Pack Expo’s back at the Las Vegas Convention Center this year, and it’s looking like a good show thus far. PMMI, which runs the annual event, said that this is the largest Las Vegas iteration of the show in history—more than 30,000 attendees are expected, including 5,000 from outside the United States. The exhibit floor boasts more than 2,000 exhibiting companies across 900,000 sq-ft of exhibit floor.
Here are some highlights from the exhibit floor:
Aventics has a number of pneumatics solutions for the food, beverage and packaging industries. Industry 4.0/IoT along with hygienic design and washdown capabilities is a focus at thei booth, and on display are pneumatic valves, cylinders and air preparation units capable of withstanding harsh environments. An interactive demonstration on IoT solutions illustrates practical industry examples of how to use IoT to achieve predictive performance-based maintenance to provide a pneumatic system with 100% uptime. The demonstration detects and solves common errors such as: decrease in throughput; mishandling of an object; low system pressure; and extensive shock wear. Aventics’ Smart Pneumatics Monitor uses data from sensors that can be analyzed and turned into information. It can then be viewed locally via web server, uploaded to the cloud, or sent to any part of the enterprise network.
ABB is focusing on their Robotic Parcel Singulation System. This system features an ABB IRB 1600 robot (1.45m reach/10kg payload) equipped with a 3D perception system to identify and pick a single object from a bin, tray or pile of identical, similar or varied products. The perception system delivers pick locations from a bin of randomly sized and weighted parts to the robot, which picks and places the parts onto a downstream sortation system. The system can work with any ABB robot, with the throughput performance determined by the payload and speed of the selected robot. This configuration enables customers to experience industry leading speeds and is capable of working from a live feed chute.
Rockwell Automation is talking about the opportunities offered by smart machines. On the Innovation Stage (C-1049), company subject-matter specialists are giving real-world examples of how OEMs can use smart machines, remote monitoring and other innovative technologies today to transform and optimize their customers’ operations and grow their own businesses. Today’s topic was “Independent Cart Technology—Changing the Way Customers View Packaging Automation.” Neil Bentley, product marketing manager for MagneMotion, a Rockwell Automation company, highlighted success stories illustrating how the innovative technology can help increase production and decrease costs.
Tomorrow will be “Building a Smarter Machine,” where Steve Mulder, OEM packaging segment leader—North America will discuss how leading machine and equipment builders are capitalizing on this opportunity today. Also on tap tomorrow is “Remote Monitoring – Adding Value to Your Machine Offering,” where Doug Weber, connected services engineering manager will discuss how to use remote monitoring to create new revenue streams, improve service delivery, strengthen collaboration with customers and more.
Epson Robots has launched a new All-in-One SCARA robot with an innovative technology feature that reduces space requirements and simplifies setup. It addresses the need for a cost-effective and easy-to-use automation solution that is suitable for simple applications—and at $7,495, is much easier for smaller manufacturers to implement than other systems that price out closer to $12,000. Below is Rick Brookshire discussing the system.
Also at their booth, attendees can see The Flexion N2 6-Axis robot, featuring a very cool compact folding arm design—it reduces space requirements and maximizes motion efficiency; the powerful, compact and high speed G6 6-Axis robot; the C8XL 6-Axis robot with SlimLine design allowing access into tight places; the LS3 compact and low cost SCARA robot; and the G3 compact and ultra-powerful SCARA robot that features high speed, high precision and low vibration.
Here’s a short video that I took of the N2 today …
Beckhoff is showing off TwinCAT HMI, a new HMI software platform for visualizations that can dynamically scale to suit the screen formats of industrial displays and any mobile device with a web browser. Based on leading web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript, TwinCAT HMI allows the user to develop platform-independent user interfaces that are “responsive,” meaning they automatically adapt to the screen resolution, size and orientation of the device at hand. With the graphical WYSIWYG editor, controls can be easily arranged via drag-and-drop and linked with real-time variables. TwinCAT HMI is extensible on all levels.
Also, the new ELM series EtherCAT I/O modules feature metal housings that optimize shielding and cooling in measurement technology applications. At the same time, the durable housings provide enhanced flexibility at the interface level, such as for LEMO or BNC plug connectors or for the well-established cage clamps, as a quickly customizable and standard solution. Measurement accuracy of 100 ppm at 23° C, precise sub-1 μs synchronization, 24 bit resolution and a high sampling rate of up to 50,000 samples per second ensure high-quality data acquisition.
