Original subtitles

[narrator] Welcome.

On this episode of Tomorrow's World Today,

we visit the world of innovation

to learn how innovations in compressed air

and a math equation from the 1700s

are being used in modern manufacturing.

Our field reporter Greg brushes up on his ABCs.

And we celebrate the first ever national pneumatics day.

From Inventionland world headquarters,

here's our host, George Davison.

Throughout history, we've used the air we breathe to power things

like blow guns,

which date back as early as 429 AD.

You know, a blow gun is simply a long narrow tube,

that you shoot something like a dart out of.

They're surprisingly powerful, they're accurate,

and they can shoot upwards of 100 yards.

- [blows] - [glass breaking]

And you've probably seen bellows used a fan of flame.

When the boards of the bellows are separated,

air rushes into the chamber.

When the boards are brought together,

the valve closes,

and air will rush out through this nozzle.

This is one of the very first uses of compressed air.

Today, compressed air is used over and over in our everyday lives,

like when the dentist's uses it to clean our teeth,

or when we're filling up our tires when the air is low.

We're gonna head over to the woodshop now

for a demonstration.

- Hi, Stu. - Hey, George.

- Well, are you ready for the demo? - Absolutely.

Take a look at this.

- All right. - So this is the Bernoulli grip

worked off Bernoulli's principle.

You can see here,

- we have a compressor in the other room. - Okay.

It's blowing high speed air with these blue arrows here.

And it creates a low pressure field,

- right in the middle with the yellow arrow. - Yes.

Which works like a vacuum.

- Ah! - So the outside air pressure

holds whatever material you want,

right up to the base of it, and it won't even touch it.

Well, that's really interesting.

Let me make sure I understand this.

So, in the other room in this illustration,

there's a compressor running that's filling a tank.

- It's forcing high speed air out of that head, right? - Yep.

When it does that,

it's creating a vacuum right here in the middle.

- Is that right? - Exactly.

And you won't even be touching your part.

It creates almost like a little hovercraft in there.

That's nice. So no damage to the part of it,

it's really a sensitive piece.

- Exactly. - Very nice.

You know what, this is one of those times

where science feels like magic,

you know, hairs blowing out of this

but it still... it creates that vacuum

with the the outside air pushing it right up in there. It's amazing.

- It seems surreal. Really. - Yeah.

- You want to take a look? - Of course, Stu.

- [laughs] - All right.

[air whooshing]

Wow.

I can see through it.

Yep. It's not even touching.

Right.

There it goes.

That's amazing, Stuart.

- Thank you for the demo. - Absolutely.

To learn more about how compressed air

is helping to innovate the world of manufacturing,

we're going to be visiting SMC

who invented an air cylinder actuator in the 1970s.

An actuator is simply what's responsible for moving or controlling parts.

They've got some great lessons and experiments in store for us

that are going to help us to understand

the science behind air compression.

I've sent Greg to SMC headquarters in Indianapolis

to get more information.

Let's catch up with him on site.

You know you've made it

when you've got your own road named after you.

I'm here at SMC

where they're using their actuators

and compressed air

to help support the automation process

in manufacturing.

We're gonna meet with John Halvorsen and Amanda Wease.

They're going to give us a little more information on the science

behind some automation necessities.

Hi, Amanda. Hi, John.

Really great to meet you two today.

I understand we're going to be doing experiments all day long.

This is going to be so cool.

Yes, it's gonna be very exciting, Greg.

John and I are going to show you three different demonstrations

to show you SMC's version of the ABCs.

The ABCs?

That's right. Let's go see.

So Amanda, I'm gonna need you to explain a little bit more about these ABCs.

Of course, Greg.

Today we're gonna be talking about air recycling,

Bernoulli's gripper and the compact wireless.

[John] Let's start with air recycling.

You're familiar with pneumatics, right?

I am. Anything with a pneumatic component uses compressed air

as its energy source.

So everything from nail guns to roller coasters,

they all use compressed air.

Exactly. You've done your homework.

I try.

Very good. Let's go look at the first demo.

Sounds great.

So Greg, in addition to nail guns, and rollercoasters,

pneumatics is commonly used in a variety of industries.

SMC is a company that's helping those manufacturers

reduce their carbon emissions through our technologies.

Well, that's great.

So the demo that I have here

is a standard pneumatic actuator

and our air saving pneumatic actuator.

[air hisses]

When I extend and retract the cylinder,

I'm putting air pressure on either side of the piston to move it back and forth.

Right, but that means you're wasting air in both directions.

That's correct. Every time I cycle this actuator,

I'm actually releasing the used air back to the atmosphere

versus in this air saving model.

- [air hisses] - I can extend the cylinder using compressed air,

but when I retract the cylinder,

I'm using the same air from this chamber.

So you're saving half the air.

Exactly. We're saving approximately half the air,

which results in half the air compressor runtime

and half the electricity and half the carbon emissions.

[Greg] That's great. Amanda, what's next?

The Bernoulli gripper.

All right, let's see the B.

- So Greg, are you familiar with the Bernoulli grip? - I am.

The Bernoulli grip allows you to have the air pressure

and the speed inversely related.

So when the speed of the air increases, the pressure decreases,

which allows us to pick up the objects.

Right. So that's basically the reasons

why birds can fly and we can't, it's about the shape of their wings.

When they flap, they generate a lot of pressure underneath and it gives them that lift.

I can flap my arms all day long,

and I'm never gonna take off.

Exactly. So right here is our Bernoulli gripper.

It allows the air to move very quickly through the holes

in the bottom of the gripper,

which creates a suction in the middle.

But what's really interesting is the fact that

it doesn't actually have any contact

because there's a thin layer of air above the object.

That is interesting. Let's see it in action.

[pressurized air hissing]

The design is also a high lifting force,

so you can pick up a little bit heavier objects, too.

[Greg] And it's not actually touching the product.

- Exactly. - That's pretty fascinating.

So this is a little bit different

- than these ones here. - Okay.

Because these are suction cups that use a vacuum generator.

So this is our ZK2,

which saves about 90% of the air consumption,

because once it reaches a certain pressure,

it just pulses the air

so it maintains that pressure rather than continuously supplying the air.

Okay, so that's basically how birds stay up in the air once they're up there.

They only flap their wings every once in a while,

and yet they stay airborne.

Exactly. Because that sounds like a lot of work.

The vacuum products will allow you to actually reduce

some of your repetitive motion.

So it's actually easier for us as well.

The very first cup that we're going to look at is this FDA cup.

It's blue because it's not naturally occurring in nature,

which makes it ideal for food applications.

So it could be used for potato chips

or cookies or picking up different things like that.

- Just picking things up, moving it a different area. - Exactly.

Well, let's see it work on our little bag of fake blueberries there.

- Perfect. - [air hisses]

[Greg] Awesome. Very interesting.

Now, as I look along here,

these all seem to have a fairly similar shape

but this one is pretty interesting to me, because it's pretty heavy.

It's about a half a ball bearing,

it's got a little bit of heft to it.

I want to see if this will pick it up.

No problem at all.

Now, one thing I'm noticing is that these shapes are similar.

And these two in particular look exactly the same.

What's the difference between these two?

So if you notice, this is a thin film whereas these are bellows.

- So that's why you can pick up this heavy round object. - Okay.

These two are a little bit different

because they're different material type.

This is a nitrile rubber,

which is really good for general industries.

So you can pick up the glass there, cardboard,

or even automotive hoods.

Okay, but this one would be better in some...

maybe some heavier duty or applications?

- Things like that. - Exactly right.

- Okay. - So I know we had a lot of fun here,

and I know we want to probably keep going,

but John, what we have next?

Yeah, let's get to the C, our compact wireless system.

We've looked at our actuators and vacuum

and how we can reduce air consumption.

Now let's look at a way that manufacturers can increase their uptime

and simplify machine design.

-Sounds great. Let's take a look. -All right, let's go.

So Greg, most manufacturers rely on 24X7 operation.

And what we found is in their machine designs,

one of the biggest problems they run into

is communication cables and losing communication.

That can be the weakest link in a machine.

