Are
you one of those people who likes to make equipment sing (run really well)? Do you have a gift for taking things apart and putting them back together, and it works—only better? Are you interested in a career
where you can do work with the kinds of machinery you like,
and apply it in the fields of agriculture, food processing or manufacturing line, construction,
irrigation, or testing equipment performance? If yes, then this is the major for you. Get an education
doing what you already love doing with Mechanized Systems
Management.
Pictured above, students in MSYM 416 worked on calibrating instrumentation amplifiers. Amplifiers are used to magnify small voltages so they can be measured with reasonable resolution. The students had to determine what resistances to use in building a voltage divider circuit so the output voltages from the voltage divider could be used as input voltages to the instrumentation amplifiers.
Strain gage load cells, for example, have output voltages that are in the micro- to milli-volt range, while most voltage recording components of data acquisition systems measure voltages in the 0 to 5 volt range. The students used the measured supply voltage to their voltage divider circuits, and measured resistance values to determine the theoretical output voltages from their voltage divider circuits. The output voltages from the voltage divider circuits were then used as input voltages to the instrumentation amplifier, and the amplified output voltages were measured. Using statistical curve-fitting techniques, the students could determine the calibration equation for the instrumentation amplifier.
