If you’re thinking of buying a rebuilt Rexroth servo motor, you’re probably wondering how it should look. Some of our competitors show a whole shelf full of Rexroth servos, supposedly rebuilt and ready for installation. They might have the smooth black exterior we associate with Rexroth servos. They might be neatly arranged. But they don’t look like actual rebuilt Rexroth motors. See the photo above? That’s how Rexroth rebuilt motors should look. See how they’re all nestled into Rexroth labeled boxes from the factory? That’s what you should look for. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in our warehouse. Rexroth [&hellip

You know what your car engine is supposed to sound like. That guttural roar of pistons moving and belts humming is part of the whole driving experience. When you hear something else — maybe a woop! woop! or a rhythmic sussing sound — you know something’s going on. Rexroth servo noises are much like engine noises–they can tell you if something’s not right. As always, a strange new noise should be investigated and repaired accordingly. But there are some culprits you should look into first if you’ve got some strange noises on your hands. Loose Parts in your Servo Just [&hellip

Servo motors work by moving things to a precisely defined position and stopping. Usually they do this over and over. Stopping is one of their important tasks. But just stopping and staying stopped is not what you want from a servo motor. What can cause a servo motor to stop? Maybe it’s broken. A broken servo motor often announces its problems with loud noises, smoke, and maybe some sparks. Overuse, overheating, and general overage account for a lot of broken servos, and all these problems can involve some dramatic effects. A servo motor that just stops as though it has [&hellip

People worry a lot about losing jobs to industrial automation, and they are not being completely unrealistic. However, a new report from the United Nations points out the gaps between fears and reality. First, about half of all robots  in service are in Germany, the U.S., and Japan. China and the Republic of Korea have increased industrial automation, but most countries that currently have a large industrial workforce are not investing in automation. Countries that are investing most heavily in automation — Germany, the U.S., and Japan — have already gone through the changes workers fear. The U.N. says that [&hellip

Rexroth’s Ecodrive drive controller was a landmark product when it first came out. It was an unusually intelligent controller, part of a beautifully designed industrial motion control system, at a great price. In fact, the “eco” in Ecodrive stands for “economy,” not “ecology” as you might have thought. The object of the Ecodrive initiative was to provide an economical entry-level industrial motion control system for all kinds of general automation. Modules can be combined to power and control everything from simple single-axis general automation to complex multi-access applications. The Ecodrive servo drive is also known as the Rexroth DKC family. [&hellip

Industrial motion control systems start with a servo motor, a motor which can be directed to take very specific actions which in turn make the machines they control perform very specific actions. Servo motors are in communication with amplifiers, or drives, which send a specific amount of power to the motor to cause the machine to take the action. A drive which provides too much power for the movement required could wear a servo motor out before its time. A drive that provided too little force could keep the servo motor from doing its job. This means that it’s not [&hellip

  This year’s hurricane season has been one of the worst in history. Hurricane Harvey drenched the gulf coast, causing billions of dollars worth of damage in Texas. Hurricane Irma hit Florida, destroying property and causing widespread evacuations. Then Hurricane Maria moved in, creating catastrophic damage in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Irma had already knocked out the electrical system. Texas and Florida saw damage, but Puerto Rico was destroyed. Why? The electric, water, and sewer systems were in bad repair. Trees and debris hadn’t been kept trimmed, so there were lots of things ready to fall on power lines and [&hellip

China has an extremely long history of using terra cotta in art and in building. So it makes sense that the University of Hong Kong architecture program should try an experiment in using terra cotta in combination with new trends in manufacturing. A robotic arm was in charge of printing out bricks for the structure. It took two or three minutes to make each brick with additive manufacturing (3-d printing). That may not be the most efficient way to make bricks right now. But there is a good reason for using this method. The structure was designed before the bricks [&hellip

We’ve seen plenty of predictions of the kinds of jobs robots will probably take over — or, in some cases, the tasks they’ll relieve humans of doing. But a new report gives us the list of jobs being taken over by robots right now. There are some surprises on the list. We’ve seen models, tax accountants, retail workers, and warehouse workers on just about every list over the past few years, and these jobs aren’t on the new list at all. Instead, we see robotics engineer, perhaps the last job people have been expecting to see done by robots. Here’s [&hellip

There’s been a call for more plug-and-play robotics, machines packaged with pre-programmed IoT connections and skills. The idea is that this will make it easier for SMEs to take the plunge into industrial automation. Right now, the cost of bringing in new machinery, programming it, and maintaining it can be a major hurdle for smaller companies. They may know that the savings in labor would pay for the machinery over time, but many hesitate to make the investment. At the same time, Rexroth’s Dr. Heiner Lang suggests that flexibility and customization are key to making automation work for the future. [&hellip