The old rule was to separate our personal and business endeavors. Traditionally, business activities became social only occasionally, at conferences and in entertaining while developing partner and customer relationships. But, the power of social media has proven too large to ignore. With potential in business intelligence, access to expertise, and new product ideas, social media is not just for personal use anymore. Today, companies ignore Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ at their competitive peril. As the wall between private and business life crumbles, here's a look at ways social media improves manufacturing, including making software systems like Enterprise Resource Planning and Manufacturing Execution work better.

SPB-USA is a recognized leader in the manufacturing of precision miniature and medium-size bearings in inch and metric dimensions. All EZO bearings are available in 52100 chrome steel or 440 stainless steel. Our EZO bearings range from .06 mm bore diameter to 90 mm bore diameter, with a variety of closures.

Linear air bearings by Specialty Components, Inc. provide translation in a plane and are commonly found in supports for coordinate measuring machines, semiconductor pick-and-place machinery, gantry systems, micromachining centers, etc. These exhibit frictionless motion of magnitude more accurate than the finest mechanical rolling element type bearings.

New from C-Flex — leader in flexing metal technology. The Lattice Coupling permits large axial, radial, angular misalignments while transmitting high torque loads with zero backlash. Our coupling combines the best qualities of disc, beam, and bellows couplings in a unique, economical design.

See more and a special trial program at C-Flex dot com.

Built on almost six decades of Sumitomo excellence in power transmission engineering, the Paramax 9000 Series BOSS Conveyor Drives are optimized for precise horsepower, torque, speed, and duty cycle to ensure long life and cost-effective operation.

For applications requiring small incremental movement, micron repeatability, and high stiffness, this unit incorporates an anti-creep cage with cross roller bearings, providing reliability in handling loads to 7 kg. Using a high-efficiency lead-screw or high-precision ball screw with the mini linear positioner will allow it to produce 40 N of thrust.

Responding to demands for greater longevity, this California supplier added not just a sensor, but a new technology platform: magnetic, Hall-effect rotary position sensors. The non-contact devices are designed for 50 million cycles, even in high-vibration environments. Redundant mechanical and magnetic functions make it dependable even when systems are dormant for extended periods.

Engineers typically order motion hardware either standard off-the-shelf (limiting design flexibility) or custom-made (paying more and losing time). Misumi promotes a third route for their linear actuators and robotic elements: configurable components. Engineers order parts by specifying exact design parameters — instead of having to locate and match many bits and pieces from standard components.

You want accuracy and compactness but need choices? These miniature stages are available in standard, vacuum, or UHV versions. The inherent braking and holding of piezoelectric motors produces a device having zero backlash and in-position stability. Cross-roller bearings add high stiffness as well. Bottom line is a fast-settling unit with overall accuracy of 10 arc-sec.

Toledo Gearmotor Company offers a complete line of custom and standard gear reducers, manufactured with experience and quality that has been proven since 1948. We are a complete machine shop, capable of modifying our product line or any parts to meet specific requirements.

A unique patent pending design, the CC-S series is a range of heavy-duty elevator buckets designed to outperform other agricultural buckets by offering greater capacities, longer life, and cleaner discharges. With the CC-S series stackable design, there is the added benefit of substantial freight and storage space savings.

Smart motors were a big step forward in automation, integrating so much into single devices. But "do-all" motors didn't solve the issue of centralized or distributed control. Combitronic, a new communication protocol, combines the best of both approaches, and permits synchronized starts and stops for up to 120 servomotors without master-slave hierarchies.

Need constant data from every actuator in your plant? IO-Link can provide it. The point-to-point communication interface is gaining support among drive manufacturers. Latest to sign on is Siemens, which is equipping all its monitoring relays. The IO-Link increases safety by sending speed, network quality, current, voltage, and other data directly to the control level.

Sure, these Ethernet servo drives give designers flexibility for individual projects. They offer plug-and-play set-up, out-of-the-box feedback and bus options, and auto tuning. But the broad 0.5 to 64 kW power range and market-fastest loop updates also makes these devices worthy of consideration if your operation standardizes on a single drive family.

Still too common in motion systems, backlash can damage screw threads and cause premature wear. Duff-Norton's solution: an actuator with a separate anti-backlash nut, a design that smooths motion and minimizes wear — and allows users to adjust backlash to minimum practical value when wear does occur, without disassembly. Among the target applications is satellite tracking.

A stainless steel series of Cablecraft Motion Control's most popular rod end features an injected molded nylon race design that offers low maintenance and self-lubricating characteristics. These rod ends excel in applications requiring corrosion resistance, low friction, high wear resistance, and low moisture absorption. Visit us online for more information.

Sometimes product quality is perceived by the noise and vibration it produces. Whirs, clicks, ticks, growls, rumbles, or worse — those other objectionable noises. Your customer can complain about a lot of issues, so don't let noise and vibration be one of them. At Signalysis, we accurately pinpoint those subjective quality issues.

This presentation covers market and development trends in electronic control of 3-phase motors in embedded applications. It focuses on AC induction (ACIM), permanent magnet synchronous (PMSM), and brushless DC (BLDC) motors, microcontrollers (MCU) and digital signal controllers (DSC). Trends in cost, performance, integration, efficiency, and application development methods are analyzed.

No one really cares, even friends, that you washed your dog. And, if you're posting on a social media site for business, it's even more important not to overload your "followers" with trivia. Here are a few quick guidelines on using social media effectively, including the best business sites, to help build your brand.

Electrical engineers in Germany have developed a new concept for ultrafast semiconductor lasers. Making use of the spin of electrons, they have taken a step to developing high-speed optical data transmission for tomorrow. Their device has broken previous speed records and shows potential to achieve modulation frequencies above 100 GHz.

Where to Find the Big Bucks?

CEOs score the fattest paychecks, some say still overpaid. But what industries or segments are overpaid? Finance has been hot for a generation; are money men paid too much? Will engineers ever earn bigger bucks? Would bigger paychecks solve the shortage of engineers?

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