Applying Industry 4.0 from the classroom to factory floor
Taking teachers on industry tours is one of the great ways the Gateway to Industry School Program for Advanced Manufacturing is helping with the development of high school student STEAM education. Creating a more skilled and industry-ready workforce is one of our key goals.
Advanced manufacturers, Urban Art Projects (UAP) and B&R Enclosures, kindly opened their doors to our group of teachers from Maryborough and Brisbane.
Not only were the experiences and knowledge gained invaluable, it also demonstrated how teachings in schools have real, valuable and current applications.
“It was inspiring to see strong employment prospects for students.” Phil Gibson, Staines Memorial College.
A rotary encoder is connected to a WiFi enabled Arduino controller
On this Gateway Day, B&R Enclosures shared with the group they are forming a “digital twin” of their factory. This gives them the ability to research and test applications and ideas for efficiencies, before they roll it out at a factory level.
B&R Enclosures use an Arduino sensor (see image insert) to collect data, which is sent to the cloud using the Internet of Things (IoT).
B&R explained to the group that problem they had experienced was that the powder coating line was a bottleneck and jobs were piling up around the machine. They needed to increase the throughput of the line, but did not have any data on how the line was running. B&R wanted to capture the speed and direction of the powder coat line.
The outcome was they used hobby-grade electronics to convert the machine into an IoT device. A rotary encoder is now connected to a WiFi enabled Arduino controller which communicates to their private cloud (SQL database). Using the visual representation of the data, operators were able to provide performance targets to the team, who were able to identify opportunities to optimise the operation of the powder coating line.
This example was particularly interesting to a grade 9 technology teacher within the group, who was currently teaching students about Arduino sensors.
The GISP Inside Advanced Manufacturing tour group, also visited UAP, seeing first-hand how artisan trades have evolved to incorporate mixed Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR&VR). UAP staff demonstrated how they use AR and VR as a complementary tool to traditional manufacturing processes to develop and prototype designs, before moving into manufacturing production.
“I found the tour to be a valuable experience because I was of the belief that robots are taking the jobs and manufacturing in Australia was dying. I’d never heard of the 4th industrial revolution.” — Teacher from Staines Memorial College
UAP demonstration of using augmented and virtual reality in manufacturing
The Gateway to Industry Schools Program for Advanced Manufacturing sends our sincere thanks to management and staff from UAP and B & R Enclosures for making this Gateway tour day possible.
The GISP is funded and supported by the Queensland government.