Machine Building

YuMi - ABB's collaborative robot celebrates 5th birthday

ABB Robotics' dual-arm YuMi collaborative robot has reached its fifth birthday this year. Originally launched in 2015 to assist workers in lightweight assembly tasks, the robot has gone on to be used in a diverse range of applications and industries, opening up new opportunities and helping to fire people's imaginations about what can be achieved with robotic automation.

19th June 2020

Scrappage scheme for old machinery and equipment?

Make UK (formerly the Engineering Employers Federation) has been highlighting the case for the Government to help manufacturing recover from COVID-19 by implementing a new scrappage scheme. It is proposing that it covers old IT, plant and machinery as an incentive for cash-strapped firms to invest in new automation, machinery and digitisation to boost both output and exports.

19th June 2020

Motor efficiency at a new level - news from Nord Drive Systems

Nord Drive Systems says that its new IE5+ motor range "Offers a constant high efficiency in a hygienic design that raises the LogiDrive concept for intralogistics to a new level with regard to energy efficiency" and thus provides a reduced cost of ownership. The company's latest generation products feature lower losses than the current IE4 series, and its unventilated smooth motor achieves an efficiency that, at times, is stated to be "Significantly above efficiency class IE5 across a wide torque range, and is suitable for operation in the partial load rang".

18th June 2020

Rockwell Automation announces Factory Insights as a Service

PTC and Rockwell Automation have announced Factory Insights as a Service, a turnkey cloud service that enables manufacturers to achieve impact, speed, and scale with their digital transformation initiatives. The new offering, unveiled during PTC's Global Partner Summit event at the recent LiveWorx 2020 digital transformation event, "Marks a significant advancement to the collaboration among Rockwell Automation, Microsoft, and PTC" says Rockwell.

18th June 2020

Southern Manufacturing & Electronics 2021 dates confirmed

Southern Manufacturing & Electronics has confirmed that it will be returning to Farnborough International next year on the 20-22nd April 2021. The show has been rescheduled from its regular dates in February to avoid conflicting with other events postponed from 2020, and to provide the greatest benefit to visitors and exhibitors as they bounce back from the effects of lockdown.

17th June 2020

Kollmorgen announces obsolescence of Servostar 400 Series

Kollmorgen has announced the discontinuation of all variants of its S400 Series servo drive product line. Although this digital multi-axis motion control system has been successfully implemented in a wide variety of applications for many years, the company says that it has become more and more uneconomical to manufacture.

17th June 2020

Patented cyanoacrylate adhesives reduce manufacturing trade-offs

Adhesives specialist Intertronics has been appointed as a distributor of Born2Bond, a new range of cyanoacrylate (CA) adhesives, said to be suitable for bonding applications in high-technology industries such as medical devices, electronics assembly, and automotive manufacturing and aftermarket. According to Intertronics these new, patented products can overcome the speed issues of a traditional methoxyethyl cyanoacrylate (MECA) product, but still offer the stability and strength of an ethyl cyanoacrylate (ECA), meaning manufacturers can use CA adhesives with fewer compromises.

17th June 2020

FANUC offers free trial of robot simulation software

FANUC UK is offering its ROBOGUIDE and CNC GUIDE simulation software programmes as free trials until the end of September, as part of an effort to kickstart industry following the recent challenges we've all faced. Both of the programmes are designed to enhance productivity by providing users with the ability to run offline simulations from standard PC equipment.

15th June 2020

FLIR Screen-EST software to improve skin temperature screening

FLIR has just announced the arrival of a new weapon in the fight against COVID-19. The company has introduced Screen-ESTTM software for the FLIR T-Series, Exx-Series, and A-Series thermal imaging cameras. The software is now available and provides automatic measurement tools that perform elevated skin temperature screenings of individuals in less than two seconds.

15th June 2020

Mitsubishi Electric webinar

If you're available on Thursday 25th June at 1030 you may be able to join the next "Back to Production" webinar hosted by Mitsubishi Electric. The company says it will explore added value services such as cyber security and harmonic surveys, legacy equipment obsolescence reports and tiered service contracts, all within a multi-vendor equipment environment with solutions for legacy product migration and preventative maintenance too.

15th June 2020