Alongside the spectacle of its latest Bionic Concepts, Festo will be demonstrating practical examples of its latest products and technologies at Hannover Fair, in line with the theme of this year's show, 'Integrated Industry - Discover Solutions!'. These exciting new developments include the simplicity of a new range of individual valves to highly intelligent handling platforms. The company will also be discussing interesting insights on Industry 4.0 topics, such as workforce development for automation.
The new SupraMotