In this study. the fatigue lives of two kinds of specimens made by $CO^2$ gas weld were assessed. The materials for two kinds of specimens were taken out of the virgin carbon steel tubes and the used carbon steel tubes respectively. As a result, it was found that the fatigue lives of two groups of specimens were in the same order of magnitude.

Remote fault diagnosis and maintenance system using general telecommunication network is necessary for an effective fault diagnosis and higher productivity of NC machine tools. In order to monitor machine tool condition and diagnose alarm states due to electrical and mechanical faults, a remote data communication system for monitoring of NC machine fault diagnosis and status is developed. The developed system consists of (1) remote communication module among NC's and host PC using PSTN. (2) 8 channels analog data sensing module, (3) digital I/O module for control or NC machine, (4) communication module between NC machine and remote data communication system via RS-232C, and (5) software man-machine interface. Diagnostic monitoring results generated through a successive type inference engine are displayed in user-friendly graphics. The validity and reliability of the developed system is verified to be a powerful commercial version on a vertical machining center through a series of experiments.

In this paper, a force control algorithm for edge following task is suggested. Through the contact state modeling between rigid part and end-effector of robot, contact force and contact angle that are essencial parameters to build the control strategies for following movement of end-effector are derived. From these two parameters, we discriminate the every contact state into 8 cases and calculate the new moving position and direction simply. For the experiment. RX90 robot from Staubli with robot language V$^{+}$ is applied and F/T sensor is attached to the wrist of robot with RCC. Finally, 3 edge following experiments including the following of corner point are executed with successful results.s.

This paper presents the introduction of Pseudo-2 axes robot module and its GA-based fuzzy control implementation. Pseudo-2 axes robot module which use a single motor and controller for driving 2 joints of a robot mechanism, is devised towards a lower priced robot with its degree of freedom maintained GA-based Fuzzy controller is considered for the better control implementation of the developed system than the conventional PID controller. Here. the scaling factors of the membership function with high fitness values are selected using a genetic algorithm for a pulse-type input trajectory. The obtained controller also shows better trajectory tracking performance than a PID controller.

The purpose of the paper is to protect the damage of plastic IC package with searching the cause of the fracture due to the delamination and crack when the encapsulant of plastic IC package is on viscoelastic behavior with the effect of creep on high temperature, The model for analysis is the plastic SOJ package with dimpled diepad in the IR soldering process of surface mounting technology. The risk of delamination with calculating the distribution of viscoelastic thermal stress in the package without the crack in the surface mounting process is checked. The package model with the perfect delamination between chip and diepad is chosen to estimate the resistance against fracture in thermal loading with calculating C (t)-integrals according to the change of the design. The optimum design to depress the delamination and crack is presented.

The purposes of the paper are to consider the failure phenomenon based on delamination and crack when the encapsulant of plastic IC package under hygrothermal loading in the IR soldering process is on elastic and viscoelastic behavior due to the temperature and to show the optimum design using fracture mechanics. The model for analysis is the plastic SOJ package with a dimpled diepad. The package model with the perfect delamination between chip and diepad is chosen to estimate the resistance to fracture by calculating J-integrals in low temperature and C(t)-integrals in high temperature with the change of the design under hygrothermal loading. The optimum design to depress the delamination and crack in the plastic IC package is presented.

Parallel link manipulators have an ability of more precise positioning than serial open-loop manipulators. However. general parallel link manipulators have been restricted to the real applications since they have limited workspace due to interference among actuators. In this study, we suggest a closed-loop manipulator with 6 degrees-of-freedom and with enlarged workspace. It consists of two parts for minimizing the interference among actuators. One part is lower structure with planar 3 degrees-of-freedom and the other is upper one with spatial 3 degrees-of-freedom. Forward kinematics and inverse kinematics are solved, research about singularity points are carried out and workspace is evaluated. The comparison of workspace between Stewart platform, which is the typical parallel link manipulator, and the suggested manipulator shows that the workspace of the latter is wider than that of the former. Especially, simulation results also show that the suggested manipulator is more suitable when there needs rotation in the end-effector.

