the future of manufacturing.

We talked about in our last segment that automation in computers.

AI, right?

Automation in automotive self driving cars.

And on the manufacturing side, what that looks like is automation in manufacturing trending towards robotics, okay?

So what we have in front of us is a robot, okay?

Might look like kind of an arm device.

That is what basically it's going to do is pick up a part and maybe load it into a manufacturing machine.

Okay?

We talked about those metal cutting machines before how we have to load a blank part in the metal machine, cuts it and we unload that finished part out.

Right?

Now, traditionally that's been done by a human.

So a human picks up a part, loads that into a machine.

The machine cuts it.

The human opens that door again, unloads that part back out.

Now, what we want to try and do across America is make our jobs easier, make our jobs more streamlined and make our production more streamlined as well.

And one way that we can do that is by implementing automation.

So automation may not always look like in the manufacturing industry a robot but that is one great way that we can automate a lot of our manufacturing processes.

So this isn't a regular robot in front of us.

Now, a lot of times industrial robots or manufacturing robots are very big, heavy duty, strong pieces of equipment.

Now a lot of times we have heavy parts like we talked about before that we need a heavy, strong robot to lift.

But sometimes we have small, manageable parts that we can lift with a much smaller device.

Now, what's great about this smaller device is it's not just a robot.

It is a collaborative robot.

And what that means, it can collaborate with robots, with humans in the area.

A lot of times with industrial robots, we would have to fence off this whole area so that humans wouldn't be able to enter because the large industrial robots could potentially hurt a human if it ever kind of moved in towards you.

With collaborative robots, we have several different safety sensors on all six of the different axes here to be able to detect if the robot were to ever hit something, including a human, it knows to just stop.

Right?

That's what makes it collaborative.

So we actually call these robots, these collaborative robots are cobots, right?

So collaborative robots.

Now what we're going to do today, I'm going to show you a little bit of how to program one of these things.

So programming robotics, definitely in the line of industry of engineers, right?

Technology, engineering coming together.

So our collaborative robot has the ability to move around.

If I grab this guy and want to move him straight up or straight down, and I can also use a different button on the robot to move around the table like this, right?

Anywhere around the table.

So what we're going to do our task is we are going to pick up this part that's on our table.

So that's an inbound part.

Say it's a raw part that needs to be machined.

We'll pick that up, we're going to relocate that somewhere else on our table, and we're going to set that back down.

That's going to simulate picking up a raw piece, putting it into a machining center, and letting the machining center go to work, right?

Okay.

So all we have to do for this is teach one pick point and one place point.

The software takes care of the rest, right?

That's that technology that we talked about, we need to make this easy to implement in a lot of places so that the wide majority of America can implement automation into their manufacturing process.

So that's why we have this cobot that's easy to program, easy to move around.

So first what we're going to do, we're going to roll over top of our part.

Wherever it's located, we're going to roll down so that we can grab on that part, right?

And then I'm going to set a teach point.

That's our pick point.

We're going to pick up the part from there.

Then we're going to come back up, come back over, and drop that part back down somewhere else on the table just to simulate that part going into a manufacturing machine.

Okay?

Think you can do that?

Yes.

I do too.

So two button on the top.

If we press and hold that two button, we can roll over top of our part.

Go ahead.

Awesome.

So we just need to get kind of close.

It's a little hard to judge whenever we're that far away.

So we can go ahead and hit our one button and drive that guy down towards our part.

Now our collaborative robot is kind of like counterweighted, very easy to move by hand.

That's perfect.

So we've got our robot right over top of our part in our grip location.

I'm going to go ahead and set that grip location here.

And we should see the robot actually close on our part.

So we've actually picked up and secured our part in our gripper.

Awesome.

So let's pick that part up.

So if we hit that one button again and go straight up, we have our part engaged on our robot indefector.

Now we're going to drive that over to some other location on the table that's just simulating us putting it into a machining cell manufacturing machine.

So two button, slide that over somewhere else.

Awesome.

Now let's drive it straight back down like we're going to drop it off on the table.

Great.

