Industrial Automation Services Reference Materials

Description: Companies that make home appliances, often known as "white goods," are going through a profound shake-up. Long-established firms with commanding leads in the market are being challenged by Asian ...

Description: This comprehensive guide authored by the team at Tri-Mation Industries helps those interested in automation to build more efficient RFQ's. The result is better communication, more accurate quoting, ...

Description: Industrial automation (I.A.) is a complex and rapidly evolving field, and as such, the demand for high-quality and engaging blog content in this area is greater than ever before. With the help of ...

Description: Medical device manufacturers face a clear imperative to automate, yet they also have many unique requirements that can make choosing an automation partner challenging. Manual processes are ...

Description: While most companies focus on pay levels and benefits packages when considering ways to attract and retain employees, companies that use plastic assemblies and parts in their manufacturing operations ...

Description: Companies that make home appliances, often known as "white goods," are going through a profound shake-up. Long-established firms with commanding leads in the market are being challenged by Asian ...

Description: 2HN Automation provides advanced technologies implementation for industries across the board. Their control system strategies, remote, cloud-based monitoring and dashboard systems help them fulfill ...

Description: I love fun facts, especially those that disprove common misconceptions. Here are a few that should really screw with your head: the pterodactyl was not a dinosaur. In fact, dinosaurs didn’t fly ...

Description: It was 3:00 AM and I couldn’t sleep. My wife had made her way to my side of the bed and was pinning my arm down and snoring. I wanted to get up and read to see if that would help, but I knew ...

Description: A paper manufacturer in the Great Northwest using Allen-Bradley legacy MicroLogix™ Controllers was unable to connect a computer to their older equipment. They needed a speed signal transferred ...

Description: The Bellagio Hotel and Casino – modeled after the opulent Lake Como Resort in Bellagio, Italy, and known as the pinnacle of luxury in Las Vegas – had a big problem and a small budget with ...

Description: By implementing these five principles of flexible assembly line design, manufacturers can pursue lean manufacturing in their current operation while also building in capability to maintain or add lean ...

Description: What does it actually mean when you say "clean?"? ...

Description: While automation technology has evolved from waterpower and steam engines to the proliferation of electric cars, internet of things (IoT) technologies and the advanced computational abilities needed ...

Description: There’s no doubt that the manufacturing industry requires credible, repeatable, and sustainable testing and qualification across the board, from raw materials (steel, alloy, polymer, composite, ...

Description: Fastener automation is an effective way to get more out of a process, while enhancing reliability and increasing tracking abilities. While some class of automation is an obvious solution, the question ...

Description: It's important to avoid the dispersion of microbial particles in hospital environments and cleanrooms that produce pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Compromised air quality can contaminate products or ...

Description: Know Your ABC's When it Comes to MSD's: ...

Description: Benjamin Franklin said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and that certainly rings true today, especially in the processing industry where safety and efficiency are of the utmost ...

Description: Your industrial mixer will likely be with you 20+ years, so it's important to make a choice that will serve your production line long-term. If you've come from an industrial planning background, or if ...

Description: We often get questions from our customers about the use of agitator shafts and what works best for their application, so we performed an analysis of the features and benefits of agitator shafts to ...

Description: Let's say you're the lead configuration engineer on the automation portion of a green-field plant installation project, and you need to give your start-up guys a head start with a set of default PID ...

Description: New plant upgrades or expansion projects don't have to be late or bust the budget. With good planning and strong management, they can finish on time - or even early. ...

Description: Organizational hierarchy creates conflict in any workplace, but working in plants and factories with a high degree of automation presents unique challenges. Automation work is highly technical and ...

Description: When automation is inadequate or used incorrectly, it can cause serious incidents leading to loss of production, equipment damage, environmental releases, and harm to personnel. Here's how to prevent ...

Description: C-suite executives tend to delegate manufacturing strategy to the manufacturing experts and IT strategy to the technology experts. Historically, that was a good strategy. Now, with the emergence of ...

Description: This platform turns up in many places, and can do many things, but there aren't many that really understand it. Here is a quick guide to explain the basics. ...

Description: Frequently Asked Questions about the Continental Rollo-Mixer ® Batch Mixer ...

Description: Today's innovations in industrial automation are largely focused on interconnectivity. Powerful new technologies provide industry professionals with unprecedented abilities to "see" what is happening ...

Description: This white paper is the first in a series to outline a new epoch of industrial automation. All aspects of control system reliability, security and lifecycle cost have been rethought from first ...

Description: This white paper is the second in a series to describe a new epoch of industrial automation. All aspects of industrial control system (ICS) reliability, security and lifecycle cost have been rethought ...

Description: Tupac might have been the first, but he's far from the only deceased star to be given the digital treatment. A Michael Jackson version appeared not long afterwards, and just last year saw a Roy ...

Description: Let's explore how a new, high-end sorting system was experiencing vibration, which increased the risk that packages would fall off the conveyor. ACE miniature shock absorbers put a stop to this ...

Description: Recent advances in the internet of things (IoT) have resulted in an explosion of new products and applications for automation, including smart homes and cities, autonomous vehicles, fastening ...

