Modularity, simple installation, and drastically reduced space requirements as well as minimum cabling - these are the key benefits of cabinet-free drive technology. Based on 20 years of development experience in this field, Bosch Rexroth now also offers a cabinet-free solution in protection class IP65 with the ctrlX DRIVE cabinet-free.

Hydrogen is considered the energy carrier of the future. Its potential applications are diverse: it is used in industry when steelmaking, in the chemical or glass industry, for mobility as fuel for fuel cell vehicles or for electricity reconversion. The downside of the energy carrier: the gas is colourless and odourless, while at the same time highly flammable. Appropriate safety measures and safe monitoring systems are therefore required during production and handling, as Armin Glaser, Pilz vice president for strategy and cooperation explains.

In the 1971 film, Willy Wonka, an egg testing machine decides that Veruca Salt is a bad egg and sends her down the waste chute after she sings, I Want it Now. But does the egg tester use machine learning or a neural network to decide? Here, Ivalyo Ivanov, support engineer at PC-based control specialist Beckhoff UK, compares two tools in the AI toolbox.

When a Formula One car takes a corner at 150 miles per hour or a jet engine powers up mid-flight, there is no room for error. Every component, every system has already been pushed to its limits in controlled conditions long before it sees real-world action. Here, Beth Ragdale, software business manager at automation specialist Beckhoff UK, explains why building the tools to run those tests and scaling them for production is a challenge that machine builders are quietly wresting with.

According to experts from Regal Rexnord, the best way to improve hygiene in bakeries is not just through cleaner materials or easier access, but by reducing the number of potential failure points across the system as a whole.

For all but the very highest force requirements, electric servo presses provide numerous advantages over their historic, hydraulic counterparts. The actuator is integral to press capability, as well as production quality, and levels of productivity, making its specification central to electric servo press design. Gerard Bush, engineer at INMOCO, discusses the motion requirements for linear servo press design.

In a recent conversation with a system integrator, PLUS Automation managing director Mark Weymouth got to discussing the special or best sensors in his 'tool kit'. That conversation inspired him to pick a sensor and explain why this robust, unusually shaped, IP69K-rated inductive sensor from Contrinex is especially useful across a wide variety of industries and applications.

The updated ISO 14119:2024 standard - covering interlocking devices associated with guards - was published just a few months ago, replacing the 2013 version. This revision is essential for machine builders, end users, and safety professionals. The experts at Fortress Safety discuss the changes.

The new Deep 3D Matching technology from MVTec recognises the exact position of objects even under difficult conditions, making picking from a box safe, fast, and efficient.

It would be fair to say that present day IO-Link sensors achieve speeds which are, at the very least, on par with conventional signals. However, the latest IO-Link technology offers decisive advantages in process automation systems, although the potential of the digital interface is far from being fully exploited, as the experts at Baumer explain.