Hygiene or environmental protection? Preferably both! Companies in the consumer goods industry are increasingly asking themselves what alternatives they have to plastic packaging and how they can act greener, more efficiently, and yet still safely. Innovative packaging lines, robotics, and artificial intelligence offer support.
As a system engineer, it is important to have a reliable and long-lasting power supply on which you can rely. Failure of the unit after a short time is annoying, costly and time consuming. The minimum lifetime of power supplies is determined by the lifetime of the electrolytic capacitors. The warmer it is, the faster the electrolytic capacitors dry out. Even a temperature rise of +10°C in the power supply cuts in half their service lifetime.
Every day, sensors in production plants collect huge amounts of data. However, companies seldom realize how valuable the correct evaluation of large amounts of data is. This creates data graves whose potential remains undiscovered. The Heubach Group had a similar experience. However, with Festo AX artificial intelligence, it was proven that benefits for maintenance, engineering and productivity can be achieved from central PID data.
As technological advancements become common-place and affordable, more industries look to implement motion control and machine vision systems to automate tasks that may be menial and time consuming. Many industries can benefit from automated systems but, the question is, how do they get started? Often, they know what they want to mechanize, but do not have automation experts on staff to make it happen. Mechatronics Canada had the opportunity to talk with Eric Rice, Product Market Manager – Electric Automation at Festo, to discuss a case study where a customer recently chose Festo to help them implement machine vision with a motion control system to automate their industrial application.
Building and maintaining the factory of the future requires capable individuals who enjoy solving problems and thrive on novelty. While the humdrum jobs of the past may be in short supply as they get transferred to robots, the installing, troubleshooting, and innovating tasks — essentially, the exciting ones — will be desperately in need of takers.
Nadine Oliynyk is an Applications Engineering co-op student at Electromate Inc and second year Mechatronics Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. In this article, she describes her experience programming the Meca500 industrial robot arm and setting up the dedicated EtherCAT Master Controller Kit and EtherNet IP/Profinet Kit available at Electromate.
Considerable investments are made with respect to industrial gear units so one expects excellent system availability and productivity. It is not always possible to predict downtime and be able to prevent unscheduled maintenance. What if there was a way to get a clear view ahead, achieve proactive maintenance, and avoid costly breakdowns and even preventative maintenance? What if this solution was possible for not only new industrial gear units, but existing ones as well? DriveRadar® from SEW-EURODRIVE is that solution and more.
Augmenta made headlines recently with an announcement that they have raised US $4.1 million in seed funding to automate building design for the construction industry. Their platform, the Augmenta Construction Platform (ACP), enables contractors and engineers to design fully detailed, code-complaint and constructible designs in hours rather than weeks or months. Mechatronics Canada had an opportunity to speak with Francesco Iorio, CEO and co-founder of Augmenta.
Well-made protective packaging is key to ensuring that foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables arrive on supermarket and grocery shelves in peak condition. Keeping pace with demand means that this packaging needs to be produced as quickly as possible without compromising either quality or strength. Orora Fresh Packaging Solutions is achieving this at its Canada HQ using an ABB robot cell to help assemble, load, and lift its protective cardboard packaging products for the fresh food industry.
The Endress+Hauser Canada’s Partners in Process Hybrid Event 2022 was a big success. For the first time, customers were able to experience the new Customer Experience Centre in Burlington, Ontario. In early June, customers from the Food & Beverage and Life Sciences industries were welcomed into the Centre by Endress+Hauser staff, both in person and virtually. Mechatronics Canada had the opportunity to join them for this occasion and see firsthand what it was all about.
For semiconductor fabricators, there is a critical need to protect the cleanroom environment from fires, as well as from the associated contamination from smoke particulate that can cause catastrophic product and process equipment damage.
Robots and automated guided vehicle systems are taking on increasingly complex tasks and ensuring high availability and productivity, at least in theory. However, disruptions often occur in the process. Solutions are provided by intelligent, hybrid and, above all, holistic systems based on sensors from different technologies. Read more to learn about a wide variety of safety and localization solutions used in intralogistics transport processes.
Together, shipping, receiving, and storage count for less than half of all warehouse activity costs. The lion’ share of expenses – a whopping 55% – is bound up in order picking. Breaking down the various activities associated with order picking, Omron finds that over 60% of time is spent walking, with writing, searching, and picking tasks comprising the other 40%. Omron’s Logistics Strategic Account Manager Yaqing Sun recently discussed some strategies for using autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for this purpose at Automate 2022 in June.
Derating is a protective measure which allows the use of power supplies at high temperatures, at high altitudes or in alternative mounting orientations. Most power supply manufacturers specify ratings for lifetime, output current, and reliability (e.g. MTBF) for their products. However, this information only applies under certain environmental conditions. In this blog article you will learn what you should consider when it comes to derating.
The production of tires and the production of wafers seem to have absolutely nothing to do with each other. In terms of automation technology, however, they use the same technology: Controlled Pneumatics. That is why Festo has further developed compressed air technology to make pneumatics sustainable, resource-saving and energy-efficient.
As machines become more connected, the need to service equipment remotely is escalating. Production is often running 24/7 and manufacturers expect immediate action from machine specialists. Not having a remote solution creates challenges like high travel costs, whereas some remote solutions cause a loss of data control and increase vulnerability. Omron’s secure remote access IoT gateway is one of the most advanced, turnkey solutions you will find on the market today, and it addresses multiple weak spots in competing solutions Omron looks at some of the concerns that this technology can help.