Posts Categorized: Blog

The Future of Collaborative Robots

Traditional industrial robots are designed to work on their own, a safe distance from human workers. They may be in a cage, behind a guard rail, or even in a separate room from the people working in the same facility. Collaborative robots are able to work alongside humans safely, working together to accomplish a specific… Read more »

National STEAM Day

November 8th is National STEM Day or National STEAM Day — you pick! What’s the difference? STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering Math STEAM stands for Science Technology Engineering Art Math These are two approaches to replacing the old teaching scheme of Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmetic with 21st century skills. Nea1rly all the fastest-growing careers… Read more »

What’s Your Operating System?

Never mind Mac vs. PC. What does your equipment run? When you decide between Mac and Windows, there are a lot of issues to consider. You have to think about price, of course, but you also need to think about things like vulnerability to viruses, elegance of design, available software, intuitive graphic user interface, and… Read more »

Is the US a Manufacturing Powerhouse?

Rexroth is a German company, historically, but the company has a strong presence in the United States. When Rexroth came to the U.S., America was a manufacturing powerhouse. Is the United States still a manufacturing powerhouse? source: tradingeconomics.com U.S. production has increased significantly  in the past decade. The most recent figures show that we make… Read more »

Manufacturing Misconceptions

A new survey has determined that Americans have negative misconceptions of manufacturing. 1. They think that manufacturing is in decline. In fact, manufacturing jobs are on the rise, and manufacturers have trouble filling those jobs. 2. They think that factory jobs don’t pay well. In fact, manufacturing jobs average more than $20.00 per hour, with… Read more »

Robots in the Stock Market

Hedge fund managers were early adopters of AI and financial advisors are on just about everyone’s list of jobs soon to be taken over by robots. But it was still a first when a cobot rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The robot was the UR5e robot arm from Universal Robots,… Read more »

Rexroth Manuals

Ah, technical manuals. It’s hard to imagine a less thrilling topic, but when you need them, you really need them. I remember one company we worked with. This firm’s unofficial motto was “RTFM – Read The Fantastic Manual.” The phone support staff had standing orders to ask every customer if they had their manual handy,… Read more »

Rexroth’s Smart Workstation

Bosch Rexroth and Tulip have gotten together to create a Smart Workstation. Company representatives say that this will completely redefine the manufacturing workstation. First off, you can customize the design online and have the perfect-for-you workbench delivered to your facility. The demand for customization by consumers has been in the “challenges” column for manufacturers for… Read more »

When Machines Outrank Humans

It’s National Boss’s Day, when we naturally start thinking about … our robot overlords. It sometimes seems as though there are so many things that can go wrong with machinery that we don’t really need to worry about having to answer to robot bosses. They’d have heatsink over temperature faults and shut themselves off before… Read more »

National Farmers Day

It’s National Farmers Day, and you can be sure that farmers aren’t worrying about losing their jobs to robots. Robots are currently not very good at many farm tasks. They can’t plant seedlings. They have trouble distinguishing ripe fruit or even recognizing leaves. They don’t have the delicacy to work on one particular plant out… Read more »