And I imagine along with that, you have to worry about

protecting that cable, depending on the environment that it's in.

You have to look at how flexible it needs to be,

how far the information has to travel, how quickly that has to happen

and what happens if that cable fails.

Right. And there's all that labor to do the cable installation

to repair the cables.

And think about all the landfill waste on the broken cables.

Man, that looks like the back of my entertainment center.

Yeah, so let's just do that.

And we have a simplified way to deal with that.

Here we have our EX600 wireless system

that takes one communication cable

from the controller to our base unit,

we have this base unit communicating wirelessly

to this remote unit

and we can have up to 127 remotes,

including our new compact version.

This compact remote can be used in a packaging machine

where they want to have a really small profile

and just keep their overall machine design small.

Now, I can't imagine though, that you're just gonna walk

into a manufacturers office,

plop this stuff down on the desk and walk away.

You've got to have some way of training

and educating them on how to use it.

Exactly. So although these are very complex products,

if someone's willing to learn,

we have a training facility just for them.

Great. I'd really love to see that.

- All right, let's go meet Beth. - Okay.

[Elizabeth] That's there.

And we're here.

- Hi, guys. - Hi!

So we've been talking about actuators.

So let's think about what you know about actuators.

- What are your movements? - Linear.

[Elizabeth] Linear, very good.

Give me a second movement of an actuator.

- Uh, gripper. - [Elizabeth] Gripper.

Give me a third movement.

Rotating.

[Elizabeth] Rotating. All right.

Let's talk about how do I pick valve that goes with the actuator

because the actuator is going to be picked by my application.

In this case, we've already picked our actuator.

We've picked a double acting actuator.

So let's start simple. Let's start with the most basic valve we've got,

which is a 2/2.

Air comes in.

Air comes out.

And now I have to figure out how I want to move my valve.

We're gonna start with returning it.

The easiest way to return it is a spring.

So I put a spring in.

Now there's a lot of different ways I can move the valve.

I can move it manually, I can move it mechanically,

I can move it with electro pneumatics,

which is what we're going to choose

because that's what a lot of industries are going to pick.

I'm going to send a signal, when I send my signal, I shift my valve,

my air goes through, send my actuator out.

When I stop sending my signal,

my valve is going to shift back

and we would anticipate the actuator come back.

Even if we had the method to send it back,

there's no place for it to go.

We can't send our air out.

2/2s don't work.

So we're going to add a port.

I'm just changing the internal construction,

I send my signal,

my air's allowed to travel through,

my actuator goes out.

When I stop sending my signal,

I have a path for my air to leave,

which I didn't have with my 2/2.

But I still don't have a spring in this

so I don't have a return method.

We're going to get to a 5/2.

Five ports, two positions.

One, two, three, four, five.

Five ports on both sides. My air comes in

and I'm gonna change how I have it plumbed.

Air on both sides.

Now if we look my air is pushing it back,

I have a path for my air to leave.

When I send a signal, when I shift my valve,

my air goes up,

my actuator goes out,

my air goes through.

When I shift it back, my air comes back,

my piston goes back

and my air is allowed to evacuated.

So what we're going to do is we're going to go look at the production simulator

and look at some applications and some examples

of those different valve and actuator combinations.

All right, so now we are at the FMS.

What does FMS stand for?

Good question. FMS stands for Flexible Manufacturing System.

[Greg] Okay.

And so what this is, is a mock up

of what you would see in industry.

So it has a lot of different combinations of actuators.

So we've talked about how we have linear actuators

and how we have rotary actuators

and we have grippers.

And on this particular station, we've got all three,

- and they all work together for one purpose. - Okay.

So in this case, what we're going to do is we're going to have

this station install a bearing into the body.

So now that it knows that it's here,

we're gonna have our linear actuator go out and push the bearing.

Now gripper and rotary are going to pick up our bearing,

move it to a second station

where that station is going to take a linear actuator

- and measure how big our bearing is. - [Greg] Okay.

And then we're gonna have our last rotary and gripper combination

pick up our bearing

and install it in the body.

