Posts Categorized: Blog

Say Hello to Robot Baxter

Baxter has something that a lot of people don’t have. Something that can’t be taught. Something that is extremely important when it comes to working with people. Baxter has, “behavior-based ‘common sense,’ capable of sensing and adapting to its task and its environment.” The new robot named Baxter was designed by the Rodney Brooks, a… Read more »

Microchips Like Human Brains?

IBM has announced the development of a microchip inspired by the human brain. Of course, all computers have been inspired by the human brain. However, they have in the past been inspired by left brain processes like math and language. The new chips are looking more to right brain processes like sensing and pattern recognition…. Read more »

Taiwan Calls for People to Adapt to Robot Upsurge

The 2014 Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show presented plenty of new ideas in robotics, including two very big ideas. First, as countries like the U.S. decide to bring their manufacturing jobs home, Taiwan is looking for ways to extend their robotics industry beyond manufacturing. Robots that can be trained, they figure, will be able… Read more »

Growth Factors for Industrial Automation

A new report from IHS Technoloy lists three factors that can be expected to drive growth in the field of industrial automation. First, the trend toward technological convergence sees multiple kinds of technology working together. Specifically, IHS sees opportunities in the convergence of traditional production technologies with digital information technologies. It’s hard to predict how… Read more »

Food Processing and Packaging

Indramat motion control has many strengths and is used in many industries. There are some special factors in food processing and packaging that bring those strengths to the fore. The most important issue in food processing is cleanliness. Occasional headlines about contamination with e-coli or salmonella keep the importance of food cleanliness in the public’s… Read more »

Factory Fires

Bacardi rum’s Cataño, Puerto Rico plant is the latest factory fire to make headlines. The Cataño plant is the largest rum distillery in the world, producing 100,000 gallons of rum each day. The fire was described by observers as “massive,” but firefighters were able to get it under control quickly and no loss of lives… Read more »

What’s a Servo Motor?

Here’s a great introduction to servo motors. While we have some fine articles on the history and care of servo motors, this is a great starting point for people who don’t know what a servo motor is. If your interest in servos is not academic, if for example you need support for Indramat or Indradrive… Read more »

Open Architecture

Your industrial motion control probably involves lots of devices, sensors, motors, controls, drives, robots, packaging machines, and so forth. When you integrate all these things together, you can physically hook them up or use a proprietary system of some kind. But you can also use an open architecture system, which is what Indramat is known… Read more »

Cabinet Health for Your Indramat Drives

We often get calls from engineers who have just opened a sealed cabinet for the very first time and found a mysterious object marked “Indramat.” Often the cabinet has been ignored for years, even decades, and it was only found by following the cable to it from a piece of equipment that has stopped doing… Read more »

Industrial Automation North America

The upcoming Industrial Automation North America conference is expected to focus on robotics. 2013 was a banner year for robots and robot sales are expected to increase by another 6% this year. Why? An aging workforce and the skills gap are top contenders for the impetus behind increasing use of robots, but there are other… Read more »