Category: Interviews

Deep in the clutches of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first half 2020 has been interesting, to say the least. But as the Netherlands, and the world, tries to grapple with the novel coronavirus, High Tech Institute and training location partner BCN are working diligently to get back to business as usual. At least, as much as possible.

It is safe to say that the coronavirus has changed life as we know it. Zoom, Skype and Teams meetings have become the standard as large numbers of people work from home and avoid groups and gatherings. Now, as the government starts to ease the pandemic measures and looks to jump-start the economy, businesses are walking a tight rope full of safety protocols in an effort to get back to work – albeit, not exactly back to normal. One such company that has traveled this path is Business Centre Netherlands (BCN), which offers multifunctional locations for business events, meetings, testing and various training sessions.

BCN should be recognizable to participants from High Tech Institute’s technical and professional training courses, as the Eindhoven location is home to the vast majority of High Tech Institute’s trainings. However, when the coronavirus struck and group meetings were banned, it immediately threw a wrench in the plans for the 2020 training calendar.

“On 16 March, we were forced to close our doors for 11 weeks,” explains Ton ten Haaf, Operational Manager of BCN. “We reopened in early June, but as there was some uncertainty about what to expect, and because we were only able to welcome a maximum of 30 guests per day in the beginning, we shifted to accommodate the needs of our customers and focused also on virtual classrooms rather than physical. Right now, however, our main focus is planning and preparing to safely get people back in the physical setting, as we expect numbers to increase in September and after.”

Ton ten Haaf, operational manager BCN Eindhoven.

New normal

If you’ve been anywhere over the last few months, you’ve probably noticed businesses taking new precautions to limit potential virus spreading. And as the world tries to find some sense of normalcy, BCN has been working to create a safer ‘new normal’. “As soon as we had to close our doors in March, we began an 11-week period of intense planning and communicating with our customers. Immediately we started to devise several protocols aimed at keeping people as safe as possible once they returned,” describes Jenny Rennenberg, account manager at BCN.

“It already starts during the reservation process, well before anyone arrives. We communicate with our customers to determine the specifics of numbers and needs, so we can make suitable accommodations – especially the 1.5 meters distancing. Another thing we do is inform all guests of the room number in advance, so they can report to the training rooms immediately, rather than lining up in the lobby.”

These won’t be the only differences visitors and training participants will notice when coming to BCN. “We’ve also split the entrance and exit routes. Normally, in and out traffic uses the same space, but now we have placed tape, arrows and signs to help guide visitors through different corridors and stairways to avoid contact,” says ten Haaf. “We encourage people to use the stairs, but if they need or prefer to use the elevator, we just ask that they use it one at a time, as the space is very narrow.”

Tape, arrows and signs help to guide visitors through different corridors and stairways to avoid contact.

In person and online

Another precaution that BCN has adopted is that the rooms are now set up in an “exam”-style design, with rows and columns of tables – each a minimum of 1.5 meters apart. “While we can still offer the intimacy of the u-shaped setup, keeping in line with the distancing measures of 1.5 meters, means capacity is a little lower. By utilizing the exam-style setup, we can accommodate more people. It really just comes down to the needs of the customer,” expresses Rennenberg. With BCN’s attention focused on health and safety, and the implementation of all the necessary precautions, there simply isn’t the same space as before. In all, the training center’s Eindhoven location can now accommodate only about 130 of its normal 280-person capacity.

“That’s a pretty big blow, in terms of what we can normally handle,” comments ten Haaf. “However, with the uncertainty of the virus, there are still some people that will feel uncomfortable traveling and attending in-person trainings. To better fit their needs, we work with our customers to organize meetings that can take place both here on location, as well as online in the virtual world, offering the best of both worlds. So, I’d say we’re actually doing quite well.” “Yes, and if there is a need for an event or training for larger numbers of people, we can use multiple rooms connected with TVs, and speakers or trainers can visit and broadcast from any of the rooms,” adds Rennenberg.

Filling up

Despite the difficulties of having to close for nearly three months, and the slow times brought on by summer vacation, BCN is looking to have a strong year – even on par with 2019. “We’ve already had a few in-person trainings resume, and the feedback we’re getting from our customers and attendees is very encouraging,” touts Rennenberg. “So far, comments have been very positive. We’re finding that most people really prefer the physical classes over virtual, and we’re hearing that visitors are happy to finally be back to doing such things on location again, especially with all the measures we’ve taken.”

Of course, that sentiment is very welcome and seems to be holding true. Since the broader easing of the national corona measures in early July, BCN’s customers have been calling nonstop. “One challenge we’ve had to work through is scheduling. Most of our customers book well in advance, even into next year,” highlights Rennenberg. “Now we’re getting a lot of calls from people that had to cancel during the shutdown, that now want to reschedule in the latter part of this year. That has taken quite some planning and scheduling adjustments, but so far, we think it’s going very well and we expect a strong finish to 2020.

This article is written by Collin Arocho, tech editor of Bits&Chips.

Deep at his core, Stefan Bäumer is an optics fanatic. He finds great passion in teaching because he likes to spread knowledge and, as he says, it keeps him on his toes. With undiminished enthusiasm, he has been providing the optics training “Modern optics for optical designers” at High Tech Institute for years. The training is tough – covering all aspects of optics – but also very valuable, participants tell him afterward.

 One of the nice things about the optics, Stefan Bäumer thinks, is the visual. “If you build a set-up in the laboratory with a light or laser beam and lenses, you can use your business card to follow the beam and see what happens to it and how it forms an image. I really like the fact that you can see the effect visually right away,” he says enthusiastically. He likes working in the field because optics are the heart of the optical (measuring) system, determining both the functions and the tolerance of the system.

“In the future, we will be moving more and more towards end-to-end modeling,” says Stefan Bäumer, lecturer at High Tech Institute.

Bäumer’s experience in optics goes back a long way. Already, during his Master’s in physics, which he followed at Washington State University, there was a link. Also, during his PhD at the Technical University Berlin, he was involved in optics at the Optical Institute.

After completing his PhD, Bäumer started his career at Philips in Eindhoven. Here he started as an optical designer at CFT and later at Philips High Tech Plastics. After that, he worked for eight years as a senior optical system designer at Philips Applied Technologies and Philips Research. After a short time, as senior principal engineer at Philips Lighting, TNO asked him if he wanted to join their team. He was happy to do so; it allowed him to turn on his light at another organization. After a career of seventeen years at Philips, he switched to the optical group at TNO in Delft.

Now Bäumer has been working as a senior optical designer at TNO for almost eight years. Since 2015, he has also been part of the principal scientists’ group, who help determine technical policy. As a principal scientist, Bäumer is co-responsible for the direction of research in optics at TNO.

Progress

To be able to determine which way to go with TNO Optics, it is certainly useful that Bäumer has been in the field for a long time. As a result, he is well informed of developments. “Actually, there are a number of important developments that have led to strong growth in optics. The accuracy with which you can model optical systems has increased enormously. The integration with other disciplines has also greatly improved. In addition, the making of optical elements has improved, because the manufacturing technology has made huge leaps forward. Finally, near-infrared possibilities for detectors and light sources have been added, which are used, for example, in medical research,” explains Bäumer.

Far-reaching technological developments in the field of optical system design have indeed significantly improved the performance of all kinds of simulation programs in recent years. Optics also benefit from this. “I used to work with rather rudimentary optical design programs with which you could model systems and create a layout. There was still a lot of manual work,” says Bäumer. “Nowadays, you can model much faster and more accurately. You can include all kinds of phenomena in your simulations, such as nanostructures and diffraction. The integration with other disciplines such as thermal disciplines, mechanics and the improved communication between software systems of the various disciplines have also led to progress.”

What is certain is that the more sophisticated manufacturing technologies now available have also greatly accelerated optical developments. This is due in part to lathes with much higher precision – diamond turning allows you to create incredibly precise optical surfaces, including free-form surfaces – and new techniques such as magneto-rheological finishing (MRF) and ion beam figuring (IBF). These techniques allow opticians to design optics with much better specifications. This has also led to the emergence of free form optics in the last ten years. This branch of the field designs new optical elements that have no translation or rotation symmetry over the optical axis. This offers room for better performance, miniaturization and new optical functionalities.

Stefan Bäumer: “I would like to give my students a good basic optical knowledge, which enables them to make a good estimate of what is possible with optical systems. And, of course, also where the boundaries of feasibility lie'” Photo: TNO.

 In the future, Bäumer predicts that we will be moving more and more towards end-to-end modeling. Bäumer: “By this, I mean that we are going to predict system performance, from source to detector, under all circumstances using high-performance computing, among other things, as is done with ray tracing (calculating how light rays behave in the optical system, AB) via graphics cards. This is a technique that they already use in the film industry, but it is also gaining ground in the scientific field. I also expect that more attention will be paid to computational optics. Because more and more computing power will become available, there will be more possibilities to find a better compromise between optical hardware and data processing via software. Because of this, different choices will be made in optical systems. Also, nanostructured surfaces and materials will increasingly find their application in optics. For optics in general, developments in the quantum field will unlock a whole new domain.”

Total overview

With all his knowledge about optical systems and the developments in the field, Bäumer can tell and show his students a lot during the training courses. The training course ‘Modern optics for optical designers‘ covers all the basic principles of optics. “It is important for trainees to understand how things work and which principles are behind them. How do electromagnetic waves and diffraction affect optical systems? What are the polarization effects? These questions all pass in review,” emphasizes Bäumer.

The fact that this training gives an overview of the entire field of optics makes it unique. However, there are many specialist optics courses, which zoom in on a specific area such as non-linear optics or optical design. What makes this training unique, however, is that it covers the entire domain of optics. A team of no less than seven qualified instructors, each working in the field of optics and specialized in a specific sub-area, provides high-quality training.

“Precisely the breadth and amount of homework that students have makes it a tough training. But that homework is the key to becoming familiar with the subject matter. When I talk to the students afterward and ask them what they thought of it, they say that it was tough, but that they learned a lot,” highlights Bäumer. “The training is also very strenuous for me. Every training takes a lot of preparation and there is a lot of after work, but I also learn from it every time and that keeps me on my toes. I want to give my students a good basic optical knowledge, which enables them to make a good estimate of what is possible with optical systems. And, of course, where the boundaries of feasibility lie.”

This article is written by Antoinette Brugman, freelance journalist and contributor to High-Tech Systems magazine.

A pioneer in the design of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) with an additional passion for everything mechanical, a pragmatist and a very good teacher. That’s professor Bob Puers in a nutshell. He was chosen lecturer of the year in 2018 for his excellent MEMS training.

A curious course with overwhelming feedback from the trainees – that’s how Bob Puers describes the MEMS training course he taught in 2018 to a group of fifteen industrials from Pakistan. Puers: “It was held in China because of difficulties with the exchange of Pakistani. The trainees were all extremely willing to learn. I really appreciated this eagerness and also the particularly good interaction with the group. We had a lot of discussion on a very high level.”

In their feedback, the trainees said about Puers: “It was an excellent training both in terms of contents and presentation. The trainer was exceptional in answering questions raised” and “The professor’s way of teaching is extraordinarily good.” This positive feedback resulted in a review score of 9.8 out of 10 and the title “Lecturer of the year 2018.” Puers is modest about his contribution and points out that all the praise is probably due to accidental circumstances. However, when explaining his way of teaching and his knowledge about microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), it’s easily understood how he earned the title.

Bob Puers has always stimulated his PhDs to physically build a device. 

The scientist

Puers’ MEMS experience goes back to his study in electrical engineering. He was very interested in research and had a special passion for everything mechanical. When he came in contact with Raoul Vereecken, a urologist at the University Hospital in Leuven, he got involved in the development of portable, implantable medical electronics. He continued his career in this domain and started his own research group at the KU Leuven in 1988. Soon he had the disposal of his own cleanroom to fabricate devices such as pressure sensors, accelerometers and flow sensors.

In his research, Puers focused on the application of medical implantable electronics and the development of technology to produce sensors – he’s always been motivated to develop devices and is working in a pragmatic way to realize this. If Puers knows a certain principle works, he doesn’t delve too much into the details of the theory but uses this knowledge to put it into practice and make new devices. And being a man of practice: he’s always stimulated his PhDs to physically build a device. As Puers puts it: “My PhDs weren’t allowed to leave without leaving something on the table.”

Puers continues: “In our cleanroom, I developed lithography and application techniques with our group of researchers. We made more sophisticated mechanical structures – on a miniature scale. The whole process of developing a very small mechanical structure, integrating it in an electronic component – to convert the mechanical signal into an electronic one – and finally building a sensor out of it – that still fascinates me.”

There have been many developments in Puers’ discipline. “Back in 1985, our group was one of the first to develop accelerometers. These devices were ground breaking at the time. Nowadays, accelerometers are integrated into commercial products like smartphones and cars at incredibly low cost. There are quite a lot of devices we laid the basis for, ideas that were taken over by the industry later on. So, we had to search for new research domains several times.”

MEMS developments are still ongoing. The current trends are far-reaching miniaturization and very low power consumption. This makes sense, for many sensors are applied in portable medical applications and thus have to be as energy efficient as possible.

The teacher

As a KU Leuven employee, teaching was part of Puers’ tasks.

He started as a teacher of courses in biomedical electronic systems. Later on, he also taught about MEMS production technology. These courses still form the basis of his MEMS systems training at High Tech Institute.

“It’s challenging to educate people and to get them excited about the science domains that you find fascinating yourself,” Puers explains. “You’ll never get them all interested. Only about one third to half of the university students get excited about the subject, the others only do what they’re told. However, High Tech Institute trainees are always people with specific interests who share my enthusiasm. They usually have some experience already, so we have a lot of detailed and specific discussions during the courses. I really like that interaction.

Puers started his MEMS training course for High Tech Institute in 2009 – being a specialist, he was asked to educate people about MEMS. His goal is to introduce his trainees to the domain. “I want them to know more about all the techniques that have been developed over the years to produce micromechanical systems. I explain the possibilities and the impossibilities of MEMS, zooming in at system level. About half of the MEMS training I spend on the instruments we have at our disposal to build a sensor or actuator. These are all necessary techniques, like etching, bonding, packaging and coating. In the second part of the training, I teach the trainees about all kinds of successful applications, like flow and pressure sensors, optical systems and medical implants. In the end, the trainees should know what’s possible and what’s almost impossible. I want them to be able to judge how realistic new concepts are.”

His vast MEMS experience, being involved from the very beginning, makes Puers a knowledgable teacher. But he’s also skillful in tuning to his audience. “I always answer questions that pop up during the course. Sometimes I can do that straight away because I know the answer from experience. If I don’t know the answer, I get back to the issue the next course day. I like to anticipate questions and feedback in my training. Teaching is a process of evolution. In every new course, I use the experience of previous courses, so my intellectual baggage as a teacher is continuously being enriched. In this way, I’m constantly refining my courses and adjusting them to my audience and their prior knowledge.”

This article is written by Antoinette Brugman, tech editor of Bits&Chips.

