Fall 2011 Initiation

On December 10th we held our fall 2011 initiation ceremony. We would like to congratulate our 16 new members. They are:

Cinetic Tour

On Friday, September 30th, various HKN members and students visited Fives Group Cinetic Automation (http://www.cineticusa.com/) and went through a tour of the facilities. Cinetic Automation was founded over 40 years ago to serve the automotive industry with application engineering, automation, and tools for powertrain. The Cinetic Automation scope expanded to fulfill customers' increasing requirements in Assembly, Automation, Washers, Gantries, Fastener Tightening, Test Equipment, and Conveyor equipment worldwide. Its dedication is also now applied outside the automotive world for appliances, energy, and defense.

The trip provided valuable insight into the engineering and design processes that go into manufacturing specialized multi-million dollar machinery that mass produce many aspects of the automobile powertrain system.Students were also able to experience a different side to the electrical engineering field, not one from a micro electronic circuitry design aspect, but from macro systems integration aspect. This is an aspect of industry that is not represented in the classroom.

An example of the Cintetic's work can be seen in the following video. In this video, a cold test station engineered by Cinetic Automation receives a fully manufactured engine (Chevy Volt). The engine is connected to a large electric motor that connects directly to the drive shaft that runs the engine while diagnostic data is gathered. This data is measured against a master engine specification list and the fully manufactured engine is either rejected or passed and shipped to an automotive assembly facility to go into a vehicle.