ARRIS, the advanced manufacturer enabling high-performance thermoplastic composites at scale for mass-market products and industrial applications, now offers a new sustainable fiber material offering. Sustainability and innovative material development are at the core of ARRIS efforts as the team scales Additive Molding for a production capacity in the millions to meet demand. Additionally, ARRIS has…

Most businesses with warehousing functions can realize greater efficiency, safety, and productivity from autonomous mobile robotics. For those ready to make the leap but unsure where to start, following are key industry trends and considerations. By Kelly Schroder | Business Development Specialist — Americas • Conductix-Wampfler The autonomous mobile robot (AMR) market saw a massive…

ARRIS — manufacturer enabling high-performance composites at scale with new design latitudes for mass-market consumer products, transportation, and industrial applications — recently signed a contract manufacturing partner (CM) to further increase production part capacity. Additive Molding, a first-of-its-kind manufacturing, materials, and software technology developed by ARRIS, has been scaled from tens of thousands of parts in 2021…

In its wake, the COVID pandemic left lingering supply-chain issues that are still affecting manufacturing and other automated industries. Now some slowdowns at least have cleared. By Lisa Eitel | Executive editor The last few years’ supply-chain issues have featured container ships waiting weeks for cargo unloading; empty shelves at stores; year-long waits for appliances;…

Semiconductor products were more affected than any other by COVID-induced supply-chain issues felt around the world. International political tensions have only prolonged and exacerbated the problem. By Lisa Eitel | Executive editor Every modern gadget, vehicle, smart device, and appliance is peppered over with semiconductors galore — offering that singular function of processing power that…

Motion-solutions provider Bishop-Wisecarver recently awarded Luna Zarco from Pittsburg High School in California the 2022 Bishop-Wisecarver Innovation Award for her automated design submission for the agriculture industry. Maurice Straubhaar from another Bay-area school — Ygnacio Valley High School — also earned an Innovation Award for his design targeting the packaging industry. “Between Bishop-Wisecarver’s Manufacturing Day […]

In the first part of this Design World Trends series, we heard from industry experts about discrete automation’s edge devices; efforts to promote standards for increased system compatibilities and interoperabilities; and the rise of fog computing as well as industrial uses for wireless technologies such as 5G. In this follow-up piece, we detail the holistic…

Discrete automation’s edge devices include actuators, sensors, and connectivity components such as gateways and motor-mounted controllers. Many of these components feature computational capabilities to minimize data bandwidth and latency issues associated with legacy versions of centralized control. Their installation at the furthest reaches of automated equipment means their processing power is situated to filter and…

LINAK U.S. Inc., the largest subsidiary of the Danish and family-owned manufacturer, has acquired a new building in Louisville, KY, to expand operations at their North and South American headquarters. After 29 years, and multiple expansions in Louisville, LINAK, a worldwide leader in electric linear actuation solutions, is committed to adding more value for design […]

An automobile’s automatic transmission case is a very complex casting that includes a sophisticated valve body with many channels and passages. These features must be precisely connected to perform the necessary control functions. However, it’s not always possible to cast all interconnections. Some case features necessitate drilling through the casting’s outer shell (and one or…

Actom Signalling, a Southern African railway signal-equipment company, has found minimal wear in accelerated wear testing on Vesconite slides in its point machines. These machines control railway tracks and switch the tracks to which particular trains will be directed. Actom engineering projects and contracts development technician Wayne Meyer confirms the test results. Testing was executed […]

There’s an untapped automation potential for palletizing goods in production and other industries. Realizing this potential requires flexible, easy-to-use, and affordable cobot solutions that can adjust to different palletizing setups and generate rapid return on investment. To meet these demands, LINAK now offers the ELEVATE lifting column — a new product that extends the reach […]

Synchronous belt drives dominate motion control designs for positioning and other precision functions. Here we detail V belts and other belt types used in industrial, robotic, and consumer designs for both linear and rotary axes. Modern flat belts are either endless (welded or otherwise closed into a hoop by the manufacturer) or open. Common on […]

