Category: Testimonials

For Nobleo Technology, precision and innovation go hand in hand. Designer Rik Houwers recently deepened his expertise through the ‘Thermal Effects in Mechatronic Systems’ course, gaining new insights into how temperature fluctuations influence high-precision machines and how modelling in the frequency domain can lead to smarter, more stable designs.

“Building something you design yourself is always fun,” Rik Houwers, designer at Nobleo says, “because you get direct feedback. Unfortunately, that is not always possible.” He studied mechanical engineering at Delft University of Technology, specializing in biomechanics and precision mechanics. He was introduced to Nobleo, where he has now worked for nine years. His work consists mainly of mechanical design and analysis of mechatronic systems and metrology machines.

Due to the multidisciplinary nature of mechatronics, the team is essential. “We work with experts from different fields: mechanical, electronical, control, software, purchasing and sometimes thermal or optical. Understanding the basics of each other’s disciplines, allows effective communication and that makes all the difference. Moreover, the best innovative ideas often are found at the border of multiple disciplines.”

A high impact niche

Houwers recently attended the course ‘Thermal Effects in Mechatronic Systems‘ offered by Mechatronics Academy through High Tech Institute. During an earlier project, he had seen firsthand how temperature variations can impact measurement accuracy. “In the machine I was working on, thermal disturbances turned out to be the dominant cause of deviations in the measurements. Since then, I’ve wanted to understand those mechanisms better.”

Nobleo’s technical director Frank Sperling had already pointed Houwers to courses at High Tech Institute before. Houwers has previously taken courses such as ‘Passive Damping for High Tech Systems’ and ‘Applied Optics’. The knowledge from both of these courses could already be applied in customer projects. According to him, this new training fits perfectly alongside them. “With this tool in my toolkit, I have even more options to develop creative and smart designs for our customers.”

Houwers shows a flexure mechanism, a test sample containing viscous damping rubber that was aimed at damping away problematic vibrations

The training is recommended for mechatronic designers who focus on high-precision applications. “As soon as you design for accuracies better than tens of micrometers, you usually can’t ignore thermal effects.” According to Houwers, this is fairly precise in the field, but no exception. “For reference, machines at ASML need to achieve nanometer-level precision.”

The course matched well with his background in dynamics. “The level was just right. The instructors, including Theo Ruijl of MI-Partners, explained the theory clearly and always linked it to real industrial examples.”

Understanding thermal effects

The three-day course offered a clear structure. The first day focused on the basics of heat transfer and thermal physics. Day two was about temperature measurement and practical examples, and the third day addressed temperature control in systems. “Thermal systems seem simpler than dynamic systems because they don’t have resonances,” Houwers explains. “But if you tune the controller incorrectly, you can still get an instable system. With a few simple design rules you can prevent that.”

The pace was high and not all assignments could be fully completed in the time available, but that did not bother Houwers. After all, the goal of the course was to absorb as much knowledge as possible in three days and that was delivered.

Although he doesn’t have a direct application for the knowledge he has gained, Houwers sees clear value in it. “At Nobleo, we are constantly working on cutting-edge systems. Sooner or later, those thermal questions will come up. When they do, it’s great to really understand the physics behind them.”

Thinking in frequencies

The most valuable insight that Houwers gained from the course came from the frequency-domain approach to thermal problems. “Temperature fluctuations each have their own frequency. The day-night cycle changes slowly, the air conditioning might switch on and off every half hour, and people walking by cause air displacements that vary over minutes.”

How strongly these variations affect the accuracy of a machine depends on the process frequency and how quickly the different components react to temperature changes. Heavy, massive components, for example, heat up more slowly than lighter parts, and materials with low thermal conductivity cause heating to occur slow and non-uniform. As a result, certain frequency heating often result in a non-synchronised warming, where one part expands, while the other is still cold. This causes deformation and measurement deviations. By modelling the system in the frequency domain, engineers gain insight into which temperature disturbances matter for the required precision.

According to Houwers, this way of thinking is remarkably powerful. “You can predict how heat spreads through a machine, how quickly parts respond and how that affects positioning. This guides design choices in material, construction, and control strategy.”

At Nobleo Technology, everything revolves around high-tech innovation in the broadest sense. The Eindhoven-based company operates in four complementary domains: Autonomous Systems, Intelligence, Embedded & Electronics and Mechatronic Systems. The first focuses on autonomous vehicles and robots, while Intelligence develops smart algorithms, for example for image recognition and quality control. Embedded & Electronics supports the development of intelligent systems by designing and integrating hardware, electronics and embedded software that enable precise control and smart decision-making. Within the Systems branch, the emphasis is on precision, speed and predictable systems for the industry, from complex chip machines to fruit sorting machines. In that regard the training fits very well with Houwers’ career path in mechatronics at Nobleo.

This article is written by Marleen Dolman, freelancer for High Tech Systems.

At high-tech companies, valuable expertise often remains locked in engineers’ minds, making it challenging for new colleagues to grasp the complete picture. This knowledge gap was exactly what mechatronics engineer Eric Dannenberg encountered at Itec with feedforward control systems, which prompted him to take High Tech Institute’s “Advanced Feedforward and Learning Control” course.

Nijmegen-based Itec operates at the forefront of scientific discovery, merging its die-bonding technology with machines taking care of subsequent steps in the chip production process. The company develops high-throughput assembly and test equipment for semiconductors, specializing in optical and electrical inspection and die bonders. One such machine focuses on taking chips from the wafer and gluing them in place on the substrate.

Eric Dannenberg has been with Itec for three years now, the last of which he spent as a mechatronics engineer. Earlier, he worked as a mechanical engineer, amongst other engineering roles, but his interest in mechatronics never wavered. “A mechanical engineer designs the needle that pushes the chip to the right position,” he explains. “The mechatronics engineer is responsible for the needle’s movements, ensuring the right speed and coordination.” Mechatronics, however, is a niche in the mechanical and electrical engineering branch, meaning fewer jobs are available.