You're doing awesome.

All right.

So now we're in our place position, right?

Yeah, you can hands off.

We're good.

So that's where we're going to place our part down.

I'm going to set that point right now we will release that gripper so that that part is now sitting stationary on the table.

And if you want to, you can push that one dot button and drive that robot straight back up.

Awesome.

So two teach locations.

That wasn't hard at all, right.

And it's pretty much the same in our manufacturing cells.

Now we may need to pick up a part, turn it sideways, place it in a machine, come back out.

But still we've got a pick point, we've got a place point.

Now we let the machine cut that part.

We go back in, we've got a pick point to remove that part, and we place it back down.

That's all we do in automation and manufacturing is a lot of pick and place.

Now the robot can do a lot more than that, but at its core, in manufacturing, that's what we do.

So let's see how good you did.

We're going to move that part back to where it was and we're going to run this robotics program all on its own so that it can go and pick up that part, put it back down, right?

Fully automated.

Moves down, grabs the part, moves up, moves back over to your drop spot, moves down, drops the part, back off, back up, ready to go again, right?

Great job.

That looked awesome.

So implementing this automation into all of these different manufacturing know that's the future of manufacturing.

We want to get more automation into the manufacturing sector that allows America to be more competitive and just stay on top of manufacturing.

Keeping manufacturing in America is what we are really striving for.

So implementing new technologies, science, engineering into the manufacturing sector is really what Ellison's trying to do.

So, do you have any questions for me on this collaborative robot cell that we're looking at here?

So, is this made to also move the bigger parts?

Sure.

So, we have a wide range of robotic arms available.

Right.

So even though this is a smaller robot moving a small part, this guy Dan can lift up a part that's probably around 20 pounds.

Right.

So think about lifting a 20 pound dumbbell.

It's pretty heavy.

But if we needed to lift up heavier parts, we do have larger size.

Robots that are still collaborative, can still work alongside humans that can lift up to about 45 pounds.

So that's almost double what we're talking about here.

So those are some pretty large parts.

Those large impellers we looked at before, some larger automotive parts.

Now, if we do need to get into more of a fully automated cell where we've got multiple machines, machines moving around very fast, we want to try and keep humans out of that area.

We, of course, can still go to an industrial robot, fence those robots off.

That allows the robots to go full speed back and forth, heavy parts.

But we're keeping the human element out of it still.

So, great question.

Anything else?

So, when it comes to the larger parts and different machines for the larger parts, is there different types of robots, different ways to attach them?

Absolutely.

So, here we have a robot that's kind of mounted to a table, right.

It's very convenient to have our parts stacked up on our table.

We can grab those parts, put them in a machine, take them out of the machine, put them back on the table.

Now we have a human that comes over, operator, takes away those finished parts, puts back on raw parts.

That robot's ready to go again.

Right.

We love lights out machining.

Lights out.

Machining means, hey, it's the end of the day.

We all want to go home and spend time with our families, right?

But what we can do with this robot cell is load it up full of parts, hit the play button, and go home when we come back in the morning.

What's that robot and machining cell done?

It's made all those parts for us while we were gone, increasing productivity, just making our lives easier to be able to come in, have all those parts finished for us.

We'll start back over again.

Now, we can mount these things to the floor in cases where we have very heavy parts, we need that stability to move those things around.

Most of our machines do get lagged to the floor, the metal cutting machines, so that we have good stability and rigidity.

But we can put these things anywhere.

We even have robots on moving platforms that can move back and forth between two different machines.

They've started engineering AGVs, automatically guided vehicles.

You've got Teslas driving around automatically driving cars.

We have the same thing.

This little robot base can drive through your facility and pick up and put down whatever it needs to do automatically.

So the future of automation is real.

It's coming, it's here.

And that's very exciting news for a lot of people in the manufacturing industry.

Brielle, thanks for coming by this week.

You did awesome.

Thank you for teaching me so much about programmable technology.

See you next week on Alabama STEM Explorers.

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Alabama STEM Explorers.

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Alabama STEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holle, champions of servant leadership.