Reflective Journal 7

This week was an exciting week for us as we had our first field trip as MJIIT students and we went to visit the malaysian factory of one the best camera maker in the world, Canon Inc. which was situated in Shah Alam. Canon Opto Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. as the factory was named, has been around since 1988 and currently tasked to the manufacturing EF lenses, Optical Lenses (penta prisms) as well as compact cameras. The trip from KSJ was suppose to take around 40 minutes but our bus drivers got lost on the way and finally after an hour we manage to reach our destination with the help of our friend Amir Hafizuddin to guide the driver as he was more familiar with the area.

Upon reaching the the factory, we were asked to take a group photo with some of the staff in front of the main building then we ushered into the meeting hall. There they gave us an introduction on the factory itself, when it started operation, what they produce here and, last but not least, safety instructions and after that we started our tour of the factory.

 First off, they went to bring us to see their water treatment plant. This is where they treat the water before it is used to do the polishing of the lenses as they require deionized water to do so. They recycle this water here as well to reduce cost as they require a huge amount of water for the polishing process. Besides that, the plant is also used to treat the waste water before it is let off into the drains.So why go all the way to Canon to see a water treatment plant? Well it seems that this is a policy of the company and that any group that comes to visit this factory is brought to visit the plant to show us that the company doesn't neglect environmental issues and tries to reduce their impact towards the environment.

Next we went on to the solid waste management plant. The smell of rubbish was in the air as this was where the solid waste like left over food was processed before it is dispose.

 They use the above machine to recycle food waste into fertiliser

This machine is a carbonizer. What it does is incinerating the waste without the presence of oxygen so that no toxic gases are produced during the incinerating process.

After that they brought us to visit the production line in the factory. Before we are allowed to enter, they gave us shoe covers to make sure that there is no excessive dust entering the production line. We were also told we could not take any pictures while we were in the line. Then they split us into three groups each with its own guide to bring us around and our guide was one of the production manager. He told us the line was split into 2 half. One half produces the compact cameras and the other half produce the lenses. One thing I've noticed in the production line was that the operators were mostly if not all women. We got to see how they assemble most of the components together and how some of the testing were done on the product and even how the packaging was done.

After visiting the line we were brought to the cafeteria to have our lunch and after that we return to the meeting hall where the exchange of gifts was done and then we went back. This trip is an eye opener as it allowed us to see the working conditions were like in a production plant.

Reflective Journal 6

Last week, an outside speaker from Titan Thermal Solution Sdn Bhd (TTS) was invited to give us a talk. As the name implies, this company specializes in thermal imaging technology. The speaker was none other than the executive director of TTS, Mr. Vivek Panicker. He started of his talk by explaining to us how important electronics systems are in our daily life and that almost every aspect of our modern lives needs us to interact with electronic systems in one form or another. He also stated that electronic systems are playing a major role in the development and advancement of technology. Electronics was in the beginning a part of electrical engineering and it was until the invention of the radio that the field of electronics diverges from the electrical field. The development in the field of electronics over the years has lead to components being much smaller than they were before which allows us to design circuits with can handle more operation and in a smaller size than before.

Mr. Vivek then explain that electronics plays a very important role in the industry or even in today's ICT era and is the catalyst that enhances production and productivity in industries as they heavily rely on them. Electronics are mainly divided into 5 major fields and they are consumer electronics, industrial electronics, defence electronics, communication electronics and information processing system and they are divided again into many other subunits such as medical electronics and imaging.

Next Mr. Vivek then gave us an overview on the imaging industry. There are a number of kinds of imaging and namely they are chemical imaging, digital imaging, geophysical imaging, medical imaging, molecular imaging, optical imaging, radar imaging and thermography (thermal imaging). He told us that thermal imaging was actually part of defence electronics which makes use of infra-red waves to produce an image. This kind of imaging is commonly known as "dirty" imaging systems as they require a lot of pre and post processing of the data before an actual image could be form.

The above is an example of a basic imaging system. A lens is use to capture the waves and then a sensor will translate this analog data into digital form which is then processed and enhanced by the ICs before it is displayed on a viewer. Thermal imaging is used widely in industries especially in maintenance, R&D as well as medical research.

Lastly, Mr. Vivek told us that there is no limit in electronics and what ever we want to achieve through electronics is possible and is only limited by our imagination.  