As a mechatronics engineer at Itec’s die bonder department, Dannenberg focuses on three main areas. First is the general problem-solving and debugging of existing equipment, helping customers keep their machines operational. Second, he optimizes the current high-end systems, looking for ways to increase throughput speed and precision and decrease errors. Lastly, he and his colleagues work on designing the next generation of machines, using the most recent developments, acting truly at the forefront of their scientific field.

Dannenberg appreciates the alternation in responsibilities. “Only doing repair work might get boring, but getting back to the roots is very helpful, and the small successes are welcome when stuck on an engineering problem for future machines.”

Feedforward control

When Dannenberg started working for Itec, he had a lot to learn. “I applied for the course at High Tech Institute because I noticed that while my colleagues had a wealth of knowledge, their explanations were always -logically – aimed at the matter at hand. I often felt like I was missing context, not getting the full picture.” Itec has a history of using courses from High Tech Institute, some of which Dannenberg had already completed. “Advanced feedforward and learning control was the next logical step, after Motion Control Tuning and Advanced Motion Control.”

Eric Dannenberg at ITEC, Nijmegen

Feedforward control refers to the machine preparing control inputs in advance, based on the desired path. Instead of waiting for position errors to occur, the actuators are guided to proactively follow the upcoming reference points more accurately. This reduces errors and improves response time, since adjustments happen while the substrate is moving forward.

The course, which took three consecutive days, focuses on iterative learning control, repetitive control and new advanced feedforward algorithms. It thus serves a very niche market segment, where little training is available. For Itec, iterative learning control with basic functions is the form most used from the course, but the entire training paints a complete picture.

Firsthand experience

The course gives insights into developing machines capable of reducing position errors to encoder resolution during repetitive movement. It provides a roadmap of how to get to the point where the encoder resolution, rather than high-value parts, becomes the limiting factor in position error reduction. Here, the close collaboration with Eindhoven University of Technology comes into its own, according to Dannenberg. “The knowledge that High Tech Institute shares in its courses is truly novel. It doesn’t exist in books yet and can only sparsely be found on the internet.”

This knowledge comes in handy both when optimizing existing equipment and when designing new systems. “Knowing the extent of the latest research allows us to make smart decisions on whether to design entirely different mechanical parts for a new machine or adapt what we already have to fit the latest developments in the field.”

Dannenberg gained more than just an overview of the complex material with this course. “We could actually test the knowledge and the algorithms we were learning on real machines. Playing around with these algorithms straight away helped us gain an understanding to a level you can’t achieve just from a Powerpoint presentation. We also got to experience firsthand how the algorithms learned from their interaction with the machine. In one case, for example, we could see the algorithm adapting to the resistance of attached cables, which it hadn’t taken into account before.”

That hands-on knowledge made it easier to put the learnings into practice. When returning to the work floor, Dannenberg could immediately share his ideas and experiences with his colleagues. Having a clearer, bigger picture helped him advance his tasks.

Dannenberg already knows what his next course will be: “Experimental Techniques in Mechatronics.” This training focuses on determining the dynamic properties of mechatronic systems. “A colleague who followed this course was quite enthusiastic and my manager agreed that it would be a good next step for me.”

This article is written by Marleen Dolman, freelancer for High Tech Systems and Bits&Chips.

Passive damping is increasingly used by mechanical engineers designing for the high-tech industry. This was the reason for Patrick Houben, mechanical architect at Nobleo Technology, to attend the “Passive damping for high-tech systems” course at High Tech Institute.

Eindhoven-based Nobleo Technology is an engineering firm that takes on in-house development projects. It specializes in software, mechatronics and mechanics in three core areas: autonomous & intelligence solutions, embedded & electronics solutions and mechatronic systems. Patrick Houben has been employed there for two years as a mechanical architect with the business unit Mechatronic Systems. Originally a mechanical engineer, he’s worked his entire career at semicon companies, including Assembléon, when it was still called Philips EMT, and ITEC in Nijmegen.

“What I mainly do at Nobleo now is define the architecture in projects for customers, lay down concepts and support the project team,” Houben explains. “I’m working together with a team of mechatronic engineers. We ensure that customers’ wishes are properly embedded in the products or modules we design for them.”

“At Nobleo, we take care of the entire design process for the customer, including supervising the industrialization of the products in the customer’s supply chain. We do the latter together with Nobleo Manufacturing. We call this Design House+ and it’s catching on well. In addition to product development, we build and test the prototypes. During the industrialization process, we can efficiently incorporate necessary improvements in the design. The customer then has a fully equipped supply chain.”

Pragmatic, practical and applicable

The reason for taking the “Passive damping for high-tech systems” course at High Tech Institute was twofold, according to Houben: to broaden his technical knowledge and to be able to apply the acquired knowledge at his clients. He had some prior experience with applying damping, but mainly for isolation, to isolate highly dynamic modules from external vibrations, for example. “I had no experience with the applications from the course. It was surprising and new to me that damping, or suppressing, a single component can greatly improve system performance.”

The course lasted three days and included practical exercises and about six extensive study cases. Houben particularly liked the fact that the course quickly switched to design rules that were easy to apply. “We were given good study cases that showed that in a mechanical construction, you often have very little damping. And if you add a little bit of damping, you can gain a lot – that was really surprising to me as well. When I look at static components in the machines of our customers, for example, they’re often sandwiched in a long span where they can resonate quite strongly. If you can reduce that with passive damping, you can get better performance and increase bandwidths without much extra cost. I really found that very instructive and practical.”

