Students from The Design Lab at Rensselaer participated in the March 28, 2023 grand opening event. The center is supported by CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute, whose mission, according to their website, is "to enhance U.S. manufacturing productivity, global competitiveness, and reinvestment by increasing energy productivity, improving economic performance and raising workforce capacity."
The students represented their Capstone team, one in a series of Capstone student teams developing smart manufacturing applications. The Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 teams are developing a set of lab exercises to introduce manufacturing students to the use and benefits of employing smart manufacturing for a business. The students have written software that accesses data from a Haas lathe which is stored on our CESMII Smart Manufacturing and Innovation Platform (SMIP). Using this data, students taking the lab will perform energy usage analysis for different combinations of materials and tooling to learn how such data can be used to make well informed manufacturing decisions in a business.
The CESMII smart manufacturing platform combines multiple technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), equipment interfacing, networking, databases, and data visualization. RPI's use of the SMIP and it's technologies allows for the development of additional applications for a variety of equipment across campus. The platform provides both the working tools to help manage and operate campus equipment and a tremendous learning opportunity for students.
Our students in the photo are (left to right) Weiyi (Jason) Piao (ECSE), Arhum Shaikh (ECSE), and Yan Feng (ECSE).