At the close of the Fluid Power Technology Conference at Cleveland State University November 20, attendees can choose to attend a short tour of the Parker Hannifin Motion Control Laboratory for Fluid Power Systems on campus. The lab seeks to provide students with the skills needed to innovate, design and build the motion control systems used in manufacturing, automation, aerospace, construction and marine applications.
Bogdan Kozul, Assistant Professor at CSU
The lab has been designed and built by Bogdan Kozul, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Washkewicz College of Engineering. It features several custom-built trainers and workstations.
Kozul encourages students to work in teams and manage their design projects or conduct research on trending technologies in motion control applications. This experience reinforces engineering theory learned in the classroom and assists students in finding career opportunities that resonate with their intellectual curiosity. Industrial partners like Parker Hannifin support students with design expertise — along with the hardware, software and controls used by thousands of the leading engineering companies across the globe.
Kozul was previously the group manager of technical training at Parker Hannifin. He said the goal with the lab is to be technology neutral between electrical, mechanical and fluid power.
“Really, the primary focus is in the space of motion control — which is in alignment with Parker Hannifin’s charter — and aligning students with opportunities with motion control companies, from the Caterpillar, Boeing, and Lockheed, all the way to the 400 manufacturing companies in Cleveland, that rely on machines running and using electric motors, hydraulic cylinders and pneumatics,” he said.
“I think we could do a whole college semester and write a whole book on trying to philosophize about whether we use electric, hydraulic or pneumatic in any given application, due to personal preferences, due to existing skillsets, due to the amount of electrical engineers that are graduating, versus the amount of hydraulics specialists, whatever that means, that come out of our educational institutions,” Kozul said. “So, here we have one place that just ignores all that and really just learns the guts of how these systems work and how they’re integrated, and lets students lean on their industrial biases to determine how they proceed with their problem solving, and with their solutions in the field.”
Register for the Fluid Power Technology Conference now.
Filed Under: News