In particular, the MRI scanner case, a doctoral research project by a TU Eindhoven student, resonated well with the course participants, Houben observed. “That was a clear and telling case. It involved a Philips MRI scanner where a person was placed in between two horizontal magnetic strips. Because of the positioning of the two strips, the top one could only be supported by two relatively narrow uprights. The stiffness of this construction was suboptimal and as a result of  the magnetic movements, the construction started to resonate on the uprights. By applying passive damping in the right place with the right mass and the right specifications, that whole mode disappeared. The damping mass was a simple thirty-pound plate suspended in rubber dampers and hardly added any cost to the scanner.”

Houben also appreciated the practical tip that you can install an oscillator app on your smartphone with which you can map resonances quite accurately and reason about the cause of the problems. “That helps you quickly move toward the right solution. I really liked that in the course – it was very pragmatic, practical and applicable.”

For Houben, the course was surprisingly easy to follow. “I’ve also attended courses that were a bit more difficult. Because I have a classical background in mechanical engineering, I had to build up my knowledge of dynamics, mechatronics and control technology as I progressed through my career. And yes, I sometimes noticed in courses that this was difficult, especially when faced with theoretical sums. But in this course, it wasn’t that difficult. I especially liked the interaction with the two teachers and how they coordinated with each other. It was very informal and open and there was also a lot of back and forth.”

Opportunities

Houben already sees his colleagues applying passive damping to their projects. For the client he’s currently working for, however, the concept is still new. “I’m thinking about how to introduce the acquired knowledge there, but I definitely see opportunities.”

This article is written by Titia Koerten, editor for High Tech Systems.

Dutch corporate tech culture can be a difficult hurdle for foreigners to overcome. That is why software developer ICT Strypes asked High Tech Institute to host an in-company corporate culture course for their Portuguese engineers.

When software developer José Rodrigues started working with his Dutch client, it was a culture shock for him. He had previous experience in the Netherlands: as an exchange student he had studied for a year in Groningen. Yet the high-tech work culture in real practice was still hard for him to get used to.

Rodrigues started out his career as a physicist, graduating from the University of Coimbra in Portugal. He quickly, however, moved into software engineering, where he ended up at ICT Strypes.

“I’m currently working on the drivers for a water cabinet that is responsible for cooling”, he says. “My job is writing software and testing it.”

ICT Strypes Portugal is originally a Dutch software development company. Today, they are based in Portugal, with facilities in Lisbon and Porto. But Dutch and Portuguese work cultures can be quite different. That is why the company decided to host a one-day culture training in Porto, ‘How to be successful in the Dutch high-tech work culture’ by High Tech Institute. Rodrigues was one of the students that took the course.

“There were two reasons to take it”, he says. “One was to better communicate with our Dutch contacts. The other was to learn from the Dutch high-tech ecosystem and see which of their lessons we can also apply here in Portugal.”

Natural selection

The training zoomed in on a specific semicon equipment company, and their unique way of doing things. “Even inside the Netherlands, they have a very atypical culture”, says Rodrigues. “My first impression was: this is chaos. It was organized chaos, but still chaos. When I first had to work with them, it felt quite confusing. But after a while you realize that it’s efficient in its own way, and that they get the job done.”

“The Dutch are in general very punctual and direct”, he continues. “Our customer on the other hand is more chaotic than the average Dutch company. It is a type of natural selection. They overcame a lot of challenges and converged on this way of working. And it really works.”

The course was taught by Jaco Friedrich, one of High Tech Institute’s trainers, who has decades of experience in the Dutch corporate tech culture. He came to Porto to teach the course to ICT Strypes’ engineers.

“It was much more engaging than I initially expected”, says Rodrigues. “Often, these kinds of courses tend to get a bit dense, particularly by the end. There is the trainer with their PowerPoint spewing facts all day long. This one was not anything like that. There were a lot of practical examples. We also engaged with the trainer, and with each other. We for example did simulations of real-life social situations.”

José Rodrigues, who writes and tests software at ICT Strypes in Portugal.
Credits: Nuno Vasco of NVSTUDIO

Code review

Because of the course, Rodrigues and his colleagues learned how to accomplish certain tasks more efficiently. One of the most important of those was the code review. In the past, there was some friction here between the Netherlands and Portugal. After the course, however, the process was reviewed and improved.

The course also improved the professional skills of the participants and provided solutions to common workplace problems. “One of the things I learned myself was how to push an idea forward”, says Rodrigues. “As an engineer, we sometimes have the tendency to be very perfectionist. We want our product to be 100 percent perfect. This, however, sometimes delays a project and causes it to stall. For the client, a 90 percent perfect product that can be delivered earlier is at times better than a 100 percent perfect one that is delivered too late. Making that switch in mindset was an important result of the course.”

Giving feedback, often a touchy subject for engineers, has equally improved since the course. “Sometimes it was hard giving feedback without seeming judgmental”, says Rodrigues. “Technical people tend to be sensitive about the quality of their work. The course taught us how to successfully communicate feedback without hurting or making the other person angry.  That’s something I now use very regularly.”

Criticism is one of the areas in which Dutch and Portuguese people differ heavily. Dutch professionals tend to be much more direct than their Portuguese counterparts. “If you are too direct with them, the average Portuguese person will get offended”, Rodrigues says. “That does not happen very often with a Dutch person. That of course does not mean that Dutch people have bad intentions, it is just part of their culture. A Portuguese professional however, will take that level of directness quite hard. That is another thing the course discussed and taught us to handle better.”

For Rodrigues, this training is a must-have for non-Dutch people working with high-tech companies in The Netherlands. “My first impression was overwhelming, he says. “Over time I learned to see that it actually made sense, and that their organization actually works very well. But if you’re not used to this, it can be a bit of a culture shock. If I had taken this course earlier in my career, I would have understood my Dutch colleagues from day one.”

José Rodrigues, who writes and tests software at ICT Strypes in Portugal.
Credits: Nuno Vasco of NVSTUDIO

This article is written by Tom Cassauwers, freelancer for Bits&Chips.

