Category: Interviews

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.

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.