In engineering, electromechanics combines the sciences of electromagnetism of electrical engineering and mechanics. Mechatronics is the discipline of engineering that combines mechanics, electronics and information technology (software engineering).

Explanation

Electromechanical devices are those that combine electrical and mechanical parts. These include electric motors, loudspeakers, some fire alarms and mechanical devices powered by them, such as calculators and adding machines; switches, solenoids, relays, crossbar switches and stepping switches.

History

Early on, "relays" originated with telegraphy as electromechanical devices used to regenerate telegraph signals.

The Strowger switch, Panel switch and similar ones were widely used in early automated telephone exchanges. Crossbar switchs were first widely installed in the middle 20th century in both the United States and Britain, and quickly spread to the rest of the world.

Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1885. Electrical typewriters developed, up to the 1980s, as "power-assisted typewriters." They contained a single electrical component in them, the motor. Where the keystroke had previously moved a typebar directly, now it engaged mechanical linkages that directed mechanical power from the motor into the typebar. This was also true of the forthcoming IBM Selectric. At Bell Labs, in the 1940s, the Bell Model V computer was developed. It was an electromechanical relay-based monster with cycle times in seconds. In 1968 Garrett Systems were invited to produce a digital computer to compete with electromechanical systems then under development for the main flight control computer in the US Navy's new F-14 Tomcat fighter.

Modern practice

Today, though, common items which would have used electromechanical devices for control, today use, less expensive and more effectively, a standard integrated circuit (containing a few million transistors) and write a computer program to carry out the same task through logic. Transistors have replaced almost all electromechanical devices, are used in most simple feedback control systems, and appear in huge numbers in everything from traffic lights to washing machines.

See also

• Linear feedback shift register
• Adding machine
• Kerrison Predictor
• Thermostat
• Automatic transmission system
• Power engineering
• Electric power conversion
• Torpedo Data Computer
• Power rating
• Stepping switch
• Robotic telescope
• Electricity meter
• Solenoid valve
• Relay
• Unit record equipment

External links

• Electromechanical Parts
• ElectroMechanical Database

Printed references

1. Paul C. Krause and Oleg Wasynczuk, "Electromechanical Motion Devices", McGraw-Hill Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1989). ISBN-10: 0070354944.

2. Edward P. Furlani, "Permanent Magnet and Electromechanical Devices: Materials, Analysis and Applications", Academic Press Series in Electromagnetism (2001). ISBN 0-12-269951-3.