 

In a relatively short period, Strypes Portugal grew very fast. This meant that a new generation of project leads had to push the company forward. Which is why the software developer asked High Tech Institute to host a four-day in-company training course in Porto to sharpen their leadership skills.

When software engineer Miguel Barros joined Strypes four years ago, it was a very different company than what it is today. “I was the sixth employee here in Portugal”, he remembers. “At this stage the company was quite small. That, however, quickly changed.”

Barros currently works as a project lead. “But when you work at a company that grows this fast, you learn to do everything”, he says. “You end up taking on a lot of responsibilities. During my time here I did everything from changing coffee filters and working on branding and marketing, to now coordinating large software projects.”

“My role at Strypes is to supervise projects and people”, Barros says. “I’m responsible for a couple of projects. I make sure that they are on the right track and that the customer is happy with our performance. Today, I have a strong coaching role.”

Technology leadership

Because Strypes grew so fast in Portugal, the company wanted to improve the leadership skills of their project leads. Many of them were technical experts who didn’t have any formal leadership training. Which is why Strypes turned to the High Tech Institute, which hosted the course ‘Leadership skills for architects and other technical leaders’ in Portugal on just that topic.

“Project leads already have good people skills, otherwise they wouldn’t be in that role”, says Barros. “But we wanted to reinforce this. We wanted to give them the tools for dealing with people and show why they work. The project leads already had the right energy but lacked the formal training. This course gave them that. It taught us some tools to navigate the responsibilities that we face as leadership figures at a technology company.”

For Barros the course put a name to things he had been doing all along without realizing it. “I already do things like talk to stakeholders and give feedback to colleagues. I just do it organically. After this training, I had a framework I could base myself on.”

This is very helpful for someone like Barros, who also needs to teach others what he knows. “Sometimes you do something naturally, but you don’t know why it works well”, he says. “Which makes it hard to explain to others how to do the same thing. These tools allow you to understand. Now I can point them to frameworks and tools.”

Feedback

During the training, the participants could discuss practical cases. “The trainer made a big effort to use real-world examples”, says Barros. “We were always talking about real issues. If we had a problem in our team, we could discuss it, and learn how to solve it. The course was very focused on practice.”

Credits: Nuno Vasco of NVSTUDIO

One focus area was feedback. “After taking the course, I started giving feedback in a different way”, says Barros. “I learned how to respond critically to a person’s work without hurting them. That is a valuable skill I will probably use for the rest of my life.”

The course proved particularly valuable for younger project leads. These are people who got promoted after we saw potential in them”, says Barros. “They know a lot about the technical side of their job, but they need to learn how to deal with certain social problems and communication issues. That’s what the training did very well.”

This fits into Strypes philosophy of having technically trained managers. “That’s very important at our company”, says Barros. “In other companies you often see a disconnect between project leads who don’t have a technical background, and just manage Excel, and the technical people below them. We want to have project leads that can do the technical things, but also have good people skills and can support their team.”

Diving deeper

The course took four days in total, divided into two sessions of two days each. “It took place in our office in Porto”, says Barros. “There we gathered all our Portuguese project leads, which was an interesting experience in itself. It was almost a team-building exercise.”

In between the two sessions, there was a break of a few months. During that time, the participants could experiment with some of the things they learned. “We had about three months to apply what we learned”, says Barros. “We even created a buddy system, where each of us kept track of another participant. We could discuss together how we were using the tools, and which ones were particularly helpful to us. This way, you just don’t forget about what you learned after a few weeks. During the second session we reported on our experiences to dive deeper.”

Looking back on it now, Barros is very positive about the training and what he learned from it. It helped him become a better leader, and helped Strypes operate more smoothly. “When you take one of these courses there’s always skepticism”, he concludes. “You ask yourself: ‘will I actually use any of this in real life.’ In this course that was different. It was highly practical, and the trainer knew the culture of Dutch tech organizations very well. The things we learned really made a difference.”

This article is written by Tom Cassauwers, freelancer for Bits&Chips.

Stefan Rutjes learned the trade of system architect on the job at Demcon. Still, he was looking to deepen his knowledge. That’s why he took the systems architecting course at High Tech Institute.

Before Stefan Rutjes became a system architect, he had a long career path as an engineer. Initially, he designed offset printing machines. In 2019, he changed course and joined Demcon as a mechanical engineer. “I ended up more and more in the lead,” he states. “Thus, I did several large projects. Eventually, I became a system architect.”

That role was right up Rutjes’ alley. “You have to learn to think along with the customers, and I love that,” he says. “What are they struggling with? What are their challenges? You can design a great piece of technology for them, but if it doesn’t match what they want, you’re going to go off the rails.”

At Demcon, this is embedded in the design process. “The system architect is involved from the very start of a project,” Rutjes explains. “A system architect already sits at the table during the coordination phase with the customer, to give direction to the project and ask the important questions. Can we do this within Demcon? Is this a good fit for Demcon? Do we have the right people to tackle this issue?”

Deeper

Still, Rutjes felt he had more to learn. He found the depth he was looking for in the “System architect(ing)” course at High Tech Institute. “I wanted to go deeper. I learned this job mainly on the job. That gave me a good foundation. At Demcon, we already use frameworks for system architecture. Still, I felt it was time to explore systematic approaches outside of these frameworks. The training gave me additional tools and insights.”

It wasn’t just the content that helped Rutjes move forward. “The training is organized in a setting with a mixed group. A lot of views came together. My group consisted of a mix of software, mechanical and electrical engineers. A few of them also had previous experience in systems engineering. We all came from different companies. The interactions we had with each other were valuable. I learned a lot from hearing how others approach something.”

During the training, the emphasis is also on a practical case. This strengthens the learning process, contends Rutjes. “Parallel to the theory, you develop a case in a group. You get a customer question and based on that, you have to pitch a proposal at the end of the training. In the groups, different views of the same problem arise. That turned out to be very interesting. You see great divergence and sometimes convergence between ideas.”