Linear displacement accuracy is one of the most important factors that determine machine tool accuracy The laser interferometer has been usually recommended for the measurement of linear displacement accuracy. In this paper, microcomputer aided measurement and compensation system has been developed for the pitch error in a CNC machine tool. For accurate pitch error calculation. the analysis code for the pitch error has been also implemented according to the international standards (ISO). The PC based automatic compensation system for the pitch error is also implemented. A new algorithm for calculating optimum value for pitch error compensation is proposed, minimizing the deviation at each target points. The development system has been applied to a practical CNC maching center and the performance has been demonstrated.

This paper presents a numerical method of the minimum-time trajectory planning for a robot manipulator amid obstacles. Each joint displacement is represented by the linear combination of the finite-term quintic B-splines which are the known functions of the path parameter. The time is represented by the linear function of the same path parameter. Since the geometric path is not fixed and the time is linear to the path parameter, the coefficients of the splines and the time-scale factor span a finite-dimensional vector space, a point in which uniquely represents the manipulator motion. The displacement, the velocity and the acceleration conditions at the starting and the goal positions are transformed into the linear equality constraints on the coefficients of the splines, which reduce the dimension of the vector space. The optimization is performed in the reduced vector space using nonlinear programming. The total moving time is the main performance index which should be minimized. The constraints on the actuator forces and that of the obstacle-avoidance, together with sufficiently large weighting coefficients, are included in the augmented performance index. In the numerical implementation, the minimum-time motion is obtained for a planar 3-1ink manipulator amid several rectangular obstacles without simplifying any dynamic or geometric models.

Pressure ripples of hydraulic vane pump results from flow ripples due to pump geometry and reverse flow through the discharge port due to compressibility of fluid and result in vibration and noise of connected hydraulic elements. In a balanced type vane pump, cam ring curve is important factor to influence the flow ripples. Therefore, to reduce the flow ripple, it has been required that optimal selection of seal region by proper design of cam ring and each port position, and notches for preventing the excessive reverse flow. This paper has been performed analytical study of compression characteristics with major design parameter in side plate and cam ring. and examined into the role of notch and radius reduction ratio.

Microstep characteristics largely depends on the variation of friction force induced by the geometric accuracy of ballscrew, guide rail and the control characteristics of servo unit. In this paper, for improving the microstep characteristics of hydrostatic table with ballscrew, microstep resolution according to the control mode of servo amplifier and response characteristic by the variation of integral gain are tested and compared. Relationship between micro motion behavior of hydrostatic table and the output torque is also tested for acquiring the effective variables on control characteristics. From the results. it is confirmed that the torque control mode has a advantage in microstep resolution, and more stable than velocity control mode in low feed rate, and by the increase of integral gain in the elastic motion realm, response characteristics can be improved.

This paper concerns the navigation algorithm of motion reference unit (MRU) for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) We apply the strapdown navigation system using middle level inertial sensors. But, because the MRU consists of inertial sensors, the values of AUV motion calculated by navigation computer are increased by drift property of inertial sensors. Therefore, we propose the attitude algorithm using switching method according to the motion of AUV From this algorithm, the drift terms are eliminated effectively for roll and pitch. But, another device is required for yaw angle.

This paper is concerned with effective operating method of pneumatic on-off valves for improving position control accuracy, valve life-time and position settling time using modified pulse width modulation with dead-zone (MPWMD). The pneumatic system using on-off valves has advantage of simple construction and low cost compared with a system with servo-valves. The performance of the proposed control method is investigated experimentally for the position control of a pneumatic cylinder using on-off valves. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm for valve operation can be used to obtain fast and accurate position control compared to the conventional PWMD algorithm. It is also shown that the use of the proposed MPWMD algorithm for the position control significantly reduces the number of valve switching and noise.