Description: The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a network of intelligent systems and computers that are connected to the Internet in order to share and collect data. A 'thing' can be any physical object or device ...

Description: Qube Bulk, a division of Australia's largest provider of import and export logistics services, manages more than 22 million tons (20 million mt) of bulk product shipments per year, which now includes ...

Description: JOHNEX manufactures the explosive using a custom designed 30 ft (9 m) high carousel in which 12 tubes are filled with one of two grades of Buttbuster explosive. Delivering each grade of powder from a ...

Description: a problem-free way of transporting ground coffee," Di Ruocco notes. "Any other conveying option would entail higher cost with no additional benefit. When a machine works as well as this one does, ...

Description: Kaneka North America LLC needed an efficient, dust-free method of re-packaging PVC modifiers to replace manual methods in place since 2003. ...

Description: There are many considerations when dealing with parts to be assembled. One overriding goal however, should be to automate as much of the process as possible. While most designers focus on the ...

Description: Generally, machine velocity and positioning systems are controlled using devices like linear actuators, hydraulic pumps or electric motors, such as a servo. However, motion control utilizes special ...

Description: Industrial automation is a broad topic that covers everything from digital manufacturing to simple control systems handling machines and processes, Industry 4.0 to the smart factory. It entails the ...

Description: Industrial automation promises to reduce production costs, optimize manufacturing, improve consistency and quality of products and more. To achieve these benefits, manufacturers and industry owners ...

Description: Like most of business today, industrial automation highly depends on information technology. Some of the main information technology areas used in the industrial automation context include ...

Description: Automation in the manufacturing industry has evolved from the use of basic hydraulic and pneumatic systems to today's modern robots. Most industrial operations are automated with the goal of boosting ...

Description: Somehow it still seems like a joke that only happens in the movies. But folks, this is real life. The United Kingdom (UK) decided to leave the European Union (EU) and fend for themselves in what has ...

Description: Industrial automation systems are categorized based on their integration level and flexibility in the manufacturing processes and operations. Different types of automation systems include: fixed ...

Description: Industry 4.0 refers to a trend or concept in the current manufacturing industry that focuses on automation of processes and data exchange. The initiative integrates the IoT, cyber-enhanced systems and ...

Description: Industrial automation software is used in a wide variety of applications. Unlike using hardware motion control, for instance, which comes with several limitations and elevated operational costs, there ...

Description: There was a time not too long ago when corrugated printing meant adding blue or black logos and text to the plain cardboard box a product was shipped in. Or adding to the front of a pizza box the ...

Description: If you work in manufacturing, chances are you've heard about "The Internet of Things." As defined in this Forbes article, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the concept of connecting to the ...

Description: As defined in strategy+business magazine, Industry 4.0 is the combination of innovations in digital technologies-advancements such as robotics and artificial intelligence, sophisticated sensors, cloud ...

Description: Often machine designers and builders are tasked to develop a work cell that solves a single problem on their customer's manufacturing floor. However, the factory of the future is flexible and uses ...

Description: In The Future of Manufacturing in the United States, pre-visualization of new products, having a flexible factor floor, and collecting and using factor floor data are just three of many aspects of the ...

Description: Pick up or browse any industrial publication and you can read multitudes of opinions that the United States is on the brink of the next Industrial Revolution. This may all be hyperbole, but since the ...

Description: In its article, "Booming Boards, Big Growth," the July 2016 issue of FLEXO Magazine addressed this trend in packaging, stating: "Sustainability is no longer a just nice to have, but is now seen as a ...

Description: Oy Saab-Valmet Ab is a major car manufacturer in Finland. In the 1980's they put on-line a computer controlled spraying system. After evaluating Norcross and several other viscometers, Norcross was ...

Description: Automatic viscosity control with Norcross systems in the flexographic printing industry is so commonplace, that it's hard to visualize news from a flexopant. The instalation at Cryovac Canada, Ltd., ...

Description: Test results from International Paper. The Wilmington Ohio plant conducted some tests. The ink supply to the press was controlled and delivered at a 17 Zahn Cup second. This resulted in less variation ...

Description: Figure 1 shows the two surfaces with a uid between them. A force is applied to the top surface and thus it moves at a certain velocity. The ratio of the Shear Stress / Shear Rate will be the ...

Description: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Design for the Environment (DfE) Program, the University of Tennessee (UT) Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies, and Western Michigan ...

Description: ATS unites best-in-class suppliers to delivery fully automatic, custom built injection molding machine. ...

Description: When one of our customers was experiencing issues with liner weight consistency, they asked us to help evaluate their situation. During our discussions they revealed that they saw variations from ...

Description: We cut our teeth in the automotive industry and still, these places are pretty big. Big enough that, in extreme climates like the south and the west, it would be cost prohibitive to air condition them ...

Description: The flood of advanced materials developed over the last 20 years has created changes in virtually all of the products that we see and use every day. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ...

Description: Multi-functional food processors are still very much in vogue. In 2014 the sales of classical small electrical appliances such as food processors achieved an above-average growth rate - according to ...

Description: Peter Smith, production engineer at a well-known manufacturer of heating control units explains his situation: "Our heating control units are available, according to type and size of heating system, ...