After the training, Rutjes began taking positions much more consciously, more clearly articulating the needs of different groups. According to him, that’s the most important thing he learned. “Of course, I already did that before. But I became more aware of it. For example, I now regularly make time to examine the whole project from the customer’s point of view. Subsequently, I take another look at everything from the usability point of view.”

Since the training, Rutjes has been making more time to be a true system architect. “This is a role where sometimes you just have to be able to think in peace and quiet,” he points out. “During a hectic day, that’s difficult, but it’s necessary. That’s why I’m planning my schedule a little more liberally now. I like to keep thirty percent free space to be able to think quietly about things like system choices or who to talk to. Especially after the training, I started doing that much more consciously. I really take my time now.”

System puzzle

Rutjes is enthusiastic about his work as a system architect. “A system architect actually stands alongside the team. You can look at things from every position, but you’re not an expert in anything. You have to ask people questions so that they themselves come to insights and grow. In my opinion, the role of system architect isn’t about taking the lead but about inspiring others.”

Sometimes that involves things like consulting stakeholders and developing frameworks. But a system architect also plays an important informal role. “You drop by people and have a chat here and there,” Rutjes illustrates. “That sounds trivial, but it’s a crucial part of my job – I even put it on my calendar. It’s not always about the technical stuff, by the way. Sometimes the problem isn’t the technology but the collaboration in the team that’s going awry. I work on that, too.”

A system architect also has to learn to choose. “You’re constantly making trade-offs, for example between cost and performance,” Rutjes explains. “In turn, you have to run that by the stakeholders. You have to check with them that you’re making the right choice.”

And not just with the customer; the whole chain is important to a system architect. “Maybe you need to talk to the person installing the technology, or the one doing the maintenance. Such players are right next to the customer and sometimes they can make all the difference between failure and success. You’re constantly looking for the right people whose shoes you can step into for a moment.”

Rutjes is enjoying the profession of system architect very much. “The diversity appeals to me the most,” he concludes. “It’s like putting together a big puzzle. You have to make all the conditions, requirements, views and budgets come together nicely. Being able to successfully solve a puzzle like that is what makes this job so interesting to me.”

This article is written by Tom Cassauwers, freelancer for Bits&Chips.

When Johan Oedzes embarked on the Embedded Linux course at High Tech Institute, he wasn’t an absolute novice in the topic. However, reflecting on his journey, he confides, “I regret not taking the course earlier.”

“The combination of software and electronics has always piqued my interest due to the interaction with the tangible world,” says Johan Oedzes. This interest led him to the University of Twente, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and subsequently delved deeper into the field with a Master’s in embedded systems.

After graduating, Oedzes secured a position at a big company in Hengelo, focusing on C++ software engineering on Linux, albeit not in the embedded sense, he explains. “Although I learned a lot there, it started to bother me that I wasn’t working on embedded systems. I also felt that I was operating within the constraints that other people had thought out. I wanted to do the innovative and exploratory part of engineering too.”

One of his more experienced colleagues shared Oedzes’ sentiment and moved to Beeliners, based in Hengelo as well. The two kept in touch and his ex-colleague asked Oedzes whether he could share his contact information with the company’s owners. When commercial director Dennis Wissink called two years ago, Oedzes decided to take the plunge and he joined Beeliners as an embedded software engineer.

E-mobility

Beeliners immediately resonated with Oedzes’ interests, he says. “All our products combine a hardware design with embedded software engineering to create a prototype or deliver a proof of concept for our clients. Such projects may encompass compact medical appliances, intelligent gym equipment or innovative e-mobility devices. I’m currently working on a product in the e-mobility sector.”

One of Beeliners’ clients wasn’t satisfied with an externally sourced e-mobility control unit and approached the company for a solution. Upon the client’s request, Beeliners embarked on the venture of creating their own. The control unit links to two external systems: the e-mobility device on the one hand and the internet on the other. The internet connection enables communication with a backend server and reception of firmware updates.

“We separated the system into two parts,” Oedzes explains. “Everything that needs real-time behavior and has strict timing requirements runs on a subsystem with a microcontroller, interfacing with the e-mobility device. The code for the backend connection, the web interface and the product’s business logic run on an embedded Linux system with a C++ application.”

Flexibility

Despite having some experience in using embedded Linux systems from his studies at the university, setting one up was uncharted territory for Oedzes. It was during the e-mobility project at Beeliners that he self-educated and successfully created a tailored embedded Linux system based on the Yocto project. “You can find a lot of information about tools to create embedded Linux distributions, such as Yocto and Buildroot. It took some searching and experimenting, but eventually, we had a working system, even including functionality for remote updates.”

“At that time, Yocto felt like the most widely accepted solution. Renowned companies working on embedded Linux were using it and many software providers offer a Yocto recipe to create packages of their software with Bitbake. Recipes are a powerful concept, and it’s one of the reasons for choosing Yocto for this project.”

Because this was the first time that they created an embedded Linux system, Oedzes and his colleagues had some questions: “How do I know that my product is good? Does my embedded Linux system do what it’s meant to do? Is it secure?” Beeliners had progressed to initial field testing with a functioning prototype, but they wanted some validation of their approach before finalizing the product.

Initially, Beeliners thought of hiring external expertise for a comprehensive evaluation. However, they wanted a quicker, lighter approach and preferred building this expertise internally, Oedzes emphasizes. “This quest for knowledge led us to explore training options. Given a prior positive experience by one of our colleagues with High Tech Institute’s ‘Good software architecture’ course, we went looking for a similar program for embedded Linux, and we found that they had one.”

As Oedzes wasn’t an absolute novice in embedded Linux, he wondered whether the course was relevant for him. “We engaged in a conference call with Jasper Nuyens, the course’s trainer, who listened to our questions. He concluded that we were well on our way but had some knowledge gaps on embedded Linux basics and rules of thumb in this domain. He also reassured us of the course’s flexibility to accommodate our specific questions.” Consequently, Oedzes enrolled in the embedded Linux course.