Micro-hole drilling (holes less than 0.5 mm in diameter with aspect ratio larger than 10) is recently having more attention in a wide spectrum of precision production industries. Alternative methods such as EDM. laser drilling, etc. can sometimes replace the mechanical micro-hole drilling but are not acceptable in PCB manufacture because of the inferior hole quality and accuracy. The major difficulties in micro-hole drilling are related to small signal to noise ratios, wandering motions of the inlet stage, high aspect ratios, high temperatures and so forth. Of all the difficulties. the most undesirable one is the increase of drilling force as the drill proceeds deeper into the hole. This is caused mainly from the chip effects. Peck-drilling is thus widely used for deep hole drilling despite that it suffers from low productivity. In the paper, a method of cutting force regulation is proposed to achieve continuous drilling. A PD and a sliding mode control algorithms were implemented through controlling the spindle rotating frequency. Experimental results show that the sliding mode control reduces the nominal cutting force and the variation of the cutting force better than the PD control. The advantages of the regulation, such as increase of drill life, fast stabilization of a wandering motion, and the precise positioning of the hole are verified in experiment.

A procedure of stress and strength analysis has been proposed for the centrifuge rotor of composite materials of quasi-isotropic laminates. The goal in this study is to maximize the allowable rotating speed, that is, to minimize maximum strength ratio with the given path length by changing the geometric parameter-outer radius and ply angles in quasi-isotropic laminates. Optimum values of the geometric parameter-outer radius and ply angles are obtained by multilevel optimization. All the geometric dimensions and stresses are normalized such that the result can be extended to a general case. Two dimensional analysis at each cross section with an elliptic tube hole subjected to internal hydrostatic pressures by samples as well as the centrifugal body forces has been performed along the height to calculate the stress distribution with the plane stress assumption, and Tsai-Wu failure criterion is used to calculate the strength ratio. The maximum allowable rotating speed can be increased by changing the radii of the outer surface along the height with the maximum strength ratio under the unit value : The optimal number of ply angles maximizing the allowable rotating speed in quasi-isotropic laminates is found to be the half number of tube hole, and the optimal laminate rotation angle is the half of $[{\pi}/m]$. A $[{\pi}/3]$ laminate, for instance, is stronger than a $[{\pi}/4]$ laminate for the centrifuge rotor of 6 tube hole number even though they have the same stiffness.

For a model system consisted of four pneumatic cylinders with strokes of 10, 20, 40 and 80 mm, investigation was carried out experimentally and numerically about the reliability of system with elastic and viscous load. The elastic load affects the performance of each cylinder in cylinder series, and changes the time lag and the velocity of the piston which makes the positioning control rather difficult. Taking the effects of the elastic load into consideration, positioning can be carried out comparatively smoothly by only adjusting the driving timing. The effect of a viscous load reduces the vibration of each moving body in the cylinder series and also reduces the over-travelled distance which happens when several cylinders move at the same time. For reasons, a positioning with a viscous load can be relatively smoothly carried out even without the timing control.

This paper addresses the results of an experimental and analytical research of cylindrical coil spring subjected to dynamic behavior. Transfer functions are presented for both deflection and transmitted force as the output with force as the input. Steady state sinusoidal magnitude ratio and transmittance are plotted along with experimental data. It is shown that dynamic characteristic of cylindrical coil spring must be used to enhance the reability of vibration system dynamic behavior analysis in actuating over some frequency.

Two angle-shaped extrusions have been studied in order to analyze the bending effect of the extruded product using the three-dimensional rigid-plastic finite element method. The velocity distribution at the outlet becomes the source for the construction of the bending configuration of the final product. in which an analytic scheme has been developed for the description of the bending. A systematic approach presented here appears to have sound agreement with the experimental result, and has been applied to a large extrusion of aluminum alloy.

In this paper. the Joint reaction forces in the suspension system of a passenger car are determined to calculate the deflections and stresses in the damper strut. A mathematical model of the Roll Stabilizer Bar(RSB) is developed to include the RSB forces in the dynamics analysis. Using these RSB forces, the variations of the damper forces and spring forces due to the wheel strokes are determined in a McPherson strut suspension. The graphs of shear force diagram, bending moment diagram, bending stress and deflections are drawn by the calculated joint reaction forces.

This paper presents the vibration characteristics of a motorcycle body frame. In order to study the excitation mechanism. for example, of handle vibration, discrete models and finite element model are developed for the calculation of natural frequencies and mode shapes of the driveline and body. which can lead to the resonances. Experiments are also conducted to compare with the analytical results From the various kinds of vibration reduction methods, the technical realizable one is presented to reduce the handle vibration responses at the start of driving.