Machine Building

New drive package cuts energy costs for steel company

SEW Eurodrive has supplied and commissioned a new drive package for Sheffield-based Bedford Steels, supplier of hollow bar to the mining and construction industry. It replaces one originally installed in 1951 and will significantly reduce the company's energy consumption, increase production and simplify the maintenance regime.

2nd February 2015

HepcoMotion products in use at solar tube manufacturer

Solar tubes require careful handling and accurate positioning, especially at high duty cycles and in an environment where lubrication needs to be kept to a minimum. Any oil or grease residue from the guidance systems coming into contact with the tube panel could affect the function of the finished product. This solar tube manufacturer needed two 6m systems in parallel to support the cross axis that carries the panels. With only local support available for the 6m structure any system would need to have good functional straightness with sufficient compliance to accomodate inaccuracies in setting.

28th January 2015

New miniature rescue robot for Warwick Mobile Robotics

Warwick Mobile Robotics (WMR) is an ongoing group research project carried out by a team of fourth year undergraduate students at the University of Warwick. This project is jointly run by the School of Engineering and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). WMG are an institution within the University of Warwick, dedicated to improving organisational competitiveness through the application of technological innovation. maxon motor uk have been involved with WMR on several projects and are delighted to sponsor the team again for 2015.

28th January 2015

Servo technology increases air filter production by 70 per cent

For their new generation air filters production machines, Keilmann Group near Frankfurt chose Lenze servo drives and achieved a 70 per cent increase in output compared with previous frequency inverter-driven machines. The new machine produces what are known as pocket filters commonly used in air handling systems. Pocket filters consist of a number of panels of filter material that are cut to a waisted profile and stitched together. Lenze servo drives control the material in- and outfeed plus dynamic positioning of the sewing heads at up to 10 stiches per second.

27th January 2015

Infra-red heating systems helps maintain chocolate quality

A precisely controllable, two-zone carbon infra-red heating system from Heraeus Noblelight is helping to ensure consistent chocolate quality at Ashbury Chocolates Ltd, of Corby, by pre-heating chocolate moulds prior to filling. The quartz infra-red system also saves considerable space over the metal element heating system which was previously employed.

23rd January 2015

Bakery saves EUR27,000 per year thanks to NSK bearings

NSK's Molded-Oil bearing technology has produced annual savings of more than EUR27,000 for a major food producer on the operation of the main make-up conveyor within a bakery. The producer was experiencing failures every 6 weeks with approximately 36 bearings being replaced every year, which was causing considerable downtime and lost production.

23rd January 2015

Eaton helps Advetec keep waste digestion under control

Eaton is now the exclusive supplier of all key automation components used by Advetec Advanced Environmental Technologies, a world leader in the development and manufacture of bio-thermic waste disposal technology. Integrating Eaton products has allowed Advetec to devise control systems that are fast to build, intuitive in operation and, crucially, easy to maintain, with spare parts readily available in every part of the world.

23rd January 2015

Customised option for crane drive synchronisation

What to do when the crane of your choice is no longer available? An Australian provider of overhead cranes fulfils all customer needs, even when the parameters are very particular. For this application, the challenge was to synchronise a new bridge crane with two existing ones. Nord Drivesystems configured the drives keeping in mind the end-users budgetary requirements.

21st January 2015

MiniTec's profile system helps Zen improve golf putting platform

MiniTec's modular aluminium profile-based machine building system is helping Zen, the British golf innovator and exporter in two ways; supplying framing and components for an artificial putting platform and providing a cost-reducing logistics service that enables large framing components to be sourced close to Zen's international customer base.

20th January 2015

Renishaw's new pioneering encoder boldly goes into space

Renishaw has reached another milestone in the application of its technology by deploying products in space for the first time. The European Space Agency's Sentinel-1A satellite was launched from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 3rd 2014, with Renishaw's new space-encoder technology installed on the advanced Optical Communications Payload (OCP) of the satellite; part of an inter-satellite laser communication system. The OCP provides an optical Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) communications link via a pair of Laser Communication Terminals (LCT) by space telecommunications company Tesat-Spacecom (Tesat) of Backnang, Germany. The GEO LCT is currently accommodated on Europe's AlphaSat.

20th January 2015