This paper deals with a style design system developed for creating shapes with required highlight lines input by the computer mouse. Highlight lines are a very important parameter for evaluating the aesthetic shape of products. The system allows simple construction of high quality surfaces in a virtual space by evaluating the shapes of highlight lines. This paper also proposes methods to define an evolute representing the curvature centers of a section of a surface by using highlight line information, and clarifies that an involute of an evolute is the section having a shape with the required highlight lines. Process methods to define an evolute of the shape of a modified section are classified according to the changing patterns of curvature. The system was developed by implementing the algorithm based on the proposed method, and the usefulness of the system was confirmed by basic tests.

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In recent years, virtual cutting simulation has advanced using tactile display. A polygonal model and a voxel model are used for expressing 3 dimensional virtual objects. Both models have advantages and disadvantages. In this research, virtual cutting simulation system was developed which surface is represented by a polygonal model; a voxel model is used for expressing the inside of a solid model locally. Cutting force was measured and compared between actual and virtual cutting. Validity was examined by improving the line cutting simulation model and applying two cutting method.

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In this paper, a flexible robotic assembly system with decentralized architecture is studied. The system is designed to achieve high reconfigurability so that it can adapt to changes in its manufacturing environment; a new robot can be easily installed into the system and execute assembly tasks immediately, together with other devices. A semi-automated calibration method for positions of newly installed robots is integrated to the system, which enhances the reconfigurability of the system significantly. The management mechanism of positional information resulting from installation/removal of assembly devices is also described. We refer to such system functions that support easy reconfiguration as “Plug & Produce.”
Our implementation of the assembly system consists of conventional manipulators and a belt conveyor. In the experiment, a new mobile manipulator was easily added into the system and it performed assembly operation successfully with other existing devices.

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Image measurement is required for mobile robots with vision. Stereo vision is widely used for this purpose. An image measurement using stereo vision can have a correspondence problem when there are similar objects in the environment. In order to avoid such a problem, a zooming measurement using monocular vision is applied. From this technique, it is possible to obtain the 3D position of an object by referring to two 2D images of it at distinct focus (view) points on the optical axis. The objects on the 2D images dynamically change with zooming. Image measurements on the digital images have uncertain regions depending on the disparity and the image resolution. The disparity is dynamically changed in the zooming measurement. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate uncertain regions with every disparity.
This paper proposes an evaluation method for uncertain regions of the zooming measurement. In the proposed method, the relationship between the disparity and the uncertain regions is shown in the experiments by using the actual zooming camera. The zooming measurement based on the evaluation is achieved.

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In this paper, a novel method for measuring nanometer order in-plane displacement of mechanical element in MEMS device will be proposed. Present method is based on the measurement of reflected light intensity irradiated on the edge of measuring target, where the work stage is traversed in the direction of displacement of the mechanical element, under applying AC vibration parallel to the direction of displacement of the element. By applying this method, measurement of displacement under 10 nm can be achieved.

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The printing method of the thermal transfer printer is to push an ink ribbon that is heated and melted by a thermal head to a printing paper, and transfer the ink to desired positions on the paper. If the heating by the thermal head is not sufficient, the ink cannot be melted and cannot be transferred to the paper. Moreover, even if the heating is excessive, a high quality print cannot be done, because an excess amount of ink will be transferred to the paper. The heat generated by the thermal head is transmitted to the printing paper through the ink ribbon. Thus the thermal conductivity of the printing paper affects the temperature rise of the ribbon and as a result printing quality. The thermal conductivity of the paper is commonly measured with a quick thermal conductivity meter. However the printing paper is too thin for the measurement. A new method of evaluating the thermal conductivity of the printing paper using the thermal transfer printer was proposed.

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Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) have been widely used in various fields of science and engineering. Although CMMs are precise instruments, they have a lot of inherent geometrical errors and probing errors. Due to this reason estimation of measurement uncertainty is extremely difficult for CMM measurements. Virtual coordinate measuring machine (VCMM) which has been developed by Physikalisch-Thchinische Bundesanstalt (German national physical institute) is one of the methods of estimating the uncertainty of measurements using CMMs. The geometrical errors are required as an input to the VCMM software, and usually measured using a ball-plate. The measurement of the geometrical errors is a complicate task and carried out less than once a year. In this paper, we propose a new CMM calibration scheme using the Internet, which we call e-trace. National metrology institutes or calibration service providers remote-control users' CMMs and measure the geometrical errors through the Internet. The users, therefore, do not have to have ball-plates or to learn the method of the measurement of geometrical errors. The concept of e-trace and some fundamental experiments will be described.

