Nidec Drives has deployed an automated solution to overcome the complexities of manual handling at its Newtown manufacturing site. In particular, variable speed drives have proved pivotal to the installation of a new conveyor system.

Textile handling machines push the boundaries of speed and precision, making a fit with the speed, precision, long range and reliability of Contrinex's analogue Inductive sensors. The sensor's accuracy of a few microns is used to measure the small changes in the position of a 'dancer' roller or 'follower', which tracks the fabric web's position and so indicates the web's tension.

Producing several million sustainable beverage cans per hour across its European plants, a can manufacturer needed to avoid unplanned machine downtime. Turning to Schaeffler's OPTIME condition monitoring solution has helped to prevent 360 hours of downtime.

Greaves 3D Engineering builds collapsible simulator with 45 igus components such as maintenance-free drylin linear and drive technology.

Three large, travelling-column bed mills at the Swansea factory of subcontractor Afon Engineering have been retrofitted with a Heidenhain TNC 320 control and new drives to improve their reliability and performance.

In a secondary packaging operation, bags of products like confectionery are often 'shingled', a process of layering them into a cardboard shipping box in alternating overlapped layers. Photoelectric sensors with background-suppression from Contrinex have provided a reliable means of checking the correct quantity of bags in each box.

Plug Power is transitioning from reactive to proactive service, building its new service structure around its ELX portal, based on IXON. Here it collects crucial operational data which it uses not only to improve response times but also to lay the foundation for future (after-sales) service models such as predictive maintenance.

One of Europe's largest private pathology providers has dramatically increased blood testing productivity at its Paris laboratory with a bespoke cold storage robotic automation system designed and built in the UK.

The renowned Belgian brewery Chimay, known for its traditional Trappist beer, relies on maintenance-free spherical bearings from igus in its bottling plant. By replacing rusty, seized ball bearings with lubrication-free igubal H3 bearing inserts, the brewery was able to increase efficiency and reduce maintenance.

F&S BONDTEC Semiconductor from Braunau, Austria, relies on image processing technology with industrial cameras from IDS Imaging Development Systems for the precise determination of wire positions and for quality assurance.