A Los Angeles company that develops equipment for the film industry has used a motor with a stator formed from a PCB (printed circuit board) to solve a problem with hand-wheel systems used to operate film cameras remotely.
The US energy technology company Baker Hughes is buying the Power Generation division of Brush Group from its private equity owner, One Equity Partners, for an undisclosed sum. Baker Hughes says that the division – which manufactures synchronous motors as well as generators, condensers and control systems – will enhance its turbomachinery portfolio, as well as optimising its supply chain using Brush Power Generation’s manufacturing base and expanding its capacity for projects in both the industrial and energy sectors.
ABB has agreed to buy Siemens’ low-voltage Nema motors operation for an undisclosed sum. The business, which has manufacturing operations in Guadalajara, Mexico, produces motors mainly for the North America market. It employs about 600 people and last year generated revenues of around $63m.
The German engineering plastics specialist igus has developed a plastic ball bearing that unusually combines two materials to make it wear-resistant and dimensionally stable and quiet, even at high speeds. This design makes the xiros 2K bearing suitable for use in applications such as fans and blowers.
The global market for motion controls – including servomotors, drives and controls – expanded by 21.6% during 2021 and will grow by a further 9.1% in 2022, according new research by Interact Analysis. This growth will continue until 2026, but at a slower pace, with a CAGR of 5.5%, according to Interact.
ABB has announced a five-axis delta robot which, it claims, is the fastest in its class for handling lightweight packaged products such as chocolates, small bottles and parcels. The five-axis IRB 365 IRB 365 robot has a 1.5kg payload, and is suitable for a variety of picking and packing applications in the food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods markets, where high production line speeds and adaptability are needed.
The Brazilian motion engineering and automation company WEG is buying the Motion Control business of the Italian automation and sensors manufacturer Gefran for around €23m.
The German sensor-maker Sick has entered a multi-year collaboration with the US-based sensing technology specialist Aeva to bring its 4D Lidar technology to industrial sensing applications including long-range position and velocity sensing. The Aeries II technology is predicted to boost the reliability and efficiency of 3D measurements in demanding applications.
Construction has started on a £13m extension to the Oxfordshire Advanced Skills (OAS) training centre which will be used for new apprenticeship programmes in areas including robotics, data science, cybersecurity, energy storage, power engineering and space. The OAS team is also developing a curriculum for a new automation and controls level 4 apprenticeship programme, which it expects to deliver from September 2023.
A UK wind turbine specialist has teamed up with a US developer of high-performance rare-earth-free magnets to design a 15MW generator for use in offshore wind turbines. Middlesborough-based GreenSpur Wind and Minneaopolis-based Niron Magnetics say that the high-efficiency low-mass generator will generate power without needing costly and environmentally-dubious rare-earth magnets. Their claims have been backed by the ORE Catapult, the UK’s technology innovation and research centre for offshore renewable energy.
NSK has developed a ballscrew technology that, it claims, can double service lives compared to standard ballscrews in some applications. The new ballscrews are aimed, in particular, at high-load applications such as injection moulding machines and servo presses which are switching from hydraulic to electric drive operation using servomotors and ballscrews to save energy.
Mushrooming demand for electrical steels for use in EV (electric vehicle) motors is pushing up prices and lengthening lead times for industrial and commercial motors, a market analyst is warning. The price of cold-rolled electrical steels – which represent about 20% of the material costs of a motor – has soared by more by 400% since January 2016, according to Interact Analysis. This has contributed to a 35-40% increase in the average selling price of motors since January 2020 and further rises could be on the way.
The Brazilian motor manufacturer, WEG, has revealed more details of the new factory that it is building in Portugal at a cost of €23.5m, which will double the size of its manufacturing operation in the town of Santo Tirso. The factory, due to be fully operational by 2024, will boost WEG’s workforce by 100 people, as well as creating what WEG is calling “Europe’s most complete testing laboratory” for MV (medium voltage) and HV (high voltage) motors and drives.
UK-based Motion Control Products (MCP) has announced what it claims are the first linear motors that do not have any magnets in their tracks, thus reducing the need for rare-earth materials and cutting costs, especially for long travel lengths. The motors are also said to be easier and safer to assemble, without the usual strong magnetic attraction between the track and the moving forcer.