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The prevention of residual stress of thin film syntheses is very important in processing engineering surfaces. In this paper, details of residual stress control by the vibration of the substrate using PZT at frequency of 10²-10⁶Hz and voltage of 0-100V are presented. The thin films deposited are crystalline TiN, Ti, Cu, Al films and amorphous C, Si films. The residual stresses are measured using Stoney's method. The results of our experiment show that for Ti, TiN and Cu thin films, compressive stress are changed to tensile stresses while the Al films show only a decrement of the compressive stresses. The amorphous thin films on the other hand did not show any change in the residual stress. XRD and Auger spectroscopy results verify that the composition and crystalline structure of the treated and untreated crystalline thin films to be the same. But it is shown that grain size in the film tend to decrease with increasing the vibration amplitude. From this microstructure change of the film, a model for the control of residual stress is proposed.

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The super resolution processing technique such as a MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) algorithm has been proposed for the location finding (LF) of the signal sources of the received signals using the array sensors. Recently, the MUSIC is investigated for the point sources emanated electro-magnetic wave and sound wave. Then, when the MUSIC will be applied to LF of sound sources for trouble diagnosis of the mechanical machine, the sound source cannot be always regarded as the point source, but it must make even efforts to investigate the LF estimation characteristics of the spread sources. This paper describes that the MUSIC were investigated for the near field sound sources by the computer simulation and the experimental examination. And it is clear that the MUSIC was enable to properly estimate for the near filed sound source even if the sound source has spread width.

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An experimental and analytical investigation has been performed on vibration induced in a driving mechanism of a photoconductor drum in a color laser printer. From results of the investigation, the following points were deduced : (1) A flywheel driven by a pulley through a belt caused forced and whirling vibrations. (2) A runout of the pulley attached to the photoreceptor drum to a shaft induced a vertical harmonic pull force to the flywheel through the belt and caused the vertical forced vibration of the flywheel. The driving mechanism must be constructed to be small runout of the pulley to the shaft and enough static tension of the belt.

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Ultraprecision surface preparation techniques to make atomically flat semiconductor surfaces are strongly demanded toward the next-generation semiconductor technology age including nanotechnology age, in which extremely integrated and functionally enhanced devices will be realized. Particularly, Si(001) surface is the most important and widely utilized surface because of the controllability of the interfacial electronic state density at the surface oxidized film. This will be the case into future nanotechnology age. However, Si(001) surface is the most difficult surface to be flattened, and no industrially promising method exists. The only possible technique is a heating method in ultra-high vacuum and is unfortunately not useful from viewpoints of industrial applications. In this work, a new EEM (elastic emission machining) system is developed and tried to apply to the preparation of ultrasmooth Si(001) surface. Processed surfaces are observed and characterized by AFM (atomic force microscope), STM (scanning tunneling microscope) and LEED (low energy electron diffraction). Obtained STM images show that EEM surfaces have an atomic-level flatness, and about 95% of a extended area having a dimension of 100nm×100nm is constructed by only three atomic layers having a structure of 1×1 surface lattice.

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The development of noncontact IC cards is in a rapid progress toward their practical use. A process of connecting an IC chip with antenna wires poses problems from viewpoints of mass productivity and antenna characteristics. The present paper proposes a method of laser soldering of antenna wires for noncontact IC cards : fluxless laser soldering that consists of heating a copper wire with an Nd : YAG laser beam and pressing it onto the chip and solder bump successively. Comparing with the conventional pulse heat method, some advantages are confirmed : shorter soldering time and maintenance-free operation. The soldered part shows a good wettability and a sufficient tensile strength of 3.64MPa.

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This paper presents a methodology to calibrate kinematic parameters in a Hexapod-type parallel mechanism machine tool. In a conventional procedure of the DBB (Double Ball Bar) test to measure a machine's contouring accuracy in a circular operation, the center deviation in an error profile is ignored to cancel setup errors. In such a case, the machine's positioning error can be evaluated only locally. We propose to use a specialized jig plate to fix a ball of a DBB device in order to evaluate the machine's positioning error in the global coordinate system. Kinematic parameters in a Hexapod-type parallel mechanism can be calibrated based on contouring error profiles. Experimental comparison shows the machine's global positioning error is significantly improved by using the proposed calibration method. In particular, the parallelity error and the straightness error are reduced by 89% and 76%, respectively, compared to the conventional calibration.

