Researchers at Humber College, funded by the NSERC Engage Grant, worked in partnership with industry partner Hamilton Plastic Systems Ltd. to design a new version of a reliable, programmable, and cost-effective control board.
Industrial systems integration and IoT can help organizations and businesses better prepare and navigate the unprecedented challenges heightened by the current pandemic. Reinventing and repurposing internal operations to meet industry demands is crucial for survival. Humber College continues to collaborate with industry partners to provide valuable contributions, where industry partners gain access to Humber’s research excellence while providing Humber with an opportunity to contribute to innovative breakthroughs and real-life industry exposure for researchers and students.
Industry Partner
Hamilton Plastic Systems Ltd. (HPSL) is a small Canadian company that has been a leading supplier of auxiliary and capital machinery to the plastics industry since 1965. HPSL operates from a modern manufacturing facility providing a wide section of equipment that efficiently moves and stores raw materials and conveys and conditions them on their way to processing. They are recognized as a leading manufacturer and supplier to the plastic industry by concentrating their resources in innovative ways to automate material flow, serve customers promptly and maintain large, finished units and spare parts inventory.
Challenge
The circuit boards in HPSL’s equipment for the operation of their Integral Vacuum Loaders, which have discreet digital components, were designed 50 years ago. They had a very short lifecycle and required frequent rewiring and maintenance, leading to numerous service calls from their clients, the leading cause of downtime and costs for their customers’ production.
HPSL collaborated with Humber College to design, optimize, and develop a cost-efficient circuit board solution that can be reprogrammed based on the need. The urgent requirement for this solution to meet the increasing demands of technicians for service calls and lost revenue from HPSL clients was met through intelligent design, research, and collaboration.
Humber Research & Innovation was successful in earning the NSERC Engage Grant
The Humber team designed a new version of the control board. The final prototype version includes a controller board and a relay board; the controller board contains a microcontroller that can be reprogrammed based on the specific requirements that may vary over time, with a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), a memory chip, and a microchip responsible for Universal Serial Bus (USB) communication. The reprogramming capability of the proposed solution is an innovative improvement compared to the previous one, as there is no need to modify the hardware for reprogramming. Besides that, the labor work to do the wiring will be significantly reduced as all connections to field devices are available through connectors on the relay board.
The research team aimed to develop a working programmable board for a self-contained material loader at a reduced cost. Prototype construction of the board was designed to verify accompanying HPSL specifications and costs.
Three Stages of the Project led by the Humber Research Team
The methodology used in achieving the goal was to divide the project into three parts:
- Programming as per the requirements of the project
- Design hardware; and
- Manufacture prototypes for testing purposes in an industrial environment.
The Project Leads
The Humber research project was led by Savdulla Kazazi, Ph.D. P.Eng., Professor and Program Coordinator, Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology (FAST) as the Principal investigator, assisted by Javeed Khan, Ph.D., P.Eng. former Professor at FAST as the Co-Investigator.
Savdulla has 32 years of experience in academia, industry, and research and development with consultation projects. His expertise in Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and extensive experience in industry settings effectively contributed to the development of the product to meet the rigorous demand in HPSL’s setting/industry environment. He assumed supervision of the students and overall technical lead for the project working in liaison with Humber Research & Innovation.
Javeed Khan’s expertise in microcontroller-based design projects and digital signal processor projects played an essential role in designing and developing this project. He was responsible for literature review, research and selection of microcontroller and interface (human-machine interface – HMI), design of physical inputs and outputs interfaced to the board, listing, and procurement of materials, programming of Microcontroller and HMI, fabrication of PCB board along with interfaces for the physical inputs and outputs, and working with the research team to meet the project deliverables
Humber College’s Research & Innovation team provided support, facilitated communication between all stakeholders to ensure the project was progressing according to the research plan and budget and helped coordinate the stages of this project, and have a structured plan to make the project a success.
Steve Hamilton, the CEO, was the main point of contact at HPSL.
During the project’s duration, the team assigned tasks and discussed them on a day-to-day basis to address any technical issues that arise.
Students Gain
Two Research Assistants were hired from Humber’s Electrical Engineering Control Systems Program:
- Ba Vu Tran, and
- Anand Vikram Muthusamy.
The students/research assistants were able to:
- Acquire hands-on training through the design of the hardware, the construction of the control board, and the programming of the microcontroller;
- Get an opportunity to perform a literature review under the guidance of supervisors;
- Gain working experience on the hardware and software of the project; and
- Train as independent workers and critical thinkers through all phases of the project.
Potential for Impact
The socio-economic benefit from this project is that the students/research assistants involved in this project were trained in an industry setting (experiential learning). They will be job-ready to join the skilled workforce of Canada. This project will also reduce the cost of the board manufactured by HPSL, and hence it will reduce the overall cost of the machine in which the board will be installed. Therefore, it will have a positive impact on the Canadian economy.
Apart from the economic benefit, the environmental benefit would be the reduction of electronic waste due to the reusability of this project. The solution is not only convenient and easy to use from the customers’ perspective, but it also significantly reduces the labor job involved, making the new generation of the integral loader one of the best choices among other competitors in the market.
The success of research projects is an outcome we are enthusiastic about sharing with our audience. Expect regular updates from us highlighting breakthroughs through research and innovation.