Schaeffler is buying the Ewellix Group – formerly SKF’s linear technology arm – for around €582m. This amount does not include transaction costs, nor Ewellix’s net debt of around €120m which Schaeffler will take on.
The Stoke-on-Trent transformer manufacturer Electro-Wind has expanded its manufacturing premises across two sites and taken on extra staff in response to a growing demand for both its standard and custom-built products over the past couple of years.
The Talking Industry series of online panel discussions are now available in a convenient podcast format. As well as audio recordings of the Webinars, DFA Manufacturing Media – which organises the online discussions and publishes Drives & Controls – is also planning to publish original podcasts both as one-off editions such as interviews with industry personalities, and as series of related programmes.
Siemens’ variable-speed drives factory in Cheshire, UK, is on track to achieve carbon neutrality this year – eight years ahead of its original target. The Congleton site, which manufactures more than 1.2m controls and drives every year, has achieved this goal by deploying a range of sustainable technologies for energy generation and demand, including generating 75kW of renewable energy from a hydro-electric plant on the nearby river Dane, and using carbon-neutral biogas to power an on-site gas engine. These measures alone are saving the company £250,000 a year and have taken the 80% power-independent factory off the grid.
Igus claims to have produced the world’s first driven energy chain, almost eliminating limits on travel distances, which can stretch to well over 1km. The technology also delivers high dynamics and long running times because there are hardly any push/pull forces acting on the chain.
The July/August edition of Drives & Controls magazine will contain our annual Buyer’s Guide for Drives, Automation, Power Transmission and Motion Control. For more than 35 years, this has been an essential tool for buyers and users of these products, offering easy-to access information on who makes and sells what, and how to contact them. There is nothing else like it in the UK market.
ABB has opened a €100m global innovation and training campus at the headquarters of its Austrian machine and factory automation subsidiary, B&R. The campus, located in Eggelsberg, will create up to 1,000 high-tech jobs. It includes r&d labs, as well as facilities for training up to 4,000 people from around the world every year in collaboration with universities.
A Welsh cybersecurity software developer has joined forces with Siemens to offer a low-cost OT (operational technology) security system for manufacturing SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) in the UK. They say that the managed security system will protect any networked, Internet-connected technology with pricetags starting from £10,000, rather than the hundreds of thousands of pounds normally needed to set up and maintain security operations centres.
SKF and ABB have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore possibilities for collaborating on the automation of manufacturing processes. They plan to identify and evaluate ideas for improving manufacturing capabilities and improving production efficiencies, potentially leading to future strategic collaborations.
Trevor Wheatley, the co-founder and former chairman of Control Techniques, and a pioneer in the variable-speed drives industry, has died at the age of 79.
Siemens has launched an open industrial platform that, it says, will make digital transformation easier, faster and scalable. The Xcelerator platform includes IoT (Internet of Things) enabled hardware, software and digital services from Siemens, and from more than 50 certified third parties. Siemens plans to transform its entire portfolio of hardware and software to become modular, cloud-connected and built on standard application programming interfaces (APIs).
The Japanese motor manufacturer Nidec has developed a new design of electric motor which, it claims, combines the high efficiency of a synchronous reluctance (SR) motor with the low cost of a cage-type induction motor. It says that the IE5-efficiency SynRA (synchronous reluctance motor with aluminium cage rotor) machine is the world’s first SR motor with an aluminium cage. It does not need an electronic controller and can be connected directly to a mains power supply.
Motion plastics specialist igus has announced a gantry robot which, it claims, is up to 60% cheaper than rival machines. The drylin XXL robot has a working envelope of 2 x 2 x 1.5m and is particularly suitable for palletising loads up to 10kg. The robot is available from €7,000 / £8,000 including the control system, and comes as a DIY kit that can be set up and programmed without needing a system integrator.
The German machine vision specialist IDS (Imaging Development Systems) has announced a camera that, it claims, closes the gap between consumer Webcams and industrial vision systems.
Four industrial automation and manufacturing groups have joined forces to develop a standard interface for monitoring energy consumption in production processes, based on OPC UA. The four – ODVA, the OPC Foundation, PI (Profibus and Profinet International) and VDMA, which represents more than 3,400 German and European companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector – have set up a working group which plans to publish a new OPC UA specification including details of the interface.
