Rare earth elements were the darlings of industrial motion control in the 1990s and early 2000s, providing the power for permanent-magnet synchronous motors. Then a variety of political and economic factors drove the price of rare earth elements up, leading to the boom and bust in rare earth a couple of years ago. One of… Read more »
Bosch, as in Bosch Rexroth, the parent company of the manufacturers of Rexroth and Indradrive electric motion control systems, makes a smart-car accessory called a drivelog dongle. The Bosch Drivelog Connector OBD-II dongle, to be exact. Users of the dongle can easily pair it with the Drivelog Connect phone app, using bluetooth technology. The app… Read more »
Britain is getting ready to vote on the serious question of whether they should leave the European Union. The EU, like the United States, is a group of political entities that have agreed to share currency. Its members can travel freely from one member state to another, they can work anywhere, retire anywhere and draw… Read more »
The world’s first industrial-level 3D printing facility will be built in the U.S. in partnership between Rexroth and Norsk Titanium, a major aerospace tech company that uses additive manufacturing in titanium to make specialized parts — check out their ad above. 10 servo axes will control the feeding of the titanium wire into the build… 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 »
A new report on servo motor markets tells us that Asia is the strongest market going forward. Countries like India, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan continue to be central to global manufacturing, and they’re trying to ramp up their capacity and to increase automation. North America and Europe are growing more slowly as… Read more »
On the one hand, we hear that reshoring is huge, that we’re bringing jobs back home, and that the global economy is being affected by the loss of U.S. business interests abroad. On the other hand, we hear that companies trying to source manufacturing in the U.S. are discouraged: we’ve lost our capacity for sourcing… Read more »
Energy is not in short supply. We may be working our way through fossil fuels pretty briskly, but our entire world is one big, bright bunch of energy. Getting that energy to do things we want — like power machines and keep our buildings lit — is the challenge. One of the most interesting possibilities… Read more »
As reshoring continues to bring manufacturing jobs home to the U.S., China is figuring out how to leverage its impressive manufacturing chops with much less American investment. One way is to improve technical training in China. Instead of an army of low-paid workers, China is ready to focus on manufacturing innovation and highly skilled work…. Read more »
Rexroth has a history of collaboration with schools in support of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education. Rexroth has also been affected by the challenges most U.S. manufacturing companies have faced in hiring qualified workers. Now, in a major collaboration with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system and other industry leaders, Rexroth has built a new center… Read more »
