Delta robot redesign picks up the pace
The packaging industry's most successful rapid transfer robot — the Delta robot — was developed in Switzerland during the early 1980s by Reymond Clavel. Since then, this lightning-quick, spiderlike mechanism has spread to factories around the world, proliferating in packaging, medical, and pharmaceutical applications...
Cures for cogging in slotted linear motors
Slotted linear motors move with speed and precision, and are raising the bar on linear motion applications. They consist basically of magnets and windings. The magnets bond to an iron plate, forming a magnet-track assembly often called a " primary."...
Winning with Teamwork
Growing throughput demand in high-tech equipment — machines used in semiconductor manufacturing, electronic assembly, and medical automation in particular — is a source of continual challenge for today's motion controllers. Not only does it require more integration flexibility at the system level, but also higher resolution and repeatability in the feedback signals shared among components....
Vibration control
How does vibration control or lack thereof affect productivity and throughput in industrial motion systems? ...
The Motion of Pick-and-Place
Pick-and-place machines are used in a wide variety of applications throughout the consumer products industry. The speed and precision with which they perform their respective tasks directly affects productivity, and ultimately, the bottom line....
Commanding new heights
Almost all motion controllers on the market today can synchronize two or more axes. But too many times, this merely means that the controller has the ability to effectively parallel command signals to two or more drives, or follow a master encode...
The motion of material handling
Material handling, in most cases, refers to operations where components are moved between processes with little or no value added during the transition. In other words, there are no changes to the form, shape, or content of the materials being moved. As a result, material-handling interval times should be kept to a minimum. ...
Applying kinematics to motion control
For years, most motion system designers wanting to create motion in a 2D plane or in 3D space would use a Cartesian mechanism. The perpendicular action of Cartesian actuators makes several things easy for the system designer. First, Cartesian coordinates are commonly used and familiar. Second, having Cartesian actuators provides for a direct mapping of tool coordinates to actuator positions...
AC made EZ
Motion engineers generally fall into two camps when it comes to ac drive technology: Those already taking advantage of its benefits — low price, compact design, simplicity — and those who will soon start. Both groups, however, face a similar challenge in that they must understand the difference between ac drive types in order to select the right one for a particular job...
A beginner's guide to Ethernet Powerlink
Ethernet is a high-speed communications-network commonly found in factories. It sends information from PCs to destinations such as other PCs, servers, scanners, and printers. Since the 1970s, Ethernet has been used in offices, as a backbone for the Internet, and is now expanding to industrial automation. To attest to its widespread use, Ethernet is also defined in IEEE 802.3, which covers the physical hardware, voltage levels, and structure of its frame...
Motion in printing
Today's most common printing machines use a flexographic process. Flexography is a direct rotary printing method that uses a raised image surface to print on a variety of substrates. The printed image is created on rubber or photopolymer plates by removing and lowering nonprinting areas. The patterned plates are then attached to rotating cylinders of various diameters to produce images. ...
Motion control in wind/unwind multi-strand converters
Perhaps the best way to describe this system is by examining a multiple-web converter— a handling system that converts many individual web streams into one web of manufactured product. To start, a motion controller directs four unwinds (each with its own tension control), laminator, die, nip roll, traverse axis, and rewinder (also containing its own tension control). A die-sealing axis cuts the base web into individual strips, combines some with wrapper stock, and uses the remainder to seal the stock into a finished web. ...
Graphical motion controller design
Off-the-shelf motion controllers are a convenient and economical solution for most automation needs. But when applications demand more than the average offtheshelf (OTS) controller can provide — faster servo update rates, better adaptability to changeovers, intelligent fault handling, and advanced feedback techniques — it may be necessary to design a specialized controller. To do so, one must recognize the need for it, understand how a motion controller works, and then design it. ...
Conversion excursion: Following the paper trail...
Converting is the process of taking a raw medium and transforming it into a functional end product. This could be as simple as converting a roll of paper stock into measure-cut and stacked reams, which could be converted once more in a printing, coating, creping, or embossing process, resulting in stationery, literature, or paper napkins....
