Automation
1. Automation is the third phase in the development of technology that began with the industrialization of the 18th century. First came mechanization which created the factory system and separated labour and management in production. Mechanization was a technology based on forms and applications of power. Mass production came next. It was a technology based on principles of production and organization. Automation is a technology based on communication, computation and control.
2. The truly automated devices must possess one or more of the following elements: system approach, programmability, feedback.
3. With a system approach, factories which make things by passing them through successive stages of manufacturing without people intervening to transfer lines, which made their debut in car factories before the Second World War, are considered automated systems. These carry components past lines of machine-tools which each cuts them automatically. People are not required; the machines clamp the parts out of themselves without a workman being present. Thus transfer lines are different from assembly lines where people are very much in evidence.
4. With programmability, a system can do more than one kind of job. An industrial robot is an automated machine. It works automatically and an operator can reprogram the computer that controls it to make the machine do different things.
5. Finally, feedback makes an automatic device vary its routine according to changes that take place around it. An automatic machine-tool with feedback would have sensors that detect, for example, if the metal it is cutting is wrongly shaped. If it is, the sensors instruct the machine to vary its routine accordingly. Other examples of devices with feedback are robots with vision or other sensors that can see or feel what they are doing.
6. Most examples of automation in factories today are not programmable; neither do they work with feedback. They are simply sets of machine-tools linked together according to systems approach. These mechanisms are inflexible. They turn out only one kind of part, which is all very well if the manufacturer wants to make thousands of identical components. But if he wants to change his routine, the machinery is not very useful. This is the case while automation is inflexible, flexible automation is on the way. Here, automated machinery has programmability and feedback and can turn out different kinds of components. The equipment will make a tremendous difference to factory floors throughout the world. Flexible automation adds up to a new industrial era.
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system approach
feedback
successive stages
to count ,
to clamp
routine
to detect
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What is the shortage of automation?
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WASTEWATER BECOMES USEFUL
1. Despite the growing improvement in water treatment methods many regions of the world cannot cope with the rapid rate of water contamination. The highly industrializes countries naturally suffer more than others. The conditions which existed only a century ago cannot be restored in large cities. That is why we need to find new ways of using the water in industry and agriculture and improving the technology of drainage purification.
2. In the recent decades the problem of water supply to people and economics has become extremely urgent. The depletion of such water resources as surface water and ground wateris inevitable. Water resources are continuously renewed within the hydrological cycle. But with the abundance of water in the technological processes in major industries non-returnable losses of fresh water may increase its shortage.
3. Building dams, reservoirs and canals is the important factor of the transformation of the hydrological regime. An essential measure is the conservation of water by all possible means, so as to decrease its expenditure per unit of production until "dry" technologies are established.
4. It is very important to combat the pollution of rain and snow-melt water through the use of herbicides, pesticides and other toxic chemicals. Settling basins should be built to collect the most polluted run-off water especially at the beginning of snowstorms and during snow melt.
5. It is advisable to use industrial wastewater for field irrigation. This measure is of importance since soil is a very favourable medium for rendering waste water harmless especially if used with small irrigation norms. Thus, waste water which is harmful when discharged into rivers and reservoirs becomes useful. Irrigation can be applied to increase soil moisture, to protect plants from frosts and dry winds, to apply fertilizers.
6. Another measure is the conversion of industrial and heat power generation to closed-recirculating water-supply systems, which do not require water of high quality. This method of rendering waste waters harmless must form an integral part of production technology.
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Why is it advisable to use industrial wastewater for field irrigation?
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