Adrian Rankers and Hans Vermeulen had a sudden challenge when ASML Wilton insisted on providing the planned four-day Dynamics and Modeling training online. Rankers started working with green screen, Open Broadcaster Software, a camcorder, and document camera and after taking countless bumps and hard lessons learned, the training was successfully completed a month later.

In this article, Rankers of Mechatronics Academy and co-trainer Vermeulen share their experience on how to roll out a highly practice-oriented training course full of exercises online. They talk about the considerations, choices and tricky bumps, as well as about their experience with an ultimately very successful session of Dynamics and Modeling. They didn’t hold back their comments either.

Dynamics and Modeling revolves around the many aspects that influence the performance of mechatronic precision systems. In order to get that knowledge into your head, participants in the training should mainly work with exercises. One way this is achieved is by giving putting participants to work using the design tool 20-sim. “They do this in groups of two or three, with us looking over their shoulders,” says Hans Vermeulen, senior principal architect of EUV Optics System at ASML and part-time professor at TU Eindhoven. This need for intensive interaction between participants and trainers is a big reason why the training was never offered online before.

Last May, Dynamics and Modeling was scheduled for twenty ASML employees in Wilton, Connecticut. But when the first measures against corona came into force, travelling to the US was no longer possible for Rankers and Vermeulen. To guarantee the quality, they proposed to postpone the training until the autumn. However, the machine builder insisted: the technical experts in Wilton really felt the need to obtain the knowledge. That’s when the duo decided to wring the four-day course into an online format.

Better connection between ppt-slide and speaker

Coincidentally, Rankers had recently taken part in a conference that the American Society for Precision Engineering was forced to hold in Zoom. He was pleased with the design and quality. However, his trainer-senses also noted a disadvantage. “It was very tiring for me to look at a powerpoint with a moving mouse and a presenter that was only visible in a small window,” he says.

Adrian Rankers for a green screen during the Dynamics and Modeling training. Top left the camera for recording trainer and green screen, bottom right the document camera.

Reflecting on the upcoming course, Rankers realized that it is much more fun to watch a video stream where the teacher is visible from the waist up next to the presentation. “This creates a better relationship between the slide and the speaker explaining the information.”

Rankers looked around and saw three options to achieve this. It is possible to project a powerpoint on a wall and video stream the teacher plus projection with a camera. You can do the same with a large TV screen.

The third option was to put the instructor in front of a well-lit green screen, cut him loose using software and then mount him in the powerpoint presentation and share that stream via Zoom or Teams. Just like the weatherman on the NOS news, the trainer has to coordinate his instructions via his own screen.

Experimenting with green screen and OBS

Rankers decided to experiment with green screen and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). He borrowed a large green tablecloth from a friend and hung it over a telescopic handle for garden tools. Photo shops already sell good green screen cloths for 30 euro. But because they were all sold out, instead it became a 4 by 6 meter cloth for 80 euros – also reasonably affordable.

Through this screen Adrian Rankers coordinated his movements with the information on the powerpoint slides.

His first experiment with the tablecloth already worked “surprisingly well.” Rankers noticed that it was the exposure that counted. “If you go for Hollywood quality, seeing every hair of the presenter, it comes close. My wood and rope setup worked surprisingly well in sufficient daylight, especially when you consider that a lot of detail is lost in video streaming to the other side of the world anyway.” As a backup, he checked the available large-screen TVs in a nearby shop.

Because of the time difference, the training for ASML Wilton required afternoon and evening sessions, so Rankers also wanted to test the lighting conditions in the evening. “I figured this might be an issue,” he says. “From the information on the internet I concluded that evening shots were really different. Without good artificial light, the software doesn’t properly cut the person out of the green background.”

The nocturnal farewell drink at a distance at the end of an ASPE conference at MIT gave Rankers the opportunity to briefly test and experiment with it. Surprisingly, it turned out to work with the available artificial light in the space that Mechatronics Academy and High Tech Institute had set up at the Fellenoord location in Eindhoven. “I’ve had a lot of positive reactions and agreed with MIT pro Dave Trumper that I would share our first course experiences with him.”

Whiteboard and document camera

During their physical training Rankers and Vermeulen write a lot on a flipchart or whiteboard. Teams (which was chosen at the request of ASML) offers the possibility to write with the mouse, but that gave problems. In trials Rankers conducted in preparation with ASML Wilton, it was reported that participants could not use their whiteboard function. They also couldn’t share their own screen. The whiteboard problem was confirmed by Microsoft and appeared to be related to (GDPR) privacy rules.

That’s why Rankers on the trainer-side immediately sought refuge with a document camera. “A document camera is similar to a webcam on a tripod, which is aimed at a sheet of A4,” explains Rankers. “This can be easily autofocused on the paper at the touch of a button and then hold this setting. If you’re going to write, that’s fine. It’s not going to be disturbed by, say, autofocus on your hand.”

Both the trainer and his co-trainer have a screen on which you can see the image that is also presented to the participants.

Rankers and Vermeulen were both very satisfied with the document camera. “But switching between them is one of the minuses,” says Vermeulen. “In a physical training course, participants see everything side by side: powerpoint, whiteboard and trainer. Now they only saw our pen on the paper. If we switched to presentation, they’d have lost that image again.”

Rankers adds that entering an additional camera signal “still requires some dexterity” because of the switching between applications, presentations and the document camera. “That’s a bit more complicated because of the combi green screen and OBS,” he thinks. Especially switching to an application like 20-sim takes some practice. Operating the computer tool via a monitor a few meters away from you was not easy. As a double check, Rankers invited himself via private email so that he could see on his mobile phone at all times what the students had in view.

Data rate prioritized

A point of attention was the internet speed at High Tech Institute on location Fellenoord. This could be a potential bottleneck. The common throughput speed of all tenants together turned out to be only 100 Mb/s, while for a video stream 5 Mb/s is quickly needed. It turned out that the IT department wanted to give one IP address a higher priority for four days.

Rankers says, with a small sigh, that the people in Wilton, like his students at the TUE, only started installing 20-sim in the weekend before the training. “That didn’t go well because of the security of their ASML laptops,” says Rankers. The result was a lot of email communication just before the training and an escalation to the IT helpdesk to facilitate the final installations. “Next time, I’m really going to call everyone a week in advance and check on the preparation,” he laughs.

Rankers had made five short introductory videos for 20-sim and sent them in advance to teach the participants all the essentials of the tooling. In the future, he plans to add a video with the latest checks and send it well in advance. “So they know what we expect as basic knowledge.”

Interaction with the students

In the training setting Rankers and Vermeulen used a laptop with two external monitors. At an angle under the monitor with the constructed video image was also a second external monitor on which the Teams-meeting was shown.

In the training, in which everyone participated from home, most students unfortunately did not have a webcam. Rankers had also noticed that the connection would not work as well if everyone turned on their camera. That’s why they finally chose to only switch on the available webcams during the proposal round. “We didn’t see students, just the glowing balls with initials when questions were asked.”

Initially, Rankers asked the students to respond via the chat function and by raising their hands when they were in the picture. “Chat in itself worked well, but leaves little room for extensive discourse,” he says. “Hand-raising requires the presenter or his companion to be very alert, and that wasn’t always the case. In the end, after the first part of the day, we agreed that everyone would just interrupt and ask questions through their microphone. That worked well. There was a lot of interaction, but just like in an ordinary classroom, some stay quiet with a wait-and-see approach .” According to Rankers, there is still room for improvement. “Online, you could easily log the participation in order to more specifically encourage some people to participate.”

Practical exercises online

In the exercises, participants worked with teams that changed each day. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes in groups of four or five. In doing so, Rankers and invite Vermeulen to watch. Rankers: “There was good discussion within the groups, but there is still room for improvement in the guidance”. Vermeulen: “During an in-person training, you watch along and see immediately if the screen gets stuck. What we found is that online, participants didn’t speak up to let us know when it froze. It worked better with groups of four or five people than with couples,” describes Vermeulen. According to him, “Larger groups also work better online because there are always a number of people among them who are a bit more experienced and who pull the other along with them.”

