Lisa Eitel

Oracle and Festo are joining forces to help educators create new opportunities and solve tough challenges at the Oracle Industry Lab. Opened today, the facility provides hands-on, simulated industry settings for customers to experiment, learn, and bring transformative technologies to life. At the lab, visitors will interact with a sophisticated Festo “Learning Factory” used in…

The Festo-MassRobotics Healthcare Robotics Startup Catalyst program celebrates the milestones achieved by the program’s four selected global startups at the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum. Key life sciences and robotics speakers to lead the event. The successful Healthcare Robotics Startup Catalyst program came to an end on April 7th, 2022. The concluding ceremony will be held…

EXAIR’s EasySwitch Wet-Dry Vac simplifies the filter change process when switching from vacuuming a dry material to a liquid or vice versa. Utilizing minimal compressed air, the EasySwitch is a powerful pneumatic vacuum that is ideal for any application — wet, dry, light and heavy. The fast and simple conversion to vacuuming liquids is done…

The manufacture and testing of semiconductors involves the competing requirements of nanometer positioning and high throughput. Here, the right encoder can help motion designs deliver on both counts. By HEIDENHAIN CORPORATION staff engineers Semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment can have the best motion-control bandwidth, artificial intelligence capabilities, and optics in the world, but none of […]

Here we offer some tips for converting a fluid-power-driven axis to electrical actuation. By Ryan Klemetson • Business Development Manager | Tolomatic, Inc. As explained in Part 1 of this article series on motioncontroltips.com, hydraulic systems offer long service life, but they’re not as efficient as electric systems. Electric systems also provide precise position, velocity, […]

Here we compare these two linear-motion technologies — and hint at a common sizing error when converting to electric actuation. By Ryan Klemetson • Business Development Manager | Tolomatic, Inc. Hydraulics offer a long service life, but they’re not as efficient as electric systems. Electric systems also provide precise position, velocity, and speed control with […]

EXAIR.com has added improved web accessibility for people who are affected by a variety of impairments. By addressing these impairments with specific tools, the EXAIR.com website has become the first in the industry to provide ADA compliant tools. Disabilities come in many forms including hearing, visual, mobility and cognitive impairments. EXAIR has removed many of…

EXAIR’s Chip Vac offers a fast, effective way to clean chips or other dry materials from fixtures, floors and work surfaces of machining centers, lathes, saws, mills and other industrial equipment. It can easily be moved from drum to drum to keep different materials separate for recycling. Dusty materials, such as absorbents are trapped by…

New investments in industrial and manufacturing conveying technologies could reach $65.1B by 2026. That’s according to a new report from researchandmarkets.com. Continued push to automate material handling, assembly, and distribution operations are key drivers. Another is the pressure from regulatory changes forcing adoption of conveyors sporting gearless and other energy-efficient motor designs. Still another is […]

EXAIR’s Air Knives are an efficient and highly effective tool for blowoff, cooling, cleaning and drying in a myriad of manufacturing processes. To accommodate the wide variety of unique problems manufacturers face, EXAIR has the ability to customize and tailor Air Knives to different specifications. These Air Knife customizations can range from size, to shape,…

Motion Plus is now in partnership with MICRONIX USA, LLC. This partnership provides a wide array of MICRONIX USA miniature precision piezo stages and motion components available for purchase online through the easy-to-use Motion Plus website at buy.motionplusmore.com. “With the high quality, miniature precision products of MICRONX USA in-stock with our storefront, customers can now […]

EXAIR’s Heavy Duty HEPA Vac is a powerful, HEPA quality, industrial vacuum cleaner that works with 30, 55 or 110 gallon open top drums. This allows you to choose the vac that best suits your applications.  The Heavy Duty HEPA Vac is designed to move more material with less wear. In addition, this vacuum has…

Depending upon the complexity of product design and its application, the DFMEA exercise can quickly become a tedious exercise if not done through a structured format. In this article, we outline five key tactics that can streamline DFMEA analysis. By Bryan Christiansen | Limble CMMS Design Failure Mode Effect Analysis (DFMEA) is a well-known engineering…

