In manufacturing environments, real estate is precious. One of the best and easiest ways to save space is through the machine control cabinets used in electric and pneumatic automation. Traditionally, control components — from the cables to the programmable logic controller (PLC) to valve terminals in pneumatic systems — existed in one or more large cabinets.
With demand for robots growing as companies in multiple sectors look for new ways to enhance their productivity and competitiveness post-pandemic, ABB has compiled a set of growth predictions, looking at key trends driving demand for robots in the coming year. Based on customer conversations, market research and a global survey of 250 companies across multiple industries, ABB has identified three key trends that will shape the demand for robots in 2022.
Mechatronics Canada had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Zoe Reeve, Analytic Product Manager at Endress+Hauser Canada. In this interview she discusses her journey to Endress+Hauser Canada and sheds light on what an Analytic Product Manager does. She also touches on some of the initiatives that have been taken to help women and employees in general achieve professional heights.
The James Webb Space Telescope promises to change the way we see the cosmos by collecting breakthrough observations of galaxies, stars, and planets. But to do this, Webb must have a precise and stable eye on the universe. The telescope’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), one of Canada’s contributions, plays a critical role in this epic mission.
For customers seeking an Industry 4.0 solution for PCs, industrial panels, or embedded and mobile devices, AVEVA Edge provides a powerful, affordable, and user-friendly supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that integrates seamlessly with Omron technologies, This is thanks to Omron’s partnership with AVEVA.
Heavy-duty autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) like the Omron HD-1500 are quickly becoming a gold standard for automating pallet transport in warehouses and distribution centres. Capable of moving payloads through dynamic and peopled environments using onboard mapping software, AMRs provide the ultimate in flexibility and scalability. When logistics facilities start considering an AMR solution, a common question that arises is how to get the pallets onto robots. It turns out there are three methods for doing this, and each has its own advantages relative to the constrains of a particular warehouse infrastructure. In this article, Omon looks at each of these in turn.
The expansion of today’s concrete jungles is accelerating at an unprecedented pace and shows no sign of slowing any time soon. And while this expansion is necessary to accommodate a growing number of urban residents and workers, the systems that manage a building’s environmental controls have come a long way in terms of sophistication and performance. With each new building that is erected, a Building Automation System (BAS) is deployed to automate and monitor the building’s various environmental controls. Though many take these systems for granted, building automation systems are vital to living and working in comfort. A sophisticated building automation system can be used in buildings both new and old. Programming, installing, and monitoring of these systems requires a workforce with the skills necessary to ensure all components perform optimally with little to no downtime. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on what a BAS is, how it works, and why they are so important.
To enable long-term monitoring of vibrations, Pepperl+Fuchs recently launched a new portfolio of vibration sensors. You can find out what distinguishes these products in the following blog article. Using a wind turbine as an application example, we will also show you how you can use vibration and acceleration sensors in combination to keep an eye on both long-term and short-term changes in vibration.
ABB has been awarded a major contract by NatureWorks, the world’s leading manufacturer of polylactic acid (PLA), a low-carbon bioplastic made from renewable agricultural resources, to automate their new, greenfield plant in Thailand, converting sugar cane to the polylactic acid (PLA) biopolymer, Ingeo™.
For manufacturers looking to get started with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a common question that comes up is whether they should use the edge or the cloud for data analysis purposes. However, this does not have to be an either-or choice. In fact, both strategies are optimized to fit different needs and can work well together.
When a customer decides they want to implement a cartesian robot for their application, where do they get started? They turn to experts in the industry, like Festo, who has decades of experience in process automation and technology. They are also global leaders in learning systems, training, and consulting. This makes them poised to provide customers with products and solutions that meet their requirements. Festo’s Handling Guide Online, or HGO is an engineering tool that makes it easy to design, configure, and order a handling system.
Industrial Automation is the automation of general-purpose machinery used in standard or task-specific applications. It can be applied to almost all industries, and primarily deals with the manufacturing, quality control, and material handling processes for those industries. In this article, Electromate explores the A to Z benefits that industrial automation brings to businesses across the world.
As the world’s leading steel producer, steel giant ArcelorMittal focuses on the very latest production technologies. The aim is to make its own production processes permanently safer and more efficient. That includes burner monitoring of the furnaces in its cold rolling mill: the plant in Ghent is used to refine steel coils (strip steel rolls) in accordance with customers’ requirements. However, to enable the steel strip to be cold-formed, it must first be heat treated. So 50 main burners, fed by 30 start-up burners, heat the annealing furnaces to a constant 1200°C. Significant downtimes and exhausting troubleshooting were the rule when the burners failed. After the retrofit, the automation system PSS 4000 now guarantees smooth and productive operation, due also to accelerated fault diagnostics, among other things
The factory of the future would not be possible without communication protocols that facilitate fast and secure data transfer. A protocol is essentially a way of communicating information between devices on a network that follows a set of agreed-upon rules for formatting and processing. As the trend toward data-driven decision-making prompts manufacturers to gather increasingly large amounts of data from the plant floor, these protocols are gaining prominence. Omron looks at two of them, OPC UA and MQTT, that are currently shaping the automation industry
ABB has won a large contract from Australian-listed ioneer Ltd., an emerging lithium-boron supplier committed to becoming an important producer of materials necessary for a sustainable future, for project management, engineering and the supply of power and automation systems. The contract is part of a development program at the customer’s Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada, US, the only known lithium-boron deposit in North America and one of two such deposits in the world. Financial details of the contract were not disclosed. The order was booked in the first quarter of 2022.
Conveyor systems play an important role in industries like packaging, food and commodity, and semiconductor manufacturing, and they vary depending on the type, weight, and dimensions of products being transported, and the environment in which they are installed. One thing that all such systems have in common, however, is a certain set of functional safety requirements. A comprehensive approach to keeping your team safe and your machines running will always start with a risk assessment to identify what risks the workers will be exposed to when performing activities like maintenance and troubleshooting. Omron looks at four converyor-related safety considerations you should be aware of.