Online training with a co-trainer on standby was a pleasant experience for Rankers and Vermeulen.

Rankers and Vermeulen alternated every hour and a half. In addition, they noticed that training is pleasant when someone is on standby. “Presenting the whole thing takes some getting used to. It’s really nice with two people.” Rankers also has training sessions in which he uses a different teacher every part of the day. “Then you actually always need someone to instruct and deal with calamities.”

The duo was largely spared the latter. During the four days, Rankers and Vermeulen had to do a hard restart only once, because the system got stuck. In the end, Rankers concluded that they had completed a successful edition, “with a lot of ideas to do it even better and perhaps simpler.”

Four afternoons and evenings of Dynamics and Modeling are intensive for Vermeulen. In the evening around 11 p.m. at home, preparing course in the morning while his children also asked for attention now and then. “It’s second best,” he says when asked to choose between an on-site training and saving a tiring journey. “Being there live is by far my preference,” he says. “Especially with all the exercises. I can imagine that you can give a very good training online. We do that in college. But a lot of interaction requires physical presence. I think for one or two days of training I would opt for online, for four or five days, I would choose to take the penalty of flying six hours there and six hours back. For Asia, online training is difficult because of the time difference, unless both teachers and students make concessions. At our upcoming online design principles training for ITRI in Taiwan, shortly after the summer holidays, we will start extra early in the morning on our side and the students will continue in their time zone in the evening until 22.00 hours”.

The evaluation of the first online training Dynamics and Modeling showed very satisfied participants. Apart from the remark whether this intensive training might not have been better given in five days, the students were full of praise afterwards. Below is a selection of the category ‘general remarks’ from the evaluations:

• “Lecturers are very experienced and have vast knowledge on these topics. I find this training very useful and a nice summary on multiple topics. It is a pity that the training was online, I feel like in person training would benefit all and it would be even better than it was.”
• “At times there were technological challenges. I do wonder if Zoom would have worked better.”
• “Intensive content, but very good learning experience with down to earth explanation. Thanks.”
• “The virtual setup was fairly successful, with very few disruptions. Overall a success!”
• “Great training overall — excellent instructors & good use of physical ‘case studies’ to illustrate concepts”
• “It would have been better if the training was given in 5-day time period instead of compressed 4-day period. There was a lot of good material. It would have helped to absorb that material better over 5-day period. It would also have given time to spend more time on the in-class exercises.”
• “Very practical training with the correct mix of theory and fundamental content. Very well delivered by the presenter.”

 

Hans Vermeulen (l) and Adrian Rankers are catching a breath during the break.

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.

Translating academic insights in the field of mechatronics into industrial practice: that is the core of the training offered by Mechatronics Academy. Adrian Rankers, in addition to Jan van Eijk and Maarten Steinbuch co-founder of this training institute, knows what is going on in the field. He is committed to guaranteeing the best trainers, furthering the development of existing training courses and the setting up of new ones.

“The fact that I ended up in the coaching profession is actually quite logical in retrospect, because education has always attracted me,” says Adrian Rankers. “I gave tutoring as early as the age of fifteen. A few hours at first, but soon, that became more. I remember giving tutoring to the son of a top executive at Shell and quickly becoming his complete homework support. My attraction to the technical side certainly had something to do with my father. He had also studied mechanical engineering and worked, first in industry and later as a professor.”

“It is essential to realize that the students still have to go through the learning curve and that some things are quite difficult and might not be obvious to everyone. As a trainer you have to be aware of this and take the time to do so.”

After completing his mechanical engineering studies at Delft University of Technology, Rankers started his career at Philips at the Centre for Manufacturing Technology (CFT). Here he was involved in the dynamics and control techniques for CD players and wafer steppers. In the evening hours, he worked on his PhD research resulting from this work. Parts of this research were later included in the book The design of high-performance mechatronics by Rob Munnig Schmidt, Jan van Eijk, Georg Schitter and Rankers himself. In addition to the development and consultancy work and his role as group leader, he became involved in the development of mechatronics education for Philips’ own employees, initiated by Jan van Eijk. He also joined the board of the Dutch Society for Precision Engineering (DSPE) in 2008, of which he is still a member today.

Mechatronics Academy

Although he enjoyed working there in engineering and technical management, Rankers made the switch to entrepreneurship in 2010 after twenty-five years of loyal service at Philips. He wanted to focus mainly on transferring his mechatronics knowledge. This eventually led to the idea to set up the Mechatronics Academy together with Jan van Eijk and Maarten Steinbuch. It turned out that there was a need for this: the organization can now rely on sixty to seventy trainers with an industrial background in the field. Mechatronics Academy now provides training courses for around four hundred students per year. These are both open training courses and in-company training courses, specially tailored to companies.

“What appeals to me in the field of mechatronics? It is always a multidisciplinary challenge where you work with people from different disciplines. Mechatronics always gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in all kinds of things. In addition, I like to pass on my knowledge of mechatronics to others,” says Rankers enthusiastically. “In doing so, it is essential to realize that the students still have to go through the learning curve that you yourself have gone through over a number of years and that some things are quite difficult and might not be obvious to everyone. As a trainer you have to have an eye for that and take your time. In accordance with the old saying by Confucius, ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand,’ we work a lot with exercises in small teams. You see how students struggle to put the theory they have just learned into practice and to master the subject matter, but it is precisely this struggle that is an important part of learning. If I can guide them through this, so that they eventually understand it for themselves, it gives me a lot of satisfaction.”

The trainings that Mechatronics Academy organizes are well-attended and get good reviews from the participants. But that certainly doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels, Rankers believes. “We think it’s important to keep our portfolio up to scratch, to expand and to ensure continuity.”

That’s why at Mechatronics Academy they are constantly working to keep the team of trainers up to strength. Good trainers who quit, because they come of age, are replaced with a new generation. To this end, they approach the best content experts in the field, whom they know from their extensive network. They also ensure that they continually adapt existing training courses to the latest academic insights and technological developments. “We adapt existing modules and develop new ones. In addition, we invest a lot in resources that we use during the practical parts of the training courses. Practical assignments, such as working on constellations or carrying out simulations, form an essential part. These assignments are indispensable for understanding,” Ranker describes.

New courses

In addition to keeping existing training courses up to date, Mechatronics Academy also develops new training courses that arise from a need in the market. Ideas for this come from Rankers, Van Eijk and Steinbuch themselves, but also from their trainers. At DSPE meetings or conferences in the field, everyone sticks out their feelers to know what is going on and where needs lie.

Through these practices, beautiful new training courses are created time and time again. For example, the training “Passive damping for high tech systems,” which started last year and has now run twice. In ultra-precise motion systems, dynamics – both loose and in interaction with control technology – play an important role. That is why in today’s practice, and therefore also in the various courses, much attention is paid to the realization of high eigenfrequencies in mechanics. Understanding mode shapes and the extent to which they can be excited by the actuator or perceived by the sensor is also important here. This approach is and remains essential. But with increasing accuracy requirements, this is no longer always sufficient. You then run into the limit of what is physically feasible. The deliberate addition of passive damping then offers extra solution space and becomes a decisive parameter in achieving extreme specifications.

The new training, which focuses on proven ways to achieve passive damping, is very successful, according to Rankers. It is a highly relevant theme in the precision engineering community. Hans Vermeulen, Kees Verbaan and Stan van der Meulen are the trainers. They have an enormous amount of knowledge of the field. The positive response to the training sessions is also reflected in the reactions of participants: “Excellent training,” “Excellent trainers” and “Very inspiring,” to name a few. “There is even interest in this training from abroad,” reports Rankers proudly.

