| Every manufacturing facility requires preventive and corrective maintenance to their industrial equipment to maintain the performance indicators to their desired levels. One of the limitations related to maintenance is the training of new and existing personnel. New personnel are unaware of the necessary steps and skills to perform maintenance on equipment. The lack of available training equipment often requires either shutting down operations, which cost the industry money and/or putting trainees and other employees in potentially dangerous situations if mistakes are made during live operations without previous training. At the educational level, students lack the proper industrial grade training due to the lack of relevant equipment and high budget constraints. Universities often train students with obsolete equipment or lower level training stations as compared to the one's used at an industrial level. For these reasons, Virtual Scenarios for Maintenance are proposed in this research.;The potential of laboratories relies on their ability to carry out industrial personnel training in a safer and more efficient way without the constraints of equipment availability and budget constraints. Virtual Scenarios lower the cost of maintenance, increase safety, reduce replacement costs for obsolete equipment and open options for online training. Virtual Scenarios for Maintenance open new avenues for education, since components possess the physical, electrical, and mechanical characteristics of the industry necessary to simulate real behavior without the limitations of having to acquire and maintain a physical laboratory or industrial space reserved for training. This research covers the development of one specific virtual scenario for training in Mechanical Maintenance, by virtualizing a standard DC motor and creating a Virtual Reality Scenario tutorial.;The procedure followed is one established through common video game development and evolves the methods used in the entertainment industry for educational and training purposes.;The method is defined by the following steps: The first step of the development process starts with the design specifications. The mechanical process or machine that the virtual process in this research will recreate has to be analyzed thoroughly and understood.;Secondly, in the design and modeling step, the machine and/or mechanical process, the tools use to perform specific tasks and the surroundings have to be designed and created using 3D modeling software.;The third step focuses on the environment design where the knowledge gained in phase one, combined with the 3D modeling from step two are put together to create a realistic environment, a representation of a real world laboratory, manufacturing facility or, in this case, a maintenance workshop.;The fourth step, and one of the most important in the whole process, is the environmental and behavior programming. This step focuses on implementing C# programming to create realistic animations that allow the trainee to interact with objects like tools, machines, components and more. This programming also allows for the environment to behave realistically with factors such as weight, mass, drag, and force.;The sixth, and final step, centers on creating a tutorial, which guides the trainee through a certain procedure; in this case, the procedure to assemble and disassemble an AC motor in order to change the bearings. The tutorial includes voice commands and full interaction with VR hardware. |