Reflective Journal 5

This week we had a talk again instead of our regular class but what made it different this time was that the speaker was an invited guest from Canon Opto Malaysia. As taking photographs is my hobby and also because I do own a Canon DSLR, I was looking forward to this session as it may shed light on the inner workings of Canon Inc and how they come about to produce such great products.

 So on that day, our guest speaker was none other than the Senior General Manager of Canon Opto Malaysia, Muhammad Azlan bin Amran. From his introductions, we got to know that he graduated from a university in Japan which happens to be the same university that Dr. Kamal graduated from and they used to be senpai - kohai. He joined Canon Opto Malaysia in 1990 and has been there ever since.

After a brief introduction on himself, he then gave an introduction on the company. So Canon Opto Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. has been here quite a while and has been established on the 14th of December 1988. The products that they manufacture are EF lenses, optical lenses (spherical lens) , pentaprisms as well as digital compact cameras.

Canon EF lens collection

 One of the EF lens that they manufacture is the EF 40mm f/2.8 STM

EF 40mm f/2.8 STM

Specifications
Optical construction	6 elements in 4 groups inc. 1x aspherical element
Number of aperture blades	7 (circular)
min. focus distance	0.25m (max. magnification: ~1.5.5)
Dimensions	68.2x22.8mm
Weight	130g
Filter size	52mm (non-rotating)
Hood	barrel shaped, optional
Other features	STM motor

Mr. Azlan explain to us that these lenses contain an electrical motor to control the auto-focus and that different lens may use different kinds of motor. The above lens for example uses a Stepping motor (STM). This kinda motor produces less noise compared to standard motor and a cheaper alternative to the Ultrasonic lens (USM). He also explained that a single lens are made up of a few smaller lenses because it would be expensive to manufacture a whole single lens with the specification and dimension that is required.

Next Mr. Azlan went on to explain about the manufacturing life cycle that is adopted by Canon.

 The above is the manufacturing phases that is adopted in Canon Opto Malaysia. During two of the phases we can see that EQCD method is used. What is that mean? It stands for Environment (E), Quality (Q), Cost (C) and Delivery (D). This means they have to take into account these four criteria before they manufacture a product. The production must not harm the environment, the product has to be of quality, cost effective and delivered on time.

As Canon Inc is a japanese company, the people working there are following the work culture of the japanese. Mr. Azlan explain that the people in Canon Opto Malaysia hold on the word "HORENSO" while doing their work. The word HORENSO (報連相) is made up of three other words. 'HO' comes from the word Houkoku (報告) which means report. 'REN' comes from the word Renraku (連絡) which means contact and 'SO' which is from the word Soudan (相談) which means consultation. This meas that during work we must always report to the progress of the work to the boss and always keep in contact and if there is a problem consult. 

He then explain about the 3 'GENS" which is GENBA (site) Genbutsu (actual thing) and Genjitsu (reality). As a person in charge, when there is a problem, we should always go the site of the problem ourselves and see the actual thing instead of just hearing it from our subordinates and assess the situation. 

That was it on this week's lecture. 

Reflective Journal 4

A week has passed and with it comes the end of the month of October. Looking back it seems like it was only yesterday that I have entered MJIIT. How fast time flies when we have so much to do. So this week, we did not enter En. Redzuan's workshop as we usually do on a Tuesday morning but instead we had a talk entitled "Introduction to Bio-electronics" by Dr. Azran. What is bio-electronics then? It is the application of the principles of electronics to biology and medicine. An example of this would be the pacemaker.

So session started with Dr. Azran reviewing back basic electronics which include the basic theorems in analyzing circuits, such as Ohm's law, as well as a review on the components from the schematic symbols to resistor colour codes.

Next he went on to explain about filters. There are basically three types of filters which are low-pass filter, high pass filter and band-pass filter.

 

 

Simple low pass filter circuit

fc = cut-off frequency

So what is a low-pass filter?  Simply it is a filter which allows any signal with a frequency below its cut-off frequency through and removes any other signal with higher frequency. Cut off frequency is calculated by the above formula.

Simple high pass filter

A high pass filter is the opposite of a low pass filter where by it allow signal with a frequency which is higher than its cut-off frequency.

Band pass filter

By combining the two filters before, we can create another filter which is the band pass filter. What it does is to allow signals with a specific range of frequency through and removes the rest. So that was it on electronics. Now we can not have bio-electronics without also knowing about the biological part. So the next part of the session, Dr. Azran explain about molecular biology and explain that each cell nucleus contains our DNA which is the blueprint of our cell.

