Case Studies

Most readers will have a mental concept of surface mining, with big excavators and dump trucks zipping about a pit dug into the Earth in search of valuable materials such as copper, gold, and diamonds. We thought we had a good understanding of what open-pit mining entailed as well, until we learned just how big the equipment used in these operations really is. Not long back, we received an inquiry from a returning client looking to address an automation challenge with their hydraulic test rigs – rigs that exclusively tested mining equipment hydraulics used in large open-pit mines. As the client described their test rigs and the mining vehicles they served, we realized that our mental image of mining equipment was way too small. Luckily, even such large equipment and the test rigs that keep them in tip-top operation still use normal sized instrumentation. With that, we turned our attention to the client’s concerns about protecting their test rigs from significant, hazardous high pressure situations, and dug right in.

A prospective client requested Whitman's review of a new application they were working on involving industrial adiabatic cooling technology, seeking an analysis and recommendation on control sensor solutions that could fit into a new product lineup they were developing.  "Sure, we'll help," we said, "that sounds pretty cool."  Pun completely intended! 

Tuesday mornings are arguably the best possible time of the week to be reminded of high school science terms we haven't thought about for too many decades.  Or at least for one Tuesday morning in particular, in which we received an email asking about our experience in gas control for interferometry propagation.  We'll save you a Wikipedia search - lasers; they were referring to lasers.  This email was from a leading CO2 fabrication laser manufacturer looking for assistance in solving a gas mixture delivery challenge for an upcoming continuous laser marking application

Medical radiography equipment is highly prone to heat-induced outages and failures, so much so that most high-volume machines today come equipped with onboard active cooling systems. In a recent project, Whitman Controls was engaged by a client seeking automation support for their own line of x-ray tube cooling systems. Thinking about how much time could be saved in radiology waiting rooms everywhere if x-ray machines never overheated, we couldn't help but scrub in!

Integrated Circuits (or ICs) are the root of most of the technology we rely on in our daily lives, from mobile phones to internet data center servers to communication satellites in orbit. For commercial and industrial businesses, ICs provide the computational power found in all automated equipment and software systems as well. Manufacturing ICs falls within the domain of the semiconductor industry, where all circuit boards, processing chips, and transistor arrays are produced.

Many of us have been guests at an outdoor event where we might have felt it a little too cold outside, our minds silently urging the happenings along so that we could get back to the warmth indoors. No matter if it’s a wedding, a concert, a community church event, a work social hour, or any other of a thousand different types of entertainment event held outside, we all can appreciate the desire to get out of the elements and back into a nicely conditioned space.

Taking a wetland vehicle out into a marsh can be daunting.  Looking out at miles of open marsh, you get the same feeling as gazing deep into forested mountains or across towering ocean waves – it’s wild country, and making it back safely is solely up to you and the equipment you bring along. No matter what mission you’re on, the vehicle you select is likely the most important decision involved.  Wetland vehicles are a special breed of off-road equipment that must excel in widely varying conditions, all while serving a multitude of challenging functions reliably and safely. 

If readers ever need a reminder that workplace accidents can occur at any time, from any source, without warning, breezing through the OSHA Catastrophic Accident database will surely do the trick. Responding to an uptick in accidents involving compressed gas cylinders, this is exactly what one of our long-time distribution customers did in searching for ways that they could help reduce their end-users’ risk.

At an inspection rate of 300 glass bottles per minute, our customer’s continuous inline inspection platform carries responsibility for making a instantaneous pass-or-fail decision on a single bottle every two-tenths of one second.  When a ‘fail’ decision is computed, a series of pneumatic cylinders and positioners isolate the suspect bottle, move it to a reject conveyor outfeed, and hold spacing on the remaining bottles so that inspections continue seamlessly. How did we protect the system from control air supply upsets? Find out the four ways we solved this challenge.

A recent customer contacted Whitman to discuss a solar-powered water pump application.  This client designs and manufactures solar pump systems intended to be deployed anywhere in the world where sunlight shines and water needs to flow.  A necessary technical feature of these systems was that they would automatically shut down should they lose incoming water flow, and that was all we needed to know to determine that we could help.