[Greg] Okay, now this whole situation looks as though

it's a simulation of an entire production line.

Yes, it does. It has all of the pieces

and all of the sequencing that you'd see in industry,

but to understand how it actually works,

let's go look at a bench and look at some actuators and air up close.

- Let's do it. - Let's go.

- This is almost done. - Let this finish this up right here.

- How you guys doing? - Oh, hi, Beth.

[actuators clicking]

- Nice. - Okay, so tell me what we're looking at here?

What we're looking at here is a close-up

of what you would see on the bench.

So now we're looking at two actuators

that are working in sequence

to have a core single idea.

Okay.

So before we were using sensors

that said, "Hey, where's my actuator?"

Now we're using these valves to say

where's our location.

So those two talk about this one,

and those two talk about that one.

Now how they get their information for each other?

- Air, and actually, the other valves. - [Greg] Okay.

[Elizabeth] So this valve right here is controlling that information.

And it's saying, "Hey, I got this information from this valve."

We're gonna move that actuator.

Same with that one.

So it's all about information. It's all about air.

So this whole thing is just pure pneumatics.

Nothing but air.

I think John and Amanda have a surprise for you.

- Let's go check it out. - Let's do it.

- Hey, guys. - Hey.

Hey, so, students are gone.

So I'm done for the day but I don't think you are.

So it's been fun. I'll see you guys later.

- All right, Beth. - Thanks a lot.

So what is this surprise I'm hearing about?

Well, John's gonna head over to Inventionland with you

to help kick off the festivities

for National Pneumatics Day on April 27.

And we're trying to keep it a secret from George.

- So if can you keep it quiet, that would be great. - [Greg] Ah.

I'll do my best. It's tough to keep anything from that guy.

- But I'll see you back in Inventionland, all right? - Awesome.

- Sounds good. - I'm taking these wheels because this place is huge.

And I need to wheel on out of here.

So off we go.

- Bye, Greg. - See you, Greg.

[bicycle bell ringing]

[Greg] To Inventionland and beyond.

- [Amanda] Bye, Greg. - [John] See you, Greg.

What is all this in my office?

- What in the world-- - Hey.

- Hey, George. - Oh, hey, John, how are you?

Good. Good to see you.

I couldn't help but notice that you found our surprise.

- Is that what's under there, a surprise? - It is.

So I'll go ahead and unveil it

since you've obviously found it.

I worked with your staff on this.

We'd like to award the first ever

Sustainability and Automation Award

to Tomorrow's World Today.

- Wow! - For helping us

to share our message with a wider audience.

Thank you very much, John. It's very kind of you and your operation.

We were happy to do that.

Actually, today is also April 27th, right?

Which is National pneumatics day,

a day dedicated to sustainability and automation.

You know, John, I don't know how you pulled that off, but that's a good idea.

Great.

So tell me what else has been going on over at SMC?

Yeah, well, thanks for sending Greg over.

We had a chance to look at some demonstrations

and we taught him about the ABCs of pneumatics.

A for air recycling cylinder

that consumes 47% less compressed air than a standard cylinder.

- Wow. - B for Bernoulli gripper

and C for our Compact Wireless System.

Our Compact Wireless System eliminates wires

between a base unit and multiple remote units

allowing for industrial communication

between two points wirelessly,

eliminates cables and helps our customers with uptime,

so they don't have cable breakages.

No cable breakage, nothing going out to the landfill. That's great.

That's right, yeah. In addition to reducing operating cost

and energy consumption,

we can also just reduce materials altogether.

We also had an opportunity to put Greg through some training.

- He actually sat in on one of our classes. - Oh.

We bring in students, you know, as paid employees,

and train them on pneumatic technology

and other industrial technology,

so then they can go out and help our customers

to implement this new technology

- and improve their sustainability. - Wow.

So what are you going to do with the award, George?

We're going to put that up in the main hall

and we'll be able to tell the story of pneumatics and technology

and, you know, where it's going in the future.

All right, well, hey, I'm happy to have left this behind,

-and I'll see you later. Take care. -Thank you, John.

[narrator] To learn more about the content in today's episode,

visit us online at www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com