Better decisions

While attending the embedded Linux course, Oedzes continued to benefit from Nuyens’ experience. It revealed to him that Buildroot would’ve possibly been more suitable for his use case. “If I had enrolled in the course earlier, maybe we would have still chosen Yocto, but we would have certainly given more consideration to Buildroot.”

Yocto excels in use cases where various devices each require some hardware-specific configuration as well as a common part. You can then build a Yocto project with various subconfigurations for each device to create a custom Linux image, Oedzes explains. “This is a powerful approach, but we didn’t need this for our use case: it has one device and just a couple of minor hardware revisions. Yocto wasn’t a bad choice, but in the course, I learned that Buildroot would have been a better fit.”

The course also allowed Oedzes to discuss various security aspects of his e-mobility project. “Jasper asked me the right questions, like: what problem are you trying to solve, what threats do you want to protect against, is your web interface externally accessible? It’s actually all quite logical, but I learned a lot by reasoning about our product with him.”

In retrospect, Oedzes would recommend potential participants to start earlier with the embedded Linux course than he did. “If you know that you need an embedded Linux system in your product and have some C/C++ programming experience, the course has immense value. Jasper covers various options and explains for which use cases each of them is suitable.”

Oedzes also found Nuyens’ explanation of cross-compiling software for another target architecture quite good for beginners. “Yes, figuring this out yourself is possible, but if you’re starting with embedded Linux, a course like this provides an encouraging head start and warns you about common errors.”

Even though Oedzes had previous experience with embedded Linux, the course armed him with important tips and insights. “I familiarized myself with new tools and gathered Jasper’s valuable advice about our e-mobility project. The experience of our current project coupled with the insights from this course gives me much more confidence for making better decisions for Beeliners’ future embedded Linux projects.”

This article is written by Koen Vervloesem, freelancer for Bits&Chips.

Sebastian Pricking from the German company Trumpf knows what he’s talking about when it comes to lasers. Yet when he was promoted to lead the development of a new fibre-based laser, technical knowledge alone wasn’t enough. He had to step into the world of system architecting. That’s why he took the Systems architect(ing) course at High Tech Institute.

Trumpf is one of Germany’s hidden champions. Even though it’s not a household name, the Trumpf Group builds high-tech machines for clients all over the world, and employs more than 16.000 people doing so. Key to the group’s success is that since their founding in 1923 they have been family-owned.

“We work on innovations where we might have to wait five to ten years before we see a return-on-investment”, says Sebastian Pricking. “If your company is listed on the stock market, looking that far ahead isn’t always possible.”

Photo credit : André Boden (Trumpf)

Pricking works in the laser development department at Trumpf. “We develop the concepts and do basic research”, he says. “We have other colleagues that specialise in the CAD designs and software. My team takes care of the system interfaces, the fundamental principles, and the basic concepts.”

They for example design the optical layout of a new laser. “We decide which kinds of mirrors to use, the coatings on the lenses, and so on, based on simulations and lab experiments”, says Pricking. “The actual mechanical integration is done by another team.”

Fibre laser

Pricking’s team works on solid-state lasers. These include YAG-based disks, but also fibre-based lasers, where the active medium is an optical fibre. Pricking currently heads a team that designs a new fibre-based laser.

The main applications of Trumpf’s lasers lie in industry, where they are generally used to treat metals. “Welding and cutting are some of the main applications of these lasers”, says Pricking. “One of the biggest industries we serve is automotive. Electromobility in particular is driving growth here. In the construction of batteries and electro-motors a lot of laser processes are needed. That market is growing significantly now.”

Lasers have been used for a while in those applications, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more technological development to do. “Parameters like power and beam quality are still improving”, says Pricking. “We are also focusing on new features. We for example develop pulsed lasers. Here the light isn’t continuous, but comes in pulses with a higher peak power. That means that we need to time the pulses exactly right for the customer’s application.”

“We are definitely capable of offering suitable power levels for all the standard processes”, he says. “Solid-state lasers provide a broad range of power levels with an excellent wall-plug efficiency. One of our designs is a disk laser, which offers up to 24 kilowatt of infrared laser light.”

A disk laser has a thin active medium, which is placed on top of a heat sink. This solves issues around cooling. “In the past the active medium was often shaped like a rod”, says Pricking. “But that caused problems with the cooling, because it’s harder to apply a proper cooling to get the heat away. There are two possible solutions to this. Either you take the rod, and press it into a disk-shape, so the heat escapes more easily due to the increase surface. Or you take it and pull it, so that it becomes a fibre-based laser. We offer both of these designs to customers.”

Architect

Pricking only recently took on the position of lead in the fibre-based laser team. Which is why he followed the Systems architect(ing) course at High Tech Institute.

“I’m originally an experimental physicist”, says Pricking. “I can do the lab work, I can simulate and calculate all the necessary effects. But when I took over the team, my work changed. I had to collect the requirements from the stakeholders. I had to make chains of tolerances. I had all these interfaces which I had to organise. I had to make sure everything fit together. I needed to be a system architect. The issue was not the technical aspects of the job, but how to organise the design. The training ‘Systems architect(ing)’ gave me the tools and the framework which allowed me to see the big picture, and make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. The framework showed me where I was on the right track, and where something was missing. It allowed me to close the gaps.”

The course taught the student how to apply the CAFCR framework.

“It allowed me to orient myself”, says Pricking. “I assume there are other, competing, frameworks as well. But this one fits our way of working nicely. It confirmed we were on the right track.”

