2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This article is a Work In Progress (WIP) paper that presents the faculty professional development regarding the courses titled “Industrial Robotics” and “Automation & PLC” in Electronics and Computer Engineering Technology (ECET) curriculum at ****. The courses will also be required for Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) for Manufacturing and Mechatronics concentrations at the same institution. The need and procedure for the authors to be certified by Fiji Automatic Numerical Control (FANUC) are described. Since it was established back in 1956, the FANUC has installed approximately 4.2 million CNC controls and 600,000 robots worldwide. One of the authors also received week-long training from FANUC America in Michigan for the same in October 2022. The primary goal is to have the authors ready and equipped with hands on skills for a fully automated environment where interdisciplinary courses on Industrial Robotics, PLC, Manufacturing, and Automation can be taught. The focus will be to have our undergraduate students be involved in multi-disciplinary hands-on experience based on the developed educational materials. Since the certification from FANUC, our institution **** has been recognized officially by FANUC as one of the training sites. The primary author is also working to administer the NOCTI credential exam for students, adult learner, and industry professionals at ****, and recently been acknowledged as the Site Administrator for NOCTI, a third-party for the FANUC robot operators licensing.
The Robot and PLC integration training aimed to prepare operator, technician, engineer, or programmer with setup, record and/or troubleshoot programs on a FANUC LR Mate robots integrated with an Allen Bradley Control Logix PLC through Ethernet/IP. The primary goal of the training is to prepare the trainee how to setup, create I/O, program, and use an Allen Bradley ControlLogix PLC controller to direct a FANUC robot application. The training uses Ladder Logic to coordinate the automation in production state. The training also prepared the author about the details of User I/O (UI/UO) and details of each bit and how they correspond to I/O module by designing, creating, and configuring Bit Maps. A detail step by step process of configuring each module using Ethernet IP is also explained.
If accepted, the authors’ requests for a traditional lecture type presentation during ASEE 2023 in Baltimore, MD, USA.