Industrial Instrumentation

Micro Magic has been involved in the field of instrumentation for industrial quality and process control and for research and development for most of its 20 years of operation

Projects:

Coefficient of Friction Tester:

This instrument was designed for a major Victorian University.  It is used to measure the coefficient of friction between two sheets of paper or polymer film.  This is very important in the development of media for laser and ink jet printers where these media must regularly slide against each other in the input and output trays without jamming. 

Micro Magic designed and built the electronics for the prototype as well as programming the instrument in the LabView graphical programming language from National Instruments, utilizing LabView’s rich array of user interface design tools, providing a professional user interface in a very short time.

Rheometer:

The IDM rheometer measures the viscosity of rubber during the vulcanisation process, by measuring the amount of torque transferred between a driven oscillating element and a stationary element.  The temperature of the rheometer is accurately controlled to a settable temperature profile, and the rheometer plots torque against either time or temperature.

Micromagic designed and built the electronics and printed circuit boards for these instruments, and also programmed the data acquisition and user interface.  This software was written in Borland Pascal and Assembler on a PC.

Hot Platen Press:

The hot platen press was deigned  for two major government research laboratories to aid in the development of new composite materials such as those used in the fuselage and wing “skins” of the FA-18 fighter.

This instrument needs to accurately control the temperature and force applied to the materials.  This instrument can accurately control temperatures between room temperature and 300˚C, and measure forces from 10N to 10 kN.  Force and temperature are both control by closed loop PID control systems.

Other Projects:

Micro Magic and its founder Alf Katz have undertaken or significantly participated in many other projects in this area including:

• Medical instruments such as microscope slide smearing and staining robot, tissue processors and clinical chemistry analysers.
• Scientific instruments such as atomic absorption spectrophotometry systems, ultraviolet/visible spectrophotometry systems and graphite atomisation furnaces.
• Industrial QA instruments such as cardboard box compression testers, universal tensile/compression testers and even a sausage skin leak tester.