Besides the content, Pricking also liked the way the course was taught. “I liked the mixture between, on the one hand, the experimental and group work, where you for example present the group’s results to solve a given challenge. And on the other hand, theoretical presentations about the model and how it works. The course took a week, and it was filled quite nicely. The entire experience was very entertaining. Me and the other students had dinner in the evenings, which allowed us to exchange experiences on how they do things in their companies.”

During the course ‘System architect(ing), the teaching team was responsive to the questions from the students. “I for example asked about which software can be used to apply this framework”, says Pricking. “The teacher mentioned that it wasn’t part of the course, but he still offered me a list of software tools we could use, together with the advantages and disadvantages of each.”

The lessons he learned during the course he now applies to his job. “With this new background, I checked everything again”, says Pricking. “I applied the model to the project. I saw that there were a few gaps, which we closed rapidly. This course helped us improve our laser concept. Our next project will for sure use this framework from the start.”

This article is written by Tom Cassauwers, freelancer for High-Tech Systems.

Working as a particle accelerator engineer, Curt Preissner ran into the limits of their design philosophy. Which is why he and a colleague took the Mechatronics system design (metron) – part 1 course at the High Tech Institute. This allowed them to introduce a new design approach into the synchrotron community, and better talk to vendors. ‘You need to be able to communicate what keeps you up at night.’

When Curt Preissner took the Metron – part 1 course at the High Tech Institute in Eindhoven, he was impressed by the local expertise, but also the amount of bikes riding around. ‘I bike to work here in the United States, but it’s not at all like in The Netherlands’, he looks back fondly.

Preissner is a mechanical engineer at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. This synchrotron, a type of circular particle accelerator, generates radiation in the form of x-rays. These x-rays in turn can be used to, for example, make images of the nanostructure of materials. Preissner is designing a very specific component in that system.

‘In a particle accelerator you accelerate electrons with the use of radio-frequency energy’, explains Preissner. ‘They then oscillate back and forth between the north and south poles of magnets, which produces what we call synchrotron radiation. In our machine, that radiation is in the form of x-rays. The energy of the x-rays we produce ranges from a few KeV all the way up to 100 KeV, so it’s highly penetrating. We take those x-rays and use something called a monochrometer to select a particular wavelength. The instrument I’m designing is an x-ray microscope called the PtychoProbe. This will be a unique, world-class instrument, and it will focus the x-rays down to five nanometers, which doesn’t exist right now. So it will be a world’s first. The x-rays will be focused on the sample and diffract off of it. The diffracted x-rays from the sample will then be collected by a detector, from which we process the data to generate an image that shows the structure of the sample.’

Curt Preissner, credit: Mark Lopez Argonne National Laboratory

New engineering philosophy

Preissner and his colleagues realised that this new design, which demands high degrees of precision, would require them to adopt a new engineering philosophy. ‘The specifications we work with can be very challenging’, says Preissner. ‘Generally, our system is static. Yet on the side of the beamline, things are moving. We have to scan our samples in a different way because the new beams are much more bright. This brightness will allow us to see our samples in greater detail. However, this high photon flux can actually damage the sample, and prevent us from seeing these details . So, we want to do this quickly. We don’t need to work as fast as some semiconductor manufacturing equipment. We scan around seven millimetres per second, which aren’t extremely high velocities. But for what we’re used to, this is quite high. The sample and the x-ray lens, called the zone plate, also needs to maintain registration on the order of 1,25 nanometres. That’s pretty tight. We do that over length scales of about 10 millimetres. This is new territory for us. Which is why we’re looking for new engineering approaches to achieve this.’

Integrated approach

After some research, they realised that mechatronics could offer an answer. ‘We first started in the synchrotron community, which isn’t that big’, explains Preissner. ‘There are a countable number of synchrotron instrumentation engineers, probably around a few hundreds, less than a few thousand for sure. The community is not that big. So when we didn’t find the answers we were looking for, we started researching other fields with similar performance specifications. This is how we ended up with semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and in turn the mechatronics approach.’

This approach, while common in some fields, is new in the synchrotron community. Mechatronics, however, might be what they need to keep pushing the technology forward. ‘In the last generation of instruments, ten to fifteen years ago it wasn’t uncommon for a mechanical engineer to sit down with a beamline scientist and just design the mechanics, connect a motion controller, maybe some interferometry, and achieve results that got the scientific job done. The only consideration to dynamics in the design was vibrations, and there was certainly no system-level approach.’, says Preissner. ‘But now the advancements in the accelerator and x-ray optics technology are really forcing us to  push the limits of what we can do. That old approach will not work.,. We need to look ahead; science does not allow us to stand still. The instrument I’m designing will need to be scientifically productive for at least the next ten years. A mechatronic approach is very interesting here. It’s great to think about things like error budgeting and dynamic models from the get-go. It’s a more integrated approach.’

Ending up in the Netherlands

Which is how Preissner and a colleague ended up in The Netherlands taking a mechatronics course at the High Tech Institute. For them it was the ideal way of being quickly plunged into the field. ‘At the APS we don’t always have the luxury to be able to do a huge amount of R&D’, says Preissner. ‘We’re in a time crunch with this project. We need to gain knowledge fast, so we can work with vendors or do our own design. If you look at for example the wafer scanners of ASML, their performance is very impressive. But an important thing to remember is that there’s roughly forty years of development behind them. When we’re designing these instruments we don’t have that time. We need to learn as fast as possible.’

Vendors

One important thing they learned in the course was a new type of language, which allowed them to better speak to their vendors. ‘We’re not just going out and buying something’, says Preissner. ‘We’re proposing things, and deciding whether a vendor can make certain designs. So knowing techniques like error budgeting is important, besides being able to look at designs with a mechatronics view. Getting some formal training accelerated our ability to talk to vendors. There’s certain key issues in this design that keep me up at night, and we need to be able to communicate that. After the course I could go to a vendor and ask them to, for example, show us their error budget. Or I could talk to them about the controller dynamics overlaid with the mechanics dynamics.’