Then there are a number of new training courses in development. From the training “Actuation and power electronics,” which focuses mainly on electromechanical propulsion, the idea arose to set up a training course specifically for piezo materials and their applications. There are also plans to set up a training course “Active thermal control.” Rankers: “How can you keep the temperature and deformations caused by heat sources manageable in a setup? Which control techniques can be used for this? What are suitable sensors for measuring temperatures and deformations with high precision? And which elements can be used for cooling or heating? These are all questions that will be addressed. The training course ‘Thermal effects in mechatronic systems’ has already briefly addressed this, but it is such an important theme in the world of ultra-precision that a separate training course would be appropriate here.”

“Our current training ‘Basics and design principles for ultra-clean vacuum‘ focuses on molecular contamination and how to prevent it. However, there is also a need for a new training course on ‘Particle contamination’,” continues Rankers. “In this training we will discuss particle contamination in vacuum. Unlike molecular contamination – for example by gas molecules trapped in a blind hole of a part placed in vacuum, which leak through the thread to the ultraclean vacuum – these are small pieces of material. These may be, for example, particles loosened by friction between moving parts of the device placed in vacuum. The knowledge from various studies that are already running in this area could serve as a guideline for this.”

“Together with our trainers, we are constantly working to improve training, set up new training courses and keep our pool of trainers up to standard,” Rankers summarizes. “We also continue to invest in support material for our training courses, so that we can link the theory we cover directly to industrial practice. This is where our strength lies: translating academic insights into industrial practice, so that trainees can directly deploy their knowledge in our high-tech industry. This is how we continue to keep our training package up-to-date and deliver the best trainers, so that we can continue to live up to the designation ‘excellent training’.”

This article is written by Antoinette Brugman, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.

“Wendy Luiten describes the first two training days of her first online Cooling of Electronics. “I’m used to looking into the classroom. Then I immediately see how the material lands.” Because of this, the pace of this remote classroom is a bit slower, according to Wendy. “In classroom trainings, I talk to people and it’s easier to look over shoulders.”

When I called her on the evening of the second day of the training, Wendy said that she was quite tired the day before, but that it was already getting better. “It takes some getting used to. Hopefully, it will continue this way over the next three days.”

Cat Okkie was the very first participant of Wendy’s online module. After attending the first two days, Okkie seems happy. Credits: Martine Raaijmakers.

During Wendy’s presentations, the cameras of many participants are off. In part, they do this to squeeze the highest quality video and audio out of the connection. But it has also been common practice for many years for remote consultations. Wendy: “At video meetings, people say hello at the start, then we have a suggestion round and then, the cameras go off. With video view, the tension curve is also more intense.”

Furthermore – and this was also to be expected – students do not automatically look for each other during breaks for social interaction. In the classroom version, there is usually a positive vibe at the coffee machine. “Now, that’s almost gone,” says Wendy. “If I want them to look for each other, I have to give them a push. It’s something to remember for next time.”

The Cooling of Electronics training course is strongly practice-oriented. “People often run into very practical issues in their work. They often have more than enough theoretical background, but are faced with very simple decisions: where should the gap be, or how much space needs to be saved? Therefore, my training is quite concrete. During the exercises, people work with a spreadsheet because that is sufficient for a first-order assessment. They have to learn to make decisions at the CAD drawing level because it’s only a design when you can draw it”.

Wendy estimates that she spends about 60 percent of the time ‘sending’ (lecturing), while the other 40 percent of the time, the students spend 40 doing exercises. Initially, she planned to save exercises for the end of the day. In the meantime, however, she has noticed that it’s best to go between theory and practice. “And it works well to turn on the cameras during the exercises.”

Because of the excellent preparation, there were no technical issues. However, there was still a small bump. Wendy and program leader Hans Vink sent the material via WeTransfer, but some companies do not allow the use of this tool for large digital mail items. The solution was simple: the participants concerned solved it via their private email address.

This blog is the second blog of a series in which we share our first experiences with online training.
Read the first blog here.

Soon: the evaluation by the participants.

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of Bits&Chips.

With more than 30 years of experience with some of the top names in the Netherlands’ high-tech industry, Cees Michielsen reflects on his lessons learned and how he tries to relay this knowledge as the instructor of the “System requirements engineering improvement” training at High Tech Institute.

It was 1986 when Cees Michielsen got his start in the world of high tech. At the time, he joined the Philips EMT team, which would later become Assembleon and finally Kulicke & Soffa, to help build SMD placement robots. “Back then, our main customers were automotive companies like Ford, GM and Chrysler. We were completely self-contained and had all the essential disciplines and competencies in our business unit,” Michielsen recalls.

Then he entered the team, Michielsen’s focus was on technical informatics, but early on, the trajectory of his career took a detour. “It was there at Philips that I started to develop into a systems thinker, and really got away from my own software discipline,” expresses Michielsen. “In hindsight, I can say that was the best start for me in my career; the experience gave me an enormous head start and is why I’m still so passionate about it today.”

“It was there at Philips that I started to develop into a systems thinker, and really got away from my own software discipline,” expresses Cees Michielsen.

Now, after more than three decades in the industry, Michielsen is spending his days as a requirements engineer at ASML, as well as an instructor at High Tech Institute where he shares his knowledge, and his many lessons learned, with the next generation of engineers in the “Systems requirements engineering improvement” training.

Abstraction layers

In systems requirements engineering, especially at the system level, scoping the problem is the name of the game. It’s about determining exactly what functions the system should have, the specific properties that are tied to those functions and accurately defining the problem being solved. “If we’re, for instance, talking about projecting patterns on wafers, you can imagine that’s the main function of the system, and several companies might be doing the same thing. But it’s the properties of this function that distinguish one group from its competitors – the accuracy, yield, speed and reliability,” highlights Michielsen.

For Michielsen, it’s these characteristics that make all the difference in the world, and requirements engineering is the art of identifying the right functions and quantifying their properties to define the problem. “Once the problem is well-defined, finding the solution is much easier,” Michielsen points out. “But you’re not going to find the implementation of your solution straightaway, so you’re probably going to go through a number of abstraction or decomposition layers.”

Cascade

During his training session, Michielsen explains that, in a system, the highest layer of abstraction is the level with the most general requirements, ie the system needs to be fast or have a certain look. But as you go down deeper into the system, it gets much more detailed. Suddenly, the layers are referring to different subjects or using different languages to express the requirements, which can be a little tricky for engineers to keep the information flowing.

“That’s the real objective of requirements engineering, finding different ways to ensure that the data continues to cascade from top to bottom and from stakeholder needs to implementation, all without losing any information,” suggests Michielsen. “I think if I were to summarize the challenge for requirements engineering, I would say that it lies mainly in the cascading of information throughout each abstraction or decomposition layer.”

Quantification

According to Michielsen, one very important part of the method is to find the complete set of requirements for a system. “The question quickly becomes, ‘when is the set complete?’”, he poses. “The best approach we’ve seen so far can be expressed using an equation, which we share in the training. It allows us to fully define a system by its functions, properties and constraints, and can be applied from the highest levels to the components and parts at the lowest points.” He continues, “By specifying and quantifying these criteria, the true requirements can be derived. This is one of the main steps of the training, learning how to put a value on each of the properties of the system.”

“Once the goals are defined, we can identify solutions – design options – based on assumed capabilities of subsystems. This is where creativity leads the product development process, as many different options are considered for solving the problem,” Michielsen depicts. “As long as we document the assumptions that are made during that creative design process, we can later translate these assumptions into requirements for the lower-level subsystems that we need in the solution.”