Belt drives have continued to evolve with new applications. Industrial belt drives in motion designs consist of rubber, engineered plastic, metal, or (most common) multi-material belts that wrap around drive pulleys — grooved or otherwise profiled wheels mounted on a shaft — in turn driven by electric motors. Powered by various motor types, belt drives run […]

OES (Optimal Engineering Systems Inc.) has added to their line of purpose-built stages.  The new XYZR Series of Four-axes Stages are the integration of a: 15 mm, 30 mm, 50 mm, 75 mm, or 100 mm linear stages (in any combination) for the X, Y, and Z axes, and a 60 mm or 100 mm […]

Red Lion now offers N-Tron Series NT5000 Gigabit Managed Layer 2 Ethernet switches. As industries around the world digitally transform and optimize their operations, reliable and secure network access is absolutely critical. NT5000 switches and their gigabit speed are designed to improve network security and reliability for industrial organizations of all sizes and environments. The…

UBITO, a member of the FRABA family of technology companies, has announced a development of Wiegand technology as an energy source for smart sensors.  After more than two years of effort at FRABA’s R&D center in Aachen (Germany), a research team has demonstrated a prototype of a wireless sensor powered by Wiegand technology that could […]

Technology and software company Emerson has been named the IoT Breakthrough 2023 “Industrial IoT Company of the Year” for the fifth time — an honor the company also received in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022. This year’s award recognizes the power of Emerson’s industry-leading Plantweb digital ecosystem, which now includes the AspenTech suite of plant…

At the start of 2023, Physik Instrumente (PI) GmbH & Co. KG merged 53 engineers, software experts, and other specialists from the insolvent IBS Ingenieurbüro Dr. Klaus Schnürer GmbH to establish a new subsidiary within the PI Group. “PI’s engineering capacity will immediately increase by approx. 55,000 hours per year,” estimates Markus Spanner, CEO of […]

At the start of 2023, Physik Instrumente (PI) GmbH & Co. KG merged 53 engineers, software experts, and other specialists from the insolvent IBS Ingenieurbüro Dr. Klaus Schnürer GmbH to establish a new subsidiary within the PI Group. “PI’s engineering capacity will immediately increase by approx. 55,000 hours per year,” estimates Markus Spanner, CEO of […]

Edge computing in industrial automation refers to systems with distributed electronics that locally collect, store, analyze, and act upon with unrivaled speed. A related industrial-network structure brings cloud-computing capabilities down into the furthest reaches of the factory-floor via nodes and networks. Called fog computing, this distributed intelligence as well as data processing out at a…

binder USA has developed a complete portfolio of connectors, contacts, tools, and accessories for crimp termination. binder’s crimp variants simplify wiring for quick cable assembly on site. The 423 series M16 connector offers reliable connectivity for signals, data, and electrical power with low contact resistance and gas tightness. These connectors have the tensile strength and…

Nearly two thirds of all energy created globally for commercial, transportation, industrial, and residential use is lost to inefficiency and waste. For operations aiming to achieve carbon-neutral status (or just higher profitability through energy conservation) preventing the loss of energy is at once immediately possible and commendable. After all, Energy Information Administration analysis indicates that…

The top goal of most digital transformation (DX) initiatives sounds suspiciously similar to that of lean-manufacturing methodologies — to minimize an operation’s waste and cost while concurrently maximizing its quality (defect-free) throughput of customer-coveted product. Benefitting a vast array of industries outside manufacturing, today lean-manufacturing approaches are applied in most all settings that allow collected…

The COVID-19 pandemic permanently changed the way in which tens of thousands of businesses worldwide operate. It also changed how many view automation and digital transformation (DX) initiatives. The latter have proven helpful where businesses aim to make remote work for office personnel permanent; toggle operations from on to idled and back more nimbly; allow…