Henry Ford might not have been the first to develop the assembly line, but he popularized it and brought it to public consciousness. He also made cars affordable for the average person. So it may not be surprising that Toyota researchers are referencing Henry Ford when they talk about making affordable robots. Japan has a… Read more »
Britain is getting ready to vote on the serious question of whether they should leave the European Union. The EU, like the United States, is a group of political entities that have agreed to share currency. Its members can travel freely from one member state to another, they can work anywhere, retire anywhere and draw… Read more »
One of the frustrations for people in the mental health field is that most treatments for mental illness tend to break out like this: One third of the patients get better. One third get worse. One third stay the same. You can say this in a happy way, like, “One third of patients treated… Read more »
Our vision of the smart factory is often focused on global connections. Information swooshes across the global supply chain. Virtual reality provides training and remote repair brings experts to machines before they break down, as each component takes responsibility for its own monitoring and service. Rexroth points out in a recent article that this vision,… Read more »
Excited about the Internet of Things? Then check out Connected World, the Internet of Things Conference. One session took place in Berlin in March and the next one is coming up in Chicago in September. Registration is open now. One of the features in Berlin was a hackathon session in which participants tried out new… Read more »
Industry Week has identified three megatrends in manufacturing that will affect us all in the near future. New technologies Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things, additive manufacturing, cabinet-free servos, nanotechnology, collaborative robots, virtual reality — and much, much more. We’re seeing an explosion of disruptive technology in manufacturing. It’s exciting, but it’s also a… Read more »
Keith Campbell of On the Edge visited the NRA trade show and got a surprise. No, not that NRA — the National Restaurant Association, where he was surprised to find servos and sensors and robots and 3-D printers on the trade show floor. On asking around, Campbell learned that “increasing complexity of the industry, lack… Read more »
Rexroth is a leader in motion control, a leader in Industry 4.0, and a leader as well in industrial training. Now the company has combined all three in a new set of rigs designed to help students and workers learn the skills they need for the new smart factory of the future. Training provides a… Read more »
Carl Palme, Applications Product Manager at Rethink Robotics, has called collaborative robots “a PC with arms.” This flexibility is one reason that the market for collaborative robots is expected to top three billion dollars in the next five years. Flexibility is increasingly important as manufacturers receive pressure to do more different things in smaller spaces…. Read more »
Since Rexroth drive and control units are modular, it’s easy to replace a faulty unit. Just localize the problem, so that you can be sure which unit is faulty. Shut down the machine correctly if it has not already been shut down. Remove the faulty unit and replace it with an identical Rexroth unit. Power… Read more »