A group of automation companies have demonstrated some of the first products to implement the UniversalAutomation.Org (UAO) open runtime system interoperating with each other. Compliance with the system – based on the IEC 6199 standard for distributed control and information systems – is predicted to bring advantages including application interoperability and portability, efficient engineering and easy maintainability.
Allied Motion Technologies has acquired the US linear and rotary motor manufacturer Airex for an undisclosed sum. Airex, based in New Hampshire, has more than 70 years of history supplying precision wound components and systems for industrial, semiconductor, life science and aerospace/defence applications.
Siemens has appointed Sarah Black-Smith as general manager of its Motion Control business in the UK. She was previously as head of factory operations at Siemens’ drives factory in Congleton, Cheshire, where she was responsible for producing more than one million drives and controls per year.
Global sales of industrial robots bounced back during 2021 to hit an all-time high of 486,800 shipped machines – a 27% increase on the figure for 2020 – according to preliminary data released by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
ABB Robotics has launched a new generation of ready-to-deploy application cells at the Automatica exhibition in Germany. The cells, to be marketed under the OmniVance brand, are designed to be easy to program and set up. At Automatica, ABB demonstrated a machining cell that can handle eight different applications, as well as a space-saving welding cell.
The Danish collaborative robot (cobot) pioneer Universal Robots has announced its most powerful cobot to date – a 20kg-capacity arm with a new joint design that will cut cycle times by up to 65% as well as being able to handle heavier loads. The cobot, unveiled at the Automatica show in Germany, has a 1,750mm reach, allowing it to work to the full height of a standard Euro-pallet, while its small footprint will allow users to achieve more in an existing production space. UR’s previously most powerful cobot had a 16kg capacity.
The UK Government has announced a series of changes intended to make it easier for British businesses to apply the new UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) mark for products placed on the market in England, Scotland and Wales.
At the Automatica exhibition in Germany, the automation specialist Beckhoff has unveiled a new concept for creating robots of almost any type – from simple single-axis rotary indexing tables to multi-axis articulated arms – simply by connecting a series of motor modules that serve as active joints.
Siemens has teamed up with Liverpool’s John Moores University to launch a top-up degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, aimed at engineering professionals who want to upgrade their existing HNC/HND certificates or diplomas to gain new skills and experience, and to study to a degree level.
At the recent Hannover Messe, Lenze launched a decentralised frequency inverter which performs several tasks simultaneously, including acting as an sensor that collects data and forwards it on to IIoT platforms and edge systems. The i-series motec inverter allows direct access to drive data via several communication interfaces, including an IO-Link master, providing machine operators with high-quality information. The sensor data can be analysed in real time, paving the way for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance functions.
At the recent Hannover Messe, Bosch Rexroth unveiled a sensor-based compensation module that gives robots and Cartesian linear systems a “human-like sensitivity” and, according to the company, marks “a paradigm shift in factory automation”. The Smart Flex Effector allows complex assembly processes that previously could only be automated at great expense or not at all, to be automated at a “reasonable” cost.
Nidec has developed a technology for detecting the position of motor rotors that, it claims, combines the high accuracy of optical encoders with the low costs and component counts of magnetic encoders.
Siemens has bought the UK-based predictive maintenance and industrial analytics specialist Senseye for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will expand Siemens’ predictive maintenance and asset intelligence portfolio.
Schneider Electric is selling its UK-headquartered Eurotherm business to Watlow, the US designer and manufacturer of industrial thermal systems, for an undisclosed sum.
Sumitomo Cyclo Drive Germany has won the 2022 Hermes technology award for its Tuaka integrated drive system which combines a 48V motor, gearbox and a drive with safety functions and is aimed, in particular, at robotic applications. The award is made annually by the organisers of the Hannover Fair for a technology at the show that displays a particularly high degree of innovation.
The German sensor developer Ege-Elektronik Spezial-Sensoren has announced a device that converts signals from traditional analogue sensors to noise-free digital IO-Link signals. Depending on its configuration, the IOL-KONV-UIS-01 converter takes one or two analogue values (0-10V or 4-20mA) or switching signals from a sensor and converts them into digital signals, which it transmits to an IO-Link primary device.
Mitsubishi Electric is investing aound 2.2 billion Indian rupees ($56.6m) to build a new plant in India that will manufacture inverters and other factory automation (FA) products. The factory, due to start operating in December 2023, will meet growing demand in India where the FA market is expanding at an annual rate of about 8% – mainly in industries such as automobiles, food & beverage, pharmaceuticals and textiles. Further growth is expected in the future.
