Industry 4.0 is here, or at least in a taxi and just about to pull up outside. Rexroth has a fully functional smart factory in place, and the Internet of Things is a reality. “We used to have to send out a team to find a problem in a system,” an engineer told us yesterday,… Read more »
You may have heard of Shark Tank, a TV show where entrepreneurs pitch products to venture capitalists who use their shark-like tendencies to make discussions of profit margins and SKUs into drama. People with brand new ideas for wheels, sunscreen, dog biscuits, and golf putters bring their prototypes or products into a studio where half… Read more »
Since 1974, Rexroth has been working with manufacturers in India from its facilities in Ahmedabad, Bangalore. In 2013, Rexroth built a state of the art factory in Sanand. And now, Rexroth is supporting the Make in India campaign (or the Make in India movement, as it is sometimes called), working toward making India a manufacturing… Read more »
We specialize in electric servo motors, drives, and controls, so we naturally are rooting for the electric contenders in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals coming up next week. There will be 25 entrants in the finals, which challenge robots to clear up debris from simulated disasters. Seven of the contenders are based on Atlas, a… Read more »
Mechatronics is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that brings a design focus to planning mechanical processes. Rexroth follows six basic principles of mechatronics: Intelligent integration Energy efficiency Modular design Intelligence Precision Load appropriateness As you’re thinking about the best design for your factory, it makes sense to explore a range of different options. The Rexroth… Read more »
Rexroth is known for intense support of education and connection with classroom training. It’s an outgrowth of their European roots, with a long tradition of apprenticeships, and its also their way to address the skills gap which is creating so many problems for manufacturers in the U.S. But what is it like to work as… Read more »
If you move your Rexroth servos, you may find that have to do some reconfiguration to help them work well in a new temperature, altitude, or humidity environment. Just think if you had to move them into space. A European group has been thinking about their machinery and how it will work in space, because… Read more »
Servo motors are still the best means of controlling industrial motion, and most of the dazzling new ideas in industrial automation these days come from AI (artificial intelligence). Here’s something new for robots, though: softness. Robots right now move in straight lines with straight arms. That’s fine for many uses, but a European study group… Read more »
The consequences of connected industry (the industrial Internet of Things) for businesses and the people who work in them are just beginning to come to light as technology gets off the digital drawing board and into the smart factory. Harvard Business School pointed out in a recent article that the first two waves of change… Read more »
Rexroth’s award-winning Industry 4.0 assembly line is using the smart factory technology of the future today. They’ve produced a video that gives us a better look at the approach. It’s energy efficient, practical, clean, way more accurate than humans, and — well, not really the technology of the future. The line was created as a… Read more »