Justification

To Michielsen, this is one of the most powerful elements of the whole method. The ability to see the complete line of logic from a quantified system definition to the design decisions and finally to the specific implementation of a solution. That is, if engineers are able to maintain coherence between system requirements, system design and system decisions – a crucial factor.

“As long as the information feeds properly, we can derive requirements for the next layer and continue the cascade. That way we can ensure that whatever requirements we end up with at the lowest component level, through our method and our traceability, we can exactly come to the justification of each requirement and each decision made throughout each layer. That’s the whole essence of the method.”

“As a trainer, I want to help instill confidence in the process”, says Michielsen.

After more than 30 years in the industry, what do you most want to share in your trainings?

“As a trainer, I want to help instill confidence in the process. Following the method is one way to achieve that, because the students get the feeling that the system can be complete, consistent and correct – in terms of specifications. That can really help it feel less daunting. Once you cross that hurdle, the students can almost immediately start determining the main functions of the system and decide what properties are related and which constraints apply at that level. By quantifying these aspects, they don’t just state that the system should be reliable, they say explicitly just how reliable the system should be.”

Lessons Learned

With his 30+ years in process architecting, Michielsen has developed several practical methods to keep the information flowing from layer to layer. His success in the field opened the door for him to work with top Dutch and European companies, like Prorail, Eurocontrol, Punch Powertrain and Vanderlande – and several others, to help establish and implement processes for their own requirements engineering programs. “What I found was that there are enormous differences between each company, especially in implementation,” recollects Michielsen. “When I went to work for DAF, we put in place a complete requirements engineering process in three years’ time. We could successfully train hundreds of engineers and the method was paying off.”

Noting the success of the DAF project, Siemens called to lure Michielsen to Germany to help establish the same approach for Daimler. “It was a huge step for me to be invited to implement the system, but it quickly became clear that the approach we developed at DAF wasn’t going to be transferrable to Daimler,” Michielsen calls to mind. “Daimler was just organized in a completely different manner, with responsibilities being spread among departments and people in a way that made successful execution really difficult. The inability to get something going there was disappointing,” he says, continuing, “It certainly was a big learning experience for me, and it came with a lot of tough lessons learned.”

Are these lessons learned what drives you in this domain?

“In part, yes. I have an enormous passion for this whole process. I want to help improve product capabilities and productmanufacturing capabilities, especially in the area where I live and work. I want to make an impact on industry in that sense because we’ve learned so much and I want to spread this information,” emphasizes Michielsen. “It’s not all my doing, it’s all the companies I’ve worked for and all my experiences. I’m extremely grateful for being able to do that, and I’d like to spread that knowledge to make sure that the entire ecosystem can benefit, and we grow from it.”

This article is written by Collin Arocho, tech editor of Bits&Chips.

After a lot of preparation and sometimes a bit of fiddling, the time has come. In the last couple of weeks Wendy Luiten was practicing her first remote Cooling of Electronics training with her cat Okkie as the first participant. “Of course I’m regularly in team meetings but providing a training is something else”. As of today the online edition starts.

Credits: Martine Raaijmakers

Wendy already gained experience with online training two days after the lock down. “I heard on Tuesday at 8 a.m. that Philips employees had to work from home. On Thursday was the last day of the already running Green Belt training at Philips. So we immediately switched to online on  Teams. At that time I had two advantages: I knew the students and they were used to online meetings via Teams”.

This week is different. The eight participants of “Electronics cooling thermal design” don’t know each other and some of them didn’t use Teams before.

Wendy’s unconcerned about potential problems. She sees tooling and in particular Microsoft’s applications as a natural phenomenon. “It is working and then we’re happy, sometimes it is not working” she says. “In my experience, the ancestor Skype always worked. Teams is more recent, but meanwhile widely deployed everywhere. In the US there are clusters of universities and schools on the educational version. I have no reason to believe that it will cause problems this week. It’s a trial run, there are always areas for improvement, and you won’t find out until you try.

In order to make the material suitable for online modules, Wendy went through all files again. The slides, the practice exercises, the case study. “From a distance, the storyline and story telling becomes more important, because you can’t see exactly how the material lands,” she says. Incidentally, Wendy isn’t going to use the special version of Teams for Education. “That doesn’t add any value for me or the participants. With the educational version, people get an email address and access to share-point, among other things. Students then have to work with user aliases and so on. This puts a burden on IT that you don’t want for a few days of training”.

Credits: Martine Raaijmakers

About the preparation of the participants: High Tech Institute’s partner for electronics courses Hans Vink personally approached all cooling participants three weeks ago. After all, everyone knows the hassle when you end up in a new video conferencing environment with a group for the first time. Do you see me! How do I mute my microphone? These kinds of things. Hans wanted to avoid that at the Team sessions. By the way, we looked at a whole bunch of potential video tools with the High Tech Institute team, but more about that later.

For some clients, Teams is the standard application for meetings, but for others it’s not , so they participate via their web browser. Hans asked all participants whether or not they use Teams and then did a test session with everyone via app or browser to check the settings and to see if all facilities work as needed in the course.

All preparations – don’t hesitate to say: also a lot of extra work – now provide an up beat vibe. Based on the feedback, Hans expects that we will be able to organise online courses every year, as well as the classroom course. “That wouldn’t surprise me”, he says, “We already have sufficient participants for the classroom course in mid-November”.

With that, Wendy’s satisfied too. She regularly receives training requests from all over the world. Offering online modules lowers the threshold to train technology professionals from for example Silicon Valley or India.

This blog is part of a series in which we share our first experiences with online training. 

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of Bits&Chips.

Academics who are experts in control theory often have difficulty in designing a controller for industrial practice. On the other hand, many mechatronics professionals who come into contact with control technology lack the theoretical basis to bring their systems to optimum performance. The Motion Control Tuning training offers a solution for both target groups. “Once you’ve gone all the way through it, you can design a perfect control system yourself in just a few minutes,” says course leader Tom Oomen.

How do you ensure that a probe microscope scans a sample in the right way with its nanodial needle? How can a pick and place machine put parts on a circuit board in a flash while still achieving super precision? How can a litho scanner project chip patterns at high speed and just the right position on a silicon wafer? It’s all about control engineering, about motion control.

It’s this knowledge that’s in the DNA of the Brainport region. Motion control is at the heart of accuracy and high performance. The success of Dutch high tech is partly due to the control technology knowledge built up around the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Technological developments at the Philips divisions Natlab and Centrum voor Fabricagetechnologie (CFT) made an important contribution to the development of the control technology field in the eighties and nineties. Time and time again, however, there was a hurdle to be overcome. When engineers in the product divisions started working with it, it was not so easy to convert the technology and theoretical principles that had been developed into industrial systems.

Students work with a very simple two-mass-spring-damper system.

Training courses Advanced Motion Control and Advanced Feedforward & Learning Control

That is why Philips realised in the 1990s that it had to transfer its knowledge effectively. This resulted in a course structure with a very practical approach. The short training courses of at least three days are intensive, but when participants return to work, they can apply the knowledge immediately.

Motion Control Tuning (MCT) was one of the first control courses set up at Philips CFT in the 1990s by Maarten Steinbuch, currently professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. Today, Mechatronics Academy develops and maintains the MCT training and markets it in collaboration with High Tech Institute, together with the Advanced Motion Control and Advanced Feedforward & Learning Control training courses.

MCT trainer Tom Oomen

Tom Oomen, associate professor at Steinbuch’s section Control Systems Technology of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, is one of the driving forces behind these three courses. “The field is developing rapidly,” says Oomen, “which means a lot of theory, but the basis, for example how to program a PID controller, has remained the same.”