The German automation specialist Beckhoff has developed a software tool that makes it possible to use linear motors for precision applications such as milling or laser-cutting machines. The software uses machine learning to compensate for the uneven cogging forces that have previously limited the use of linear motors in applications of this type.
A German company has developed a “virtual PLC” technology that decouples real-time control from proprietary hardware, allowing automation engineers to manage PLCs from suppliers such as Siemens, Bosch Rexroth and Beckhoff like cloud-based software systems. Software Defined Automation (SDA) says that its industrial-control-as-a-service model will break up proprietary silos in control technologies and turn factories into software systems.
Schneider Electric has announced a service plan for variable-speed drives that, it claims, will cut the risk of VSD failures by up to 65%, as well as reducing maintenance and planned downtime by up to 20%. The EcoStruxure Service Plan combines round-the-clock remote monitoring with preventive condition-based maintenance.
The British engineering group IMI is buying the German electric linear motion specialist Bahr Modultechnik Holding for €98m (£83m). Bahr will become part of the IMI Precision Engineering’s industrial automation business.
SKF has joined forces with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a wireless technology which, they say, reinvents the fields of industrial machine reliability and predictive maintenance. The automated condition-monitoring system, called Axios, promises manufacturers a simple, affordable wireless technology for monitoring more of their rotating equipment.
Dyson, the domestic appliances giant, says it wants to recruit 700 robotics engineers over the next five years as it expands its newly-revealed robotics division, which already includes 250 robotics experts working across disciplines such as computer vision, machine learning, sensors and mechatronics. Following ten years of secretive work on robots, Dyson is now revealing and accelerating its development of autonomous devices capable of household chores and other tasks.
More UK manufacturers believe that their continuing reliance on ageing technologies is having a bigger negative effect of their businesses than Brexit, according to a survey of more than 400 manufacturing executives in the UK and US. The survey was conducted by iBASEt, a Californian company that simplifies how complex products are built and maintained, in conjunction with the UK’s Manufacturing Technology Centre. The 403 respondents were split almost evenly between the US and UK.
The Drives & Controls Show and its co-located manufacturing industry events – Smart Industry Expo, Plant and Asset Management, Fluid Power & Systems and Air-Tech – returned to the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre last month after a four-year Covid-enforced absence.
The Italian gears, motors and drives manufacturer Bonfiglioli has announced a series of decentralised inverters for controlling asynchronous and synchronous reluctance motors. The DGM Modular inverters have embedded EMC filters and on onboard PLC that can be used to customise the inverter functions.
In October 2019, the Germany machinery safety specialist Pilz was hit by devastating ransomware cyberattack which knocked out its production, IT and Web systems for months in some cases. The company, which refused to pay the ransom, had to revert to using phones and whiteboards. “It almost killed us,” admits joint managing partner, Thomas Pilz. But “we fought back,” he adds. “It was wake-up call.”
Panasonic Industry has entered the motion controls market with a compact controller that combines motion functions with typical PLC functions such as positioning, networking, modular I/Os and a high-frequency counter. The company says that the GM1 controller will save cabinet space and can handle demanding applications with up to 32 axes and response times as low as 0.5ms.
The industrial sensing and protection company Sensata Technologies has teamed up with the Canadian-Indian machine health monitoring specialist Nanoprecise to offer a monitoring and predictive maintenance system for rotating machines that allows plant managers to detect early-stage faults and extend the working lives of their machines.
Schneider Electric is talking to several potential buyers of its Telemecanique automation and control activities, according to the Bloomberg news service. It says that the business, which could be sold for around $1bn, has attracted interested from several private equity firms as well as the connectors and sensors manufacturer, Amphenol.
The UK government is providing £20m to help set up a “data innovation hub” at Ulster University that will assist UK manufacturers to accelerate the development of digital technologies. The £50m Smart Manufacturing Data Hub (SMDH) will help small- and medium-size manufacturers to capture their data and use it better, thus boosting their productivity, growth and sustainability.
Schneider Electric has launched a condition-monitoring technology for rotating machines that analyses motor currents rather than relying on traditional vibration-monitoring techniques. It claims that this approach offers several advantages, including accurate prediction of imminent machine failures, the ability to operate in harsh environments, and the ability to provide data that can be used to cut energy consumption and optimise the performance of machinery.
