The guys who can repair machinery and troubleshoot mechanical communication problems, see where new solutions need to be brought in and where traditional tactics will still work just fine, and design and configure a workplace in their heads — those guys are, on average, 56 years old. That means that a lot of these invaluable… Read more »
Industrial motion control includes robotics, but there’s a whole category of robot ideas that doesn’t apply in factories, breweries, or printing shops. Industrial robots don’t have faces, they don’t have personalities, and they don’t have voices, whether cute or scary. And they don’t do ecommerce. Until now. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pepper, the… Read more »
So you’ve got some cool new linear motion technology with Industry 4.0 applications you want to show off? What are you going to do with it? Obviously, put it on a truck and drive it around for everyone to admire! Add a disco soundtrack and some catchy phrases like “absolutely robust,” and yes of course… Read more »
Your motion control devices don’t care whether you speak English, Spanish, or German, and the new Industry 4.0 interfaces can allow operators to choose their preferred language. For a nation of immigrants like the U.S., this can be a great advantage, especially when the skills gap limits hiring options. Your servos, drives, and controls may… Read more »
Dr. Steffen Haack, a leader at Rexroth AG, wrote recently that he keeps meeting people who plan to “go it alone” with Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things. That’s not going to happen, says Dr. Haack. “Industry 4.0 will not only trigger innovations in production technologies,” he says, but “the automation industry itself will… Read more »
Move over, job loss — there’s a new potentially worrying consequence of industrial automation in town! Plenty of people worry that robots will take over all or jobs, and some may still be worrying about a robot uprising, but a new book by Craig Lambert suggests that there are human consequences to the rise of… Read more »
Rexroth has announced that it will be sponsoring the Contribution to Skills & Training category at the Motion Control Industry Awards in April 2016, in the UK. Rexroth’s Drive & Control Academy makes it an obvious top candidate for the Skills & Training category, with both face to face trainings in locations in Europe and… Read more »
IoT researcher Timo Elliott jokes that the first example of the Internet of Things was the canary that miners took into the mine shafts. Canaries would die from lack of oxygen before the miners realized they weren’t feeling so hot, so the hapless birds were an early warning system for bad air. The Industrial Internet… Read more »
Robots. We work with them, take care of them, and rely on them in ways many people don’t even realize. We also — in movies — fear them, get killed by them, and use them in evil plots. With Halloween coming up this weekend, we’ll probably be dressing up as robots either evil or cute,… Read more »
Rexroth’s showing the new EasyHandling Cartesian Motion System (CMS) at trade shows this season. So what’s Cartesian motion? It’s motion along three axes. Not just up and down. Not just back and forth. This is fancy motion. Not as fancy as six-axis motion, but plenty fancy enough for curvilinear movements. Cartesian motion is named for… Read more »