The Motion Control Tuning (MCT) training provides engineers with a solid basis. Participants are often developers with a thorough knowledge of control theory who want to apply their knowledge in practice but encounter practical obstacles. The surprising thing is that each edition always is joined by a number of international participants. It says a lot about how the world views the Dutch expertise in this field.

Motion control training students can roughly be divided into two groups. The first are people with insufficient technical background in control technology, who do have to deal with control technology on a daily basis. They want to learn the basics in order to be able to communicate better with their colleagues. “These people do design controllers, but don’t understand the techniques behind them. They make models for a controller, without knowing exactly what a controller can do. This causes communication problems between system designers and control engineers,” says Oomen.

Control engineers traditionally design a good controller on the basis of pictures, the so-called Bode and Nyquist-diagrams. “For seasoned control engineers, those diagrams are a piece of cake, but if you’ve never learned to read those figures, it’s still abracadabra. Then you can turn the knobs any way you want, but you’ll never design a good controller”, says Oomen.

Motion Control Tuning features twenty trainers

The best way to teach the essence of the profession to people with insufficient theoretical backgrounds, according to TNO’s Gert Witvoet, is to drag them all the way through it once. Witvoet, who also serves as a part-time assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, is one of the twenty trainers and supervisors involved in the MCT training. “They have to learn how to read such diagrams. They need to understand exactly what they mean. With this training you really learn how control engineers in the industry design controllers, and what the possibilities and limitations of feedback are,” says Witvoet.

The other target group consists of engineers who are theoretically prepared. They are trained in theoretical control technology and have a good background, including knowledge of the underlying mathematics. Most of them are international participants, who come to the Netherlands especially for the motion control training. “These people have moved from academia to industry but have often never designed a controller for an industrial system. They are unable to achieve a good performance with modern tools, and the ability to tune classic PID controllers is often lacking,’ says Oomen. Witvoet: “In our course they will learn the real industry practice: how to handle a motion system and come to a good design step by step.”

Tom Oomen says that he looks with ‘theorical glasses’. Witvoet is more the applications guy. Both of them think it’s cool to teach engineers how to put the knowledge from state-of-the-art research transfer it into practice.

The academic world and industry work in very different ways, although their starting point is the same: a model. Researchers and engineers, however, each choose a different approach. Academics often use physical models including underlying mathematics, differential equations and the like. But in practice, engineers work with so-called non-parametric models such as frequency response functions. “This is very different from what we work with in the scientific world and we will work with it in the training”, says Oomen.

Tom Oomen.

MCT training part one is feedback design

Motion control tuning students get started with frequency response functions on the first day. They are quick and easy to obtain and are a means to reach the goal: to design a feedback controller. They measure the properties and characteristics of an existing mechatronic system. “A frequency response function follows from these measurements, which shows how the machine behaves,” says Oomen. “Then a model rolls out, which allows you to design a controller for that system.”

In contrast to these rapidly acquired and highly accurate frequency response models, many techniques from academia build a parametric model. For that they need detailed information on masses, springs, stiffness, dampers and so on. In practice, this is far too time-consuming. It is difficult to know all the parameters exactly.

But if you have an existing system, a frequency response is a good alternative. “You offer a suitable signal and simply measure how the system reacts,” says Witvoet. “This way you get a super good frequency response function of the input-output behaviour in just a few minutes, which allows you to design a good controller. If you then also know how to tune such a thing, you can make the best controller for your system, step by step, within a few minutes.”

Students in MCT training use a simple, practical system

Students get started with a very simple two-mass-spring-damper system. One mass is connected directly to the motor, the second mass (the load) is connected to the first mass. The system has position sensors at the motor, as well as at the load. The challenge is to design a controller that controls the second mass accurately. Not easy, because the shaft is torsional.

Oomen: “In practice, systems always measure the load. Just look at a printer. Somewhere there is a motor that moves the carriage via a drive belt. Because you want to know exactly where the ink is on the paper, you measure the position of the carriage. When you measure on the engine, you never know for sure, because the transmission between the engine and the print head is flexible.”

Gert Witvoet.

Even seasoned researchers in the control technology sometimes have trouble understanding the stubborn practice. In their experience, everything can be modelled in detail, including the transmission between engine and load. During visits to top international groups, Oomen regularly shows the experimental set-up from the motion control tuning training to theorists. “I then ask them if it makes any difference where I measure, at the motor or the load. Starting from theoretical concepts like controllability and observability, they usually answer that it doesn’t matter”.

In the MCT course, however, the trainers show that it is essential where you measure. “If you measure over the motor, then the sky is the limit in terms of performance. Everything is possible. Malfunctions can be suppressed up to any frequency. But if you measure – as always in practice – over the load, then you are very limited, because you have to deal with unpredictable behavior due to flexible parts. Then there are significant limitations for control loops and the performance that you can actually achieve. If you want to make a stabilizing regulator under these conditions, you have to be very careful. It’s easy to get unstable behavior. If you want to know exactly what that’s like, you have to come to the course,” laughs Oomen.

Henry Nyquist and Hendrik Bode

To give a motion controller stability, classic concepts are necessary. These were devised by Henry Nyquist and Hendrik Bode. Oomen: “In the first half of the last century, Nyquist already devised principles to guarantee the stability of such a control loop. I recently read a book from 1947 in which he described this. We still use this on a daily basis, in combination with those frequency response functions. Both are deeply interwoven. In this way we guarantee the stability of control loops.”

Mention the name Nyquist, and you’re also talking about Fourier and Laplace transformations. It might sound complicated but working with mathematics in practice doesn’t require a deep understanding. “We explain these concepts in a very intuitive way that is accessible to everyone,” says Oomen. “The role of these concepts in control design forms the basis and is encountered by control engineers in their work anyway. We think it’s important that people really know it, but it’s really not necessary to go deep into mathematics for that.”

After the basic concepts, the training makes the step to stability. Witvoet: “They learn to lay a good foundation with a picture, a Nyquist diagram. This allows students to test the stability of their system. All mysticism is then gone, because they know what’s underneath and how to use it. Students will then be able to turn the knobs and check whether the closed control loop is stable.”

This is followed by the step to an actual design. The first requirement of such a design may be stability, but in the end, it is all about performance. To achieve this, students are given a wide range of motion control tools such as notch, lead, lag filters and PID controllers. “It’s all in the engineer’s toolbox and it’s the prelude to one of the most appreciated afternoons of the course – the loop-shaping game. In this game, students will tune the controller as well as possible and squeeze out the performance. If they can do that, they’ll have mastered how a feedback controller works.”

MCT training part two is feedforward controller design

In addition to the feedback controller for stability and interference suppression, each motion system also has a feedforward controller. This tells the system how to follow its path from a to b. This is also called reference tracking. “You control that with the feedforward controller,” says Oomen. “The most important part of the system’s performance comes from the feedforward control. Here, too, we briefly go into the theory and then immediately start experimenting. It is a very systematic and intuitive approach. Once you’ve done it, you can apply it immediately.”

By actually applying it, participants in the MCT training learn how things like mass feedforward and capture feedforward work. “It’s a very systematic approach that allows you to tune the parameters one by one in an optimal way,” says Oomen. “If you master that technique, you can tune the best feedforward controller for your system in just a few minutes, by doing iterative experiments.

Once you know how to measure a frequency response function and design a feedback and feedforward control, you can design controllers very quickly. Oomen: “Time is money, of course, and that’s why the entire Dutch high-tech industry does it this way. You can find it in Venlo at Canon Printing Systems and in Best at Philips Healthcare. The smaller mechatronic companies also use these techniques. At ASML in Veldhoven, almost all motion controllers in wafer scanners are tuned in this way. Once you are a little experienced, you can almost get the optimal performance out of the system. That’s within a few minutes and, of course, that’s cool.”