Robotics experts at the UK’s Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) have developed an autonomous robot vehicle designed to move along underground pipes to carry out inspections. The invention has the potential cut costs cost and improve efficiency for utilities, as well as preventing pipework leaks and reducing human exposure to hazardous environments.
Britain’s manufacturers are calling for a cross-industry and Government taskforce to assess the UK’s current and future supply chain resilience and capabilities, and to establish an action plan to protect the economy from future disruptive events.
An international developer of electric vehicle drive technologies is commissioning a cloud-based robotic assembly plant in Coventry, UK, which it plans to replicate in a network of digitalised manufacturing plants around the world. Israeli-headquartered REE Automotive, expects to produce 40,000 of its REEcorner modules – which combine a powertrain with steering, braking and suspension – at its Coventry Integration Centre this year. One module is needed for each wheel, so this capacity will be enough to power 10,000 commercial vehicles such as delivery vans, buses and recreational vehicles.
Festo has previewed what it claims will be the world’s first pneumatic cobot. It says that the device – due to go on sale in 2023 – will be cheaper than electric cobots in the same class, as well as offering other attractions such as a high sensitivity to collisions and a low weight.
igus has announced a smart cobot (collaborative robot) which costs just €4,970 (£4,230) and can be up and running within days. The plug-and-play cobot – part of the company’s Rebel family of robotic technologies – weighs just 8.2kg. It is claimed to be the lightest of its type, due largely to the fact that around 90% of its mechanical components are made from engineering polymers, including “the world's first industrial-grade cobot gearbox made of plastic”.
The American motors and controls manufacturer Teknic has been awarded a US patent for a method for dissipating energy recovered from mechanical loads connected to servomotors during braking. It says that this function – which it calls VRS (vector regen shunt) – will simplify servodrives by eliminating the need for external regenerative circuits and shunts, thus cutting costs, space requirements, wiring and system complexity.
ABB has launched a digital service that will help industrial operators to maximise their energy efficiency and boost their sustainability by identifying motor-driven equipment in their facilities with the biggest energy-saving potential. The ABB Ability Digital Powertrain Energy Appraisal service will draw data from fleets of digitally-connected electric motors and VSDs (variable-speed drives) to show where – and how much – energy can be saved by upgrading to the latest high-efficiency technologies. The users can then make data-driven decisions to prioritise their investments.
At the 2022 Hannover Fair, Siemens will unveil an AI-based edge app that detects problems in drive systems before they can affect production. The app will allow users to avoid unplanned downtime and to schedule maintenance times in good time, raising plant availability by up to 30%. Siemens says that by scheduling maintenance and servicing activities based on actual demand, companies will be able to boost their productivity by up to 10%.
ABB Robotics has launched a software package which, it claims, will boost the speed of six-axis robots by 70% and their accuracy by 50%, significantly reducing time-to-market, while improving accuracy levels.
ThinGap, the Californian manufacturer of zero-cogging slotless motors, is merging with Allied Motion Technologies, the US group that designs and produces precision motion products for the global market. The terms of the merger have not been revealed.
Interroll has launched a platform-based material-flow system that, it says, will boost the productivity of manufacturing processes “significantly”. The modular, plug-and-play LCP (light conveyor platform) system allows integrators to implement scalable belt conveyor sections quickly to satisfy the automated material-flow requirements of individual customers.
The precision motion control specialist PI (Physik Instrumente) is investing almost $60m in locations around the world to boost productivity, expand production capacity and optimise its supply chains. The German-headquartered company is focussing on growth markets such as industrial automation, semiconductors, photonics and life sciences.
Rockwell Automation has announced a pair of micro-PLCs that, it claims, will allow machine-builders to design and program machines more efficiently. As well as releasing the Allen-Bradley Micro850 and Micro870 2080-Lx0E controllers, Rockwell has also updated its Connected Components Workbench software which, it says, will simplify the development of machines using the microcontrollers and cut development times by boosting upload data transfer rates by 23%, and download rates by 40%
Almost two thirds (65%) of industrial companies around the world are planning to upgrade the efficiency of their equipment to best-in-class technologies such as high-efficiency motors and variable-speed drives as they attempt to move towards net-zero emissions, according to a new survey carried out in 13 countries for ABB.
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