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The atmospheric pressure plasma CVD (AP-PCVD) process was applied to the fabrication of intrinsic layer (i-layer) of single-junction amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar cells. The i-layers were prepared with extremely high deposition rates in atmospheric pressure VHF (very high frequency) plasma of gas mixtures containing He, H₂ and SiH₄. The other layers were deposited by the conventional low-pressure techniques. The I-V characteristics and the spectral sensitivity under AM-1.5, 100mW/cm² illumination, and the I-V characteristics in the dark state of the solar cells were investigated as functions of the deposition parameters of the i-layers such as input power, hydrogen concentration (H₂/SiH₄) and Substrate temperature. The energy conversion efficiency (η) of the solar cell was strongly affected by the optical absorption characteristic of the i-layer. η of 6.6% was achieved when the deposition rate of i-layer was 168nm/s. At this deposition rate, it might be possible by scanning substrate to form i-layer of the thickness of 0.3μm on the substrate of 1m×1m area in 350 seconds, which was nearly 10 times faster than that by the conventional low-pressure plasma CVD technique.

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Centerless grinding is characterized by supporting a workpiece with the periphery to be ground under a preliminary selected geometrical arrangement and in viewpoint of rounding action there exist geometrical/statical stability and also a dynamic stability in the grinding system. Work set-up conditions such as center-height angle, work speed in revolution and top angle of work support blade dominate the stability of rounding action. Therefore, for selecting the optimum work set-up conditions for stability, it is necessary to prepare a practical guideline to enable to satisfy both the geometrical/statical stability and also the dynamic stability simultaneously. In the present paper, an identification method for the dynamic stability conditions and also a method of integration of the geometrical/statical stability with dynamic one are proposed. Application of the proposed method enables to give a practical guideline to select the optimum work set-up conditions.

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Serious issues in magnesium alloy machining are combustion of chips and generation of hydrogen gas. The chips may flam out when the magnesium alloy is machined with oil fluid or in dry condition. Therefore emulsion coolants for the magnesium alloy are developed to chill the machining point and to prevent generation of hydrogen gas. However, an environmental issue is increasing costs of the waste fluid treatments. In this paper, an eco-friendly machining system for the magnesium alloy with oil film on water fog cutting fluid (OoW) is developed. It is obtained that the hydrogen gas is hardly generated when OoW with new oil is sprayed on the chips of magnesium alloy. And, milling tests with OoW are carried out with the developed machining system. As a result, magnesium alloy parts with high accuracy can be produced safely by the eco-friendly machining system.

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In this report, the remarkable features in the ultrasonic vibration cutting was extracted from the view point of relative cutting speed between the tool and the work piece, then the chip forming process considering this feature was simulated by using the finite element method. As first, the existence of the transitional cutting speed was shown. When the steady cutting speed is lower than the transitional cutting speed, the maximum relative speed, which is the sum of the steady feed speed and the maximum vibration speed of tool, cannot be obtained in the real cutting term. In this case, the relative cutting speed is the highest at the moment of tool-chip contact in the cycle of vibration, and then it becomes lower in the cutting term. Secondly the deformation process in the ultrasonic vibration cutting, which is an interrupted cutting process and the relative cutting speed varied largely during the 1 period of vibration, was analyzed by thermo elastic-plastic finite element method. The chip forming process was shown from the strain rate distribution in the deformation zone. It was also shown that the cutting force acting between tool-chip and the temperature rise are almost same in vibration cutting and conventional cutting, if we assume that the frictional characteristic and the flow stress are the same in conventional cutting and vibration cutting.

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Owing to high gain feedback control and feedforward control technology, servo response of the feed drives in NC machine tools is getting faster than that of conventional drives. However, when a large table including column or gantry is positioned by high response servo control, structural vibrations in low frequency domain are inspired and deteriorate the motion accuracy. Especially overshoot and vibration with low damping tend to appear in motion trajectory at acceleration and deceleration points. Such vibrations are likely to be generated by the dynamic combination of the machine structure as a rigid body and the floor foundation as a elastic spring and a damping. In this paper, a feed drive under the influence of base dynamics is investigated in a existing horizontal machining center by using FEM and experimental modal analysis. By creating a servo simulation model with the drive and base, vibrations at positioning are estimated and have a good agreement with measured ones. By analyzing the servo model it is found that the vibration is due to the coupling of base dynamics and feed dynamics.

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