PhoneCam Photos - June 9, 2006

Geek Heaven... Revisited!

Yesterday's PhoneCam Photo of the Day may have confused some of the families of my students, causing them to think that all we do is have fun and play all day.  I really feel the need to clarify that a bit. 

Guess what? We DO have fun and play all day! 

It's always been my goal as an instructor to make learning (and teaching) FUN.  If you really enjoy what you do for a living, it makes for a pleasurable experience.  That's much better than being bored or even worse, miserable with your job.

The PhoneCam photos today are of three pretty cool pieces of lab equipment we have to "play" with. 

The first one is a hydraulics training station.  Hydraulics are used in everything from power steering in our cars to bulldozers and heavy equipment and even the big fishing trawlers.   Hydraulic systems are often controlled electronically using PLCs or microcontrollers... which we also study in the course.

The second poto is of an industrial robotic arm that uses a PLC to control pneumatic solenoids and motors.  You can see it picking up a round block that it will place into the lazy-susan.  Then it'llget another load and continue until the lazy-susan is full. 

All the action has to be programmed and tweaked and modified until you get it to operate the way you intended.  It's a fun robot to play with.

The last photo is another programmable robotic arm that is very versatile.  It simulates what one might see on a factory floor putting cars together or loading Wheaties boxes into containers. 

It can be trained or programmed to do pretty much anything you want.  Another cool 'toy' that really exercises the ol' grey matter!

So YES... we do have fun, but along the way we're learning some pretty complex stuff!