The National Association of Manufacturers reports that one quarter of U.S. manufacturers had to turn down business opportunities for one simple reason: not enough workers. American manufacturing has been suffering from a lack of qualified workers for years. Manufacturing has changed, and now requires more tech skills, which new grads mostly don’t have. American students… Read more »
Retail behemoth Walmart will bring thousands more robots into its stores. This, Walmart says, will make the human workers happy. Automation is supposed to make workers happy. Workers who can give up repetitive, tedious, or dangerous jobs should be happy. Walmart is taking human beings out of the most unsatisfying jobs, like scrubbing floors or… Read more »
The Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was organized in 1866. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children followed not long after, in 1874. The Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots was founded in 1999. Their idea is not so much that we should be courteous to industrial robot… Read more »
New Belgium brewery in Ft. Collins, Colorado, has one of the most efficient, greenest, most sustainable production facilities around. Part of this is using wind, solar, and methane for energy; reusing and repurposing multiple materials for everything from furniture to art installations; reclaiming and reusing water and heat; and thinking from the dumpster back when… Read more »
If you use Rexroth electric motion control, you’ve probably come to rely on the components for consistent, trouble-free performance year in and year out. At some point, however, you may need service or support. In fact, you might think about replacing your servo, drive, or control with a newer model. That shouldn’t be your first… Read more »
Rexroth is showing new products and applications at this year’s trade shows. The Mechatronics@Work demo collects and displays machine and production data. This is central to Industry 4.0, which relies on ubiquitous capture of data to inform decision making. Using the Rexroth IoT Gateway, the Smart Assembly 4.0 Conveyor collects, displays, and communicates data from… Read more »
New connections in factories are opening lots of possibilities for increasing performance, tracking environmental factors, and heading problems off at the pass. Sensors catch temperature, vibration, pressure, velocity, and all the myriad variations in the performance of machines. But they can also track human performance. Smart wearables can identify the highs and lows in a… Read more »
Servo noise can cause a range of problems. Electrical noise in the sense of variations in voltage or current can interfere with feedback and generally confuse the systems. Dirty electricity can create real problems, but there is always some noise in any electrical system. Using the right cables and using them correctly can help with… Read more »
Researchers in robotics spend a lot of time on mobility, grasping, and things of that nature. But new area of research is moving into prominence. Robot voices are becoming more common… and bringing up new issues as they do so. Robot gender Robots don’t usually have a gender… unless they have a voice. Research suggests… Read more »
Your Rexroth DKC drives are at risk from something you might not think about much: condensation. Condensation is the change from a gaseous state to a liquid state. In this context, we’re talking about water vapor in the air changing to liquid drops of water on your drive. Not a good thing. What causes condensation… Read more »