MCT training is 100 percent practice

When asked about the relationship between theory and practice, Oomen laughingly says that the MCT training is “100 percent practice”. “All the theory we do is essential to practice,” adds Witvoet. “We explain a number of theoretical concepts, but we do so by means of an application. It’s all about tuning. It’s really a design course and gradually one learns some theory. Every afternoon we work on that system, making frequency response functions and then fine tuning. Feedforward, feedback, it’s a daily job getting your hands dirty and your feet in the mud, because you apply the theory right away.”

After five days, participants will be able to develop a feedback and feedforward controller independently. In the final day various trainers and experts discuss the developments within their field of expertise.

Oomen: “Within the five days, participants succeed in making controllers with one input and one output, but many industrial systems have multiple inputs and outputs. That seems to have consequences for tuning.” Witvoet: “We show where the dangers lie. When things can go wrong and when things go wrong, how to deal with them.”

To design control systems for multiple inputs and outputs, motion control engineers need a stronger theoretical basis. This knowledge of multivariable systems is discussed in the five-day Advanced Motion Control training course. “In this course, participants will learn in great detail how to make control systems with multiple inputs and outputs”, says Oomen, “We will follow the same philosophy and reasoning as in the Motion Control Tuning training”.

On the last day, learning from data is also discussed, a trend that is currently growing rapidly within the control area. “The latest generations of control systems can learn from past mistakes and at the same time correct them,” says Oomen. “In doing so, we use large amounts of data produced by sensors in machines. This enables us to correct machine faults within a few iterations. This paves the way for new revolutionary machine designs that are lightweight, more accurate, less expensive and more versatile, but also allow existing machines to be upgraded in this way. On the last day of MCT, I’ll tell you about it for an hour, but in the Advanced Feedforward Control training course, we’ll take three days to do it.”

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.

Nico Meijerman joined NTS to help build and expand the company’s software competency. Shortly after arriving at the hardware stronghold, he started to work on bridging the gap between software engineering and the worlds of physics, mechanics and hardware-related disciplines. The result is a workshop in which Meijerman teaches his non-software colleagues the basics of software engineering. Customer and business specifics included.

First-tier supplier NTS Group has quietly been shaping its software engineering competence over the last couple of years. You might not expect this from a company that’s still making most of its money by bending sheet steel, milling parts and assembling systems.

However, embracing software expertise is a natural step for some first-tier suppliers. Over the past decades, NTS has been actively building its system development capabilities. It now develops and manufactures complete machines and modules that are branded and marketed by its customers. With the value of end products shifting to software, it seems a natural move for NTS to develop the competences to catch the digitization wave.

NTS’ Development and Engineering (D&E) department has a headcount of about two hundred engineers, of which 15 percent focus on software. For a supplier that delivers high-end systems and designs, this is still on the low side, Meijerman argues. “It will grow because we see software becoming more and more essential for creating value for our customers. We see the software effort increasing in our projects.”

“We see the software effort increasing in our projects”, says Nico Meijerman. 

An intriguing offer

Meijerman has been walking the hardware-software trail for his entire career. He learned to design chips during his study in Twente and joined Sagantec, a company that both worked on a silicon compiler and developed application-specific ICs for customers. There, he started designing chips, but soon enough, he shifted to programming because the embedded software turned out to take more effort than the hardware itself.

Later, Meijerman taught informatics-related subjects at several departments of the university of applied sciences (HTS) in Arnhem. Subsequently, he joined Philips CFT, where they needed a software engineer who understood what was happening in the mechanical and electrical domains. There, he developed motion control software for ASML’s first PAS 5500 litho scanners. Soon after, he also worked on MRI scanners for Philips Healthcare.

In 2010, Meijerman decided it was time to start his own consultancy company but a few years later, NTS approached him with an intriguing offer: would he be interested in becoming the group leader for machine control, a team focusing on software and electrical engineering. Helping to build up the software competency seemed a daunting, yet very attractive challenge.

After arriving at the hardware stronghold, Meijerman knew he needed to work on his relationship with the NTS mechanics and mechatronics base. He figured a short workshop would help make his new colleagues more familiar with software.

According to Nico Meijerman of NTS, “Mechanical engineers deal with the limitations of physics, software manages complexity.”

Meijerman started interviewing colleagues to get an idea of their needs. First, he talked to the systems engineers – the guys that mostly have a mechanical background. “The most frequent response was that they had no clue about software. I heard remarks like ‘Those guys are always too late’, ‘They never make the things that I really need’ and ‘I can’t work with them because they don’t understand anything’. It was very much a culture of blaming and it was clear that our systems engineers didn’t know what software was doing. They saw it as an unpredictable black box.”

In Meijerman’s contact with the system architects, things started to resonate more. “They at least got an idea about what they would like to know about software. They wanted to know more about programming languages, third-party, multi-tasking, real-time, Agile and other basic concepts. They also wanted to know what a software development process looked like.”

Before long, Meijerman and the system architects concluded that the customer perspective is of enormous importance. “We saw the need to involve clients early in the software development process. For NTS, this was a high priority because most of its customers have a mechanics background. They know that software has to be included but they have to be educated on the specifics – for instance, on the fact that software is never bug-free. That’s why part of my workshop is also about business models and everything that follows our development activities.”

Nico Meijerman is the trainer for ‘Software engineering for non-software engineers’. 

Wrong assumptions

In the high tech industry, you often hear that communication is the problem in settings with different disciplines. But at NTS, Meijerman experienced that it’s more about understanding and being able to step in someone else’s shoes. “People do try to communicate. I see that there’s definitely a willingness to talk,” he says. “But hardware and software engineers are often living in completely different worlds.”

Meijerman explains that mechanical engineers predominantly look at the limitations of physics. “It’s about nanometers, about milliseconds. The stiffness of a construction determines what you can achieve. Components wear out if you use them too long.” Software engineers, on the other hand, do not deal with physics; they try to control complexity. “Mechanics is about managing the limits of physics, while software is about managing complexity.”

The problems often arise from wrong assumptions. “Mechanics rarely ask a software engineer about the degree of complexity. That’s why a software engineer will say in most cases he can fix a machine control problem – except for some very difficult issues. But if you ask them how much effort it’s going to take and how complex it is, you may get a completely different answer. A mechanical engineer looks at things from a physics point of view, not from a complexity point of view. But he should know how much work his question can generate. The lack of understanding of such basic concepts makes it difficult to interact. Equally, software engineers definitely have to improve their knowledge in the field of mechanical engineering.”

Part of Meijerman’s workshop is understanding that software engineering isn’t the same as programming. “Youngsters are learning how to program while at university or during technical education. A lot of people think software engineering is just more programming but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In programming, complexity usually isn’t the issue, as you’ll end up with some hundreds of lines of code. It’s not until you’re dealing with over a hundred thousand lines of code that it starts to get complicated. In high-tech systems this is the case: there are sometimes millions of lines of code, and the only way to tackle challenges of this magnitude is to find a way to work through the problem. That means breaking it down and ensuring that your work is correct. Engineering is about focusing on architecture and design, as well as managing complexity.”

“My goal is to teach participants all aspects of software engineering,” Meijerman concludes. “When they realize that, they understand that they can’t ask their nephew playing with Arduino boards to write a program for them over the weekend.” At the end of the workshop, participants understand more about the intriguing world of software engineering and about the differences and commonalities between software engineering and other disciplines, resulting in better collaboration, better solutions and hopefully more fun in their work.

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of Bits&Chips.