Just like how computer codes are made up of 0's and 1's, our DNA 'code' is made up of Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Thymine (T) and Guanine (G). These A,C,T,G make up each code which is contain in the DNA. He then explain that in normal circumstances, a cell which has been 'programed' to do a specific task cannot be altered to be or do something else. But a research done by Shinya Yamanaka has prove that a human skin cell can be 'reprogram' to become stem cell and that has become a huge breakthrough in molecular engineering.

So that's it for this week's class. What will be in store next week i wonder. 

Reflective Journal 3

A new week has arrive and with it comes new challenges as well as new experiences. So what have I experience this week you may ask? Well its something I have not touch in a while and it was a good exercise to recall back what I've learned. This week's class was about importing circuits from Multisim to Ultiboard. First off, we had to 'design' or more or less assemble the circuit from the schematic which was given by En. Redzuan in Multisim.

The above diagram is the circuit which has been assembled in Multisim. As we can see here, some of the components are blue in colour and some are in black. Why the difference in colours? This is to show whether the components we are using are virtual components (non-existing components) or whether we are using real components (components existing in the market). What we want is so that all the components we are using are real components and this is done by choosing a footprint for each of the components that we are using. After doing that the circuit should look like below.

Now all the components are blue in colour which indicates that they are real components and if you look closely, the 12V DC input has been replace with another component. That is an input for the source. This is because a 12V DC source is not a real existing component and has to be replace with something that is real. Only after this done, and all the components that are in our circuit are real components can we then export our design to Ultiboard.

The above is how it will look like after we transfer the circuit over to Ultiboard. As we can see, the components are all situated on the top left hand corner and the rectangular space is our board that we are going to mount our components on. We can also crop the board into what ever shape we like.

After cropping my board is now in the shape of an oval. After that we drag and place the components where we want it to be on the board.

The above is the result after placing the components on the board. When we are doing this, we have to consider where the connectors go so that they do not overlap. At this stage, we also edit the size of the connectors to make sure it is not too thin. This is a very crucial stage as an overlapping connector or a connector which is too thin can cause the program to produce an error message when we finalize the design later on.

The above is the finalize design with no errors and viewed in 3D form.

And this is the view from below. We can clearly see the connectors which will be on the printed circuit board that we want to create here. So basically that was what we learned in En.Redzuan's class this week. Awaiting what is in store for us next week. Till then, sayonara. 

Reflective Journal 2

This week marks the 4th week of our life here in MJIIT. Hooray! Its been almost a month and things are going smoothly so far. So this week's class on Introduction to Electronic System Engineering is done in the electronics lab. It was a first for many entering the lab but for us, former UTM diploma students, its a nostalgic feeling entering back into this lab and i can't help but reminisce about the times we used to spend here. So this week class started with Dr.Kamal telling us a thing or two about our blogs.

He gave us valuable input like how we are graded on our journal writing, what are the key points that we should have in our writing and tips on how a good journal entry should be. One of the key points that he mention was that our journals not only reflect how we feel about the class, but also what we gain from the lesson or on how we apply the knowledge that we have gain from the class. After that short session on our journal writing with Dr.Kamal, En.Redzuan took over an introduce to us what we are going to learn today.

So our main topic of the day was the introduction to Multisim. What is Multisim you ask? Well its a software use to simulate the behavior of a certain circuit we design. For example, if we wanted to know the amount of current flowing through a certain part of a circuit, instead of actually assembling the components together and then monitoring the results by using a meter, we can recreate the circuit we wanted to analyze virtually with this software and get the results that we want to know all from the simulation that was done. Easy. I used this application a number of times when i was doing my diploma to analyze circuits and to solve circuit-related problems. After the brief introduction on the software and also the basic know-hows of using the software, En.Redzuan gave us a task.

 The task was fairly simple. It was to assemble first circuit from the above diagram in Multisim and run the simulation. As it was not my first time using Multisim, the task was a piece of cake! A few of the other students did encounter problems like where the components were located on the tool bar. So as one of the senpai in the class I did my part by helping them out. After all of us complete the simulation, En.Redzuan showed us how to import the circuit that we design on Multisim to another software which is Ultiboard.

So what is Ultiboard then? Well it basically shows us the circuit we have designed in 3D form on a printed circuit board (PCB). What we can do here is set the positions of our components on the board and then later when we are satisfied with the positions, we can print out the schematics of the PCB. This will be taught in detail in next week's lecture. 

This is it for this week's reflection and looking forward to next week!