Aston University

Peter Brett

Robin Taylor

David Proops

Chris Coulson

Mansel V Griffiths

Anthony Molloy

Xianghong Ma

The present invention provides a method of drilling a hole in a workpiece in order to control breakthrough of the workpiece comprising the steps of: a) initiating contact between a drill bit of a drill unit and the workpiece; b) operating the drill unit to rotate the drill bit to drill the workpiece; c) during drilling of the workpiece measuring the force, F and torque, T, experienced by the drill bit; d) calculating a variable F', based on the measured force, F, representing the rate of change of F; e) calculating a variable, T&#x2032; based on the measured torque, T, representing the rate of change of T; f) calculating a variable F&#x2033; representing the rate of change of F&#x2032;; g) calculating a variable T&#x2033; representing the rate of change of T&#x2033;; h) detecting the onset of breakout of the workpiece by use of the variables F&#x2032;, F&#x2033;, T&#x2032; and T&#x2033;; i) thereby controlling the speed of rotation of the drill bit during breakthrough of the workpiece to control the degree of breakout of the drill bit from the workpiece. A drilling system is also disclosed.

Drilling apparatus and methods

The present invention relates to a sensing system which is capable of discriminating types of causes of changing loads on a surface, such as the type of motion of a human subject. The system has wide ranging applications including sports performance (e.g. golf club swing analysis). The system comprises a deformable load bearing surface (), a plurality of mutually spaced sensors (), a processor () and an output (). The sensors () are coupled through the deformation response of the surface () to an applied load () to receive local sensory data from the surface (). The processor () is operatively coupled to the sensors () and is arranged to transform the sensory data into information data relating to a load () applied to the surface (), e.g. by means of a neural network algorithm. In an alternative embodiment, a housing including the deformable load bearing surface () contains a flowable material (e.g. liquid) which flows in response to the deformation of the surface.

System and method for sensing and interpreting dynamic forces

Growing community of inventors

Birmingham, United Kingdom

Peter Brett