2025 Digital Animation Award
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2025 Digital Animation Award

This FIRST award, sponsored by AutomationDirect, celebrates the art of digital animation and its close relationship to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).  NEW FOR 2025: Separate competitions for FIRST Robotics Competition and FIRST Tech Challenge teams. The 2025 Digital Animation Awards are offered to help encourage students to cultivate skills in design and creation of animation…
Eastern Washington University Students Look for a Smooth Ride
ApplicationApplication StoriesAutomationDirect SpotlightEducation/DIYIndustryIssue 42 - 2019Machine ControlNotebook IssuePneumaticsPneumaticsProductStudent Spotlight

Eastern Washington University Students Look for a Smooth Ride

Everyone likes a smooth ride in their vehicle — unless you are off road in a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Most of us will avoid the bumps and potholes to drive on the smoothest pavement possible. Car manufacturers recognize this too. They spend lots of money on TV, print and digital advertising to promote that their…
Copley High School's Automation Success
ApplicationApplication StoriesAutomationDirect SpotlightEducation/DIYIndustryIssue 38 - 2017Machine ControlNotebook IssuePLCProductProgrammable ControlSimple PLCStudent SpotlightStudent Spotlight

Copley High School's Automation Success

The Innovator team at Copley High School in Akron, Ohio needed to design a piece of equipment to snap caps together for Weaver Industries ProPak, a company that has been employing people with disabilities for about 40 years. With the existing assembly method, Weaver was struggling to meet production and contract requirements for component assembly.
Halloween DIY How To Prop - Automated Door
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Halloween DIY How To Prop - Automated Door

Things that go bump in the night takes on a whole new meaning with AutomationDirect’s latest Halloween project. The recent installment in their long-running Halloween DIY How To Prop series shows how quick and simple it is to create a Haunted Automated Door with AutomationDirect parts and service. You and your spooky decorations are guaranteed to…
Beam Testing at Portland State
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Beam Testing at Portland State

For their undergraduate senior capstone project, a team of Mechanical Engineering students at Portland State University (PSU) recently designed an electronic system upgrade for the control system of a 100-year-old beam testing machine. Using a range of AutomationDirect parts, the purpose of the project was to make the operator experience comparable to modern machines.
The Halloween Box
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The Halloween Box

In every haunted house, you’ll find automated props: chairs that rock on their own, slamming doors, rattling chains, drawers opening and closing as if by some supernatural force. These “tricks” enhance the “treat” of getting the life scared out of you. The process behind making a Halloween prop can be quite simple. Here is just…
Lock-Jaw2 Robot Competes in BattleBots TV Show Using AutomationDirect Parts
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Lock-Jaw2 Robot Competes in BattleBots TV Show Using AutomationDirect Parts

Robots Activate! Is a familiar phrase to those fans who follow the BattleBots competition which just completed its 2016 season broadcast on ABC Television in the United States. One of the BattleBots competition veterans, Donald Hutson, has been involved since the show began and has been on the robot combat circuit since 1986.
Machine Produces Nanofibers for Biomedical Research
ApplicationApplication StoriesAutomation NotebookAutomationDirect SpotlightDrivesEducation/DIYIndustryIssue 36 - 2016Learning ResourcesMachine ControlMechanical Power TransmissionMotion ControlNotebook IssueOperator InterfaceProductProgrammable ControlStudent SpotlightStudent Spotlight

Machine Produces Nanofibers for Biomedical Research

If you can’t buy it, you have to build it. This was the situation our group of engineering students encountered when we needed to grow vascular tissue for a bioengineering project at Walla Walla University, and found existing solutions were not acceptable.