The term “mechatronics” is starting to be heard with greater frequency in the packaging industry. Just last September, for instance, at the Pack Expo trade show, automation supplier Bosch Rexroth Corp. (Hoffman Estates, Ill.) heralded its booth display as illustrating “Innovation in Mechatronics.” A big part of the company’s justification for that claim was Indra Motion for Packaging control, its open control system that was being exhibited with new software. This expanded solution offers a PackML compliant, IEC61131-3 programming environment and handles precise synchronization, camming, registration, electronic gearing, collating, robotic path planning, dynamic belt synchronization and other aspects of automated packaging line operation.

Added to this was the “mechatronics training simulator,” a mobile training device that allows students to simulate a number of functions such as those connected with pneumatics, electronics and control, to create hypothetical systems in which the individual components operate synergistically to optimize the overall system. Put these and other elements of the display together, and it becomes clear that Bosch Rexroth has a pretty strong claim to the word “mechatronics.”

That said, what precisely is this concept? Most of us feel we have a pretty good idea of what mechatronics is and can recognize it when we encounter it, but if asked to define it. . .well, for many of us that’s a different story. In that respect, it is analogous to the famous description of jazz: “I know it when I hear it.”

The subject need not be so mysterious. The word was originally coined in 1969 by Tetsuro Mori, an engineer with Japan’s Yaskawa, by combining the words mechanical and electronics to symbolize a holistic approach to design. Rather than design the mechanical and electronic or control elements of a machine or system separately, why not create these elements together? The result, he maintained, will often be more robust, higher performing and more economical machines and systems.

Some four decades later, this fundamental insight remains true even though today’s machines and systems are generally much more complex than those of 1969, and the concept of mechatronics has expanded to encompass this complexity.

Listen, for instance, to the working definition used by Arum Jain, vice president of motion control business in the United States for Siemens Industry Inc., Alpharetta, Ga. “Mechatronics incorporates several fields of classic physics such as mechanical dynamics, kinematics, materials and electromagnetism, with more modern engineering fields such as control design, software programming, micro-electronics, modeling and simulation techniques.

“Mechatronics is thus the science of integrating a wide variety of concepts of the above fields, to create a new electro-mechanical design, with improved characteristics or desired behavior.”
Sounds impressive, but to what extent are packagers attuned to, and employing, the concept?

“We’re definitely seeing it used by designers and systems engineers in the packaging industry,” says Jain. He says understanding of the concept varies among industries, but he feels that the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market is relatively sophisticated in this regard. Here too, however, it varies.

“In packaging we’ve seen mechatronics used more on the high-end, high-speed machinery and not so much on the simpler machines because those are chiefly adaptations of earlier machines,” Jain says. Similarly, companies that build for the domestic U.S. market are more likely to employ the concept than companies that build primarily for export, he says. The latter are often looking primarily for low cost and simple operation.

More from existing assets

Jain observes that "end users are trying to get more out of their assets,” and many of them are employing mechatronics to help them do that, particularly in their quest for greater flexibility, improved productivity and higher energy efficiency.

Those are themes that strike a receptive chord with John Morehead, vice president of business development for Dunkermotoren USA Inc., Elgin, Ill., a supplier of fractional horsepower motion control solutions. He says his company has embraced the concept, with positive results.

“As an example, what previously may have required a large, expensive master control connected by bulky, expensive cables and connectors to motors in a system can now be controlled by master intelligence built into one motor driving other smart slave motors through a simple CANopen wire network,” says Morehead.

Morehead alludes to cost, and this is a key consideration for Siemens’ Jain as well. He says that when it comes to mechatronics, the bottom line is. . .well, the bottom line. “From my perspective mechatronics is all about economics,” Morehead says. “In the packaging industry competition is fierce. With global players and domestic players, big ...