Description: Technical cleanliness is gaining increasing importance, particularly in the automotive technology. Minute particles can cause devastating damage. For example when components are assembled onto a PCB ...

Description: Manufacturing engineers have two options for obtaining an automatic assembly system. They can get each component - an automatic screwdriver, a rotary indexing dial, a gripper - from individual ...

Description: There's no magic to building automation equipment. If systems integrators choose appropriate components, they will build an efficient and well-functioning assembly system right from the start. ...

Description: Today's headrests form part of every vehicle's passive safety system. They reduce sudden impact on the sensitive spinal area at the base of the skull. One of the most important responsibilities of the ...

Description: Ever had to brush your teeth between shivers because the previous bathroom user tilted the window open and forgot to close it again? Extremely unpleasant! The cold creeps into the bathroom and then ...

Description: What do metal castings, products made from composite materials, and brake disc blanks have in common? When all of the above items are machined, any sharp edges, burrs, fraying or chips produced during ...

Description: To ensure that a call never gets missed, two programmers are always on call at any given time. The customer's machine operators, technicians and engineers can always connect to an ATS support person ...

Description: Anti-lock brake systems are of indisputable importance for vehicle safety. They can be found in modern cars through the whole range of various models and types. Manufacturers require that ABS device ...

Description: A world leader in Clinical Chemistry Diagnostics approached ATS to develop a high speed, batch driven automation solution to match a quickly rising market demand. A leader in chemical diagnostic slide ...

Description: Our customer required a qualification build of five machines with complete design validation and full production factory acceptance test within 16 weeks of placing the order. Based on a successful ...

Description: A US provider of medication handling systems to hospitals and long-term care facilities was failing to make significant progress on the alpha system for an innovative approach to medication ...

Description: A medical device manufacturer in Asia needed to build significant manufacturing capacity to support their marketing projections for a new product family. The Manufacturing Specialists at Pre ...

Description: Our client needed inspection and verification of various key features of a part while running at high rates of speed, 130-250 parts per minute (ppm) continuously (on-the-fly). The parts are generally ...

Description: A major pharmaceutical manufacturer wanted to commercialize a new technology to integrate a liquid Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) into a solid tablet with the application of Process Analytical ...

Description: Despite successful continuous improvement programs resulting in reduced manufacturing-related product costs, this global leader of high-volume medical devices was not satisfied. They needed capacity ...

Description: We reviewed the plant level requirements to define problem areas and find commercial solutions where possible. Areas requiring more complex solutions were targeted for custom designed solutions. We ...

Description: The company was already operating at capacity and needed a manufacturing strategy to take them through 2013. We were engaged to develop the plan in collaboration with the client's staff. We collected ...

Description: A leading consumer goods manufacturer developed a fully automated line for the motor of their product. ...

Description: This company approached us for help with their manufacturing strategy. They specifically wanted to know what product design changes would be required to meet their low cost manufacturing plan and what ...

Description: A UK-based company acquired a high-speed manufacturing line for the assembly and testing of an existing product in order to reduce costs and decommission older, slower equipment, and to free up ...

Description: Our customer's proposed package design had unique design elements that were not easily accommodated by readily available solid dose filling and packaging equipment. To offset the increased components' ...

Description: With the launch of a new generation of car transmission systems, the automotive industry required a state-of-the-art test technology for the implemented hydraulic mechatronic unit before it was ...

Description: Our client was looking for expertise in test instrumentation and data collection as the basis for developing many unique and highly capable test fixtures. We successfully demonstrated to the client ...

Description: As the welding industry continues its broad transition into automation, one process in particular stands out from the rest: hybrid laser arc welding (HLAW). According to Ed Hansen, welding automation ...

Description: New advances in spiral conveyor technology offer significant productivity and operational benefits in a wide number of industries and applications where pace for material handling systems may be ...

Description: In 1993, Fleischer's moved to a new 42,000 square foot plant on a six acre site, providing ample room to grow if sales continued to increase. Since they were in the wholesale industry, producing more ...

Description: Automation plays an increasingly important role in the global economy, and the variety of computers and computer components for automation continues growing at an impressive rate. Manufacturers have ...

Description: If getting to the top of the ladder in the North American building products business means not letting the competition walk all over you, then you can't get much better living proof of this truism ...

Description: It's not much of a stretch to say that Wulftec International Inc. has done many things right in its 16-year history to become one of the world's leading designers, manufacturers and distributors of ...

Description: Applying liquid or powder materials to parts within a manufacturing process is fairly common. Often the application takes place manually, in which case the material is applied directly by workers on ...

Description: Avtron offers several solutions for mounting encoders on motors with brakes. Since the brake typically mounts on the accessory flange used for many encoders, we offer: ...

Description: Each step up in the classification increases the durability of the encoder, its ability to withstand contaminants and abuse, and the ability to withstand bearing load (or elimination of bearings ...

Description: The sensor/rotor gap was extremely small, often less than 0.010", requiring precise adjustments and mounting. Old magnetic encoders were subject to "sensor crashes". Avtron's Wide-Gap technology in ...