Short timeframe

The course taught them this in a short timeframe. This is important for an engineer like Preissner, who is working on a time-sensitive project for a government-funded organisation. ‘We’re under a high amount of pressure, so we were eager to learn, and did so quite fast. We looked hard for a course that could quickly package this knowledge for us. APS is also a government institution, so we’re using tax dollars. We need to be mindful of how we spend them. We’re always looking at ways to achieve goals in an effective manner, and this course taught us what we needed to know very efficiently.’

All of this is a work in progress according to Preissner. ‘The synchrotron engineering community has been operating in a certain way for a long time. But now people realise that we need to do things differently. This course enabled us to take that different approach.’

Model in a holistic way?

So far the new mechatronics knowledge has mainly been used in contacts with vendors. But Preissner notes that going forward, they want to also use it to design new instruments from the ground up. ‘It’s on the drawing board’, he says. ‘We are wondering if we can take this new approach, and apply it in a more systematic way. Can we model the instrument, the control system model and the influences in a holistic way? What knobs do we need to turn? What control approach would make sense?’

For now, however, Preissner and his colleagues want to expand their knowledge of mechatronics. They’re already looking forward to taking more courses. ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it. So we’re feeling some pressure to apply what we learned as regularly as possible. The first part of the training was good, and now we’re thinking about taking additional courses. When you learn new engineering techniques it takes a bit of time. You have to work with it. It has already changed our vendor interactions. The next step will be changing our own designs from the ground up.’

This article is written by Tom Cassauwers, freelancer for High-Tech Systems.

To better understand his customers’ technology and applications, Ralf Noijen, systems engineer at AAE, took the Applied Optics course at the High Tech Institute. “We like to take part in the discussions at a high level,” he says.

In Helmond, AAE produces the C-Trap for Amsterdam-based LUMICKS. With this instrument, researchers can investigate, among other things, the binding of proteins to DNA strands. Understanding this molecular interaction is important to clarify the mechanisms of specific diseases.

For that research, it is necessary to manipulate the DNA strands. To do so, they are connected at the ends to small polystyrene beads. That combination is then placed in a liquid in contact with labelled specific proteins. The C-Trap allows researchers to study DNA strands with bound proteins using optical techniques.

The instrument is able to manipulate the beads with laser beams. “You can think of it as optical tweezers,” Noijen explains. “The laser beams catch small beads of polystyrene flowing through a glass channel. Between two beads is a single strand of DNA containing proteins labelled with fluorescent substances. By pulling two beads apart with optical tweezers, the stiffness of the DNA strand can be measured and thus the influence of the bound proteins. Sub-pico-Newton forces can be measured with this system.”

The instrument mainly serves to research diseases such as cancer. “The main customers of these machines are universities and research institutes,” said Noijen.

 

Ralf Noijen: “Theoretical parts of the course were balanced with a healthy dose of experimentation.”

Small microscope with flowcell

Another project AAE is building for LUMICKS is the z-Movi platform. “That is basically a small microscope with a flowcell in which tumour cells can be grown,” says Noijen. “The microscope is used to study the binding between cancer cells and immune cells. Those cancer cells are brought into contact with the drug of a specific immunotherapy in the flowcell. On top of this flowcell, a piezo element is attached. The piezo element vibrates the fluid in the channel and creates a standing acoustic wave. The immune cells are attracted to the node in the standing wave. By increasing the amplitude, the attached immune cells release at some point, which tells us something about the strength of the binding. The Cell Avidity platform measures the moment of release optically. This gives us information about the binding and thus the effectiveness of immunotherapy.”

Understanding sensitivities

The great importance of optical phenomena prompted Noijen to take the Applied Optics course at the High Tech Institute, mainly as a basis for working with customers. Noijen: “At AAE, we focus on manufacturability, testability and assembly. But we like to think along in the development process so that we can take care of all aspects. Over the years, we already built up a lot of application knowledge and we oversee more and more parts of development. That is precisely why a course like this one comes in handy. Optics is very important in the LUMICKS systems. The better we understand their sensitivities, the better we can assess whether our proposals will work.” Noijen already had experience with training courses from the High Tech Institute. “When I saw the Applied Optics course description, I thought: ‘hey that fits in nicely with the platforms we build for LUMICKS.’”

Carving out time

The course was intensive, notes Noijen, totalling 13 half-day sessions over six months. In between, he did five homework assignments. That was tough, but Noijen is nevertheless positive about the experience. “I just found it very interesting, so I didn’t have much trouble taking the time out for it,” he laughs. “You have to schedule it, of course, because life is busy.”

On the structure and content: “It started with the basics of light, what is light? From there we went to modelling and when you can use it. Which aspects are important? For example, when can you use ray tracing? I liked the build-up from basics to applications. Then lighting and sensors were also covered. The last sessions went deeper into ASML’s lithography. I found that very insightful. I worked at ASML so the subject matter was not entirely new to me, but still there were many things that I saw for the first time. Throughout the course, we learned about the latest updates in all the areas covered. We were taught by real experts.”

The theoretical parts of the course were balanced with a healthy dose of experimentation. “It goes deep into theory, but then you start experimenting. When you experience how everything really works, the theory sticks better. You learn more easily when you’ve had something in your hands. That was the uniqueness of the course.”

Discussions

For Noijen, the optics course was especially important to build a better connection with his clients. Deeper technical knowledge allows him to better engage with experts and companies. “I think we can now participate at a higher level,” he states. “That’s really nice. You learn to speak the same language about a machine. If I had done this course earlier, I would have been better able to spar with the opticians in previous projects. This also helps AAE by the way. Our primary proposition, especially for start-ups, is that we build their machines. But on top of that, you still have a competitive advantage if you can talk about the application at a high level. If you can show that you understand the sensitivities, that builds confidence.”

This article is written by Tom Cassauwers, freelancer for High-Tech Systems.