Industry-leading automation solution provider, Omron Automation Americas, continues to demonstrate its commitment to research and development opening the new Omron Advanced Motion Research and Development Center. This state-of-the-art facility enables top-talent engineers, led by Curt Wilson, Senior Director Engineering, Advanced Motion, to continue the innovative work pioneered by Delta Tau Data Systems. The center delivers to […]

In this article, we detail how assembly, packaging, and machine-tool OEMs can keep senior plant personnel in charge of the most demanding and intricate tasks — and relegate everything else to pre-programmed work routines and automated workcells. Such approaches make copious use of cobots and augmented reality (AR) tools. By Tim LeCrone • Director of […]

THK America Inc. now offers a type LMHB linear bushing for linear-motion applications. This linear bushing is press-fit into moving elements of linear motion axes to allow smooth traversal of round shaft. The THK LMHB linear bushing achieves smooth and silent motion thanks to the spring effect provided by curved metal plates within the assembly […]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry faced a large-scale personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage, which put frontline workers at risk of infection. Seeing this struggle, Ontario-based integrator and tool builder Harbour Technologies pivoted their business to include a new title — PPE manufacturer. Harbour Technologies designed a robotic cell to swiftly manufacture FDA-approved isolation…

Vancouver-based NZ Technologies — a designer and manufacturer of human machine interfaces (HMIs) primarily for the medical market — recently entered into a Manufacturing Collaboration Agreement with Dupar Controls to produce a modern take on elevator call buttons and panels. The latter is a maker of elevator and keypad components. Together, the companies are manufacturing…

EXAIR’s Model 7905 Digital Static Meter provides an easy-to-use handheld tool for measuring and identifying sources of static in your processes. Static electricity can wreak havoc in manufacturing processes affecting product quality, by causing jamming or tearing, as well as producing hazardous shocks to unwitting employees. EXAIR’s Digital Static Meter with the simple press of…

Traco Power (Baar, Switzerland) has announced its newest high efficiency, miniaturized ac/dc power supplies: the TPP 180 series for medical and industrial and TPI 180 for industrial. The power supplies measure only 2-by-3-by-1.24 inches in the open-frame version — with global safety approvals for medical or industrial markets. They come in 16 standard models with single…

Battery-powered motor applications need careful design work to match motor performance and power-consumption profiles to the battery type. Optimal motor and battery pairing relies on the selection of an efficient motor as well as a battery with the appropriate capacity, cost, size, maintainability, and discharge duration and curve. By Scott McMillan • Senior Applications Engineer […]

The Basics of Static Electricity white paper presents 20 comprehensive and full colored pages on the causes of static electricity, how it develops, and solutions for combatting it in manufacturing processes. Static electricity is a product of non-conductive materials coming into contact and separating, or creating friction between them leading to imbalanced ions. EXAIR Static…

Nook Industries, a leader in US engineered linear motion products and solutions, announced today that it has sold the family-owned business to Braintree, Massachusetts based Altra Industrial Motion Corp. (Nasdaq: AIMC), a leading global manufacturer and supplier of motion control, power transmission and automation products. The Nook business, which will be integrated into Altra’s Thomson […]

MKS Instruments is extending its MLT Series of compact, low profile high precision linear stages with pre-assembled XYZ-stacks and MLT-Z vertical stages. MLT stages are ideal for typical scanning or point-to-point applications in semiconductor, industrial, or research markets for metrology, sensor test and calibration, alignment, and pick-and-place assembly. The MLT series showcases the latest innovations and […]

With the new EL7062 dual-channel EtherCAT Terminal, Beckhoff enables the direct connection of two stepper motors in the medium power range of up to 3 A and for a voltage range of 8–48 V. With flexible parameterization and minimized channel costs, the flexible motion interface is ideal as a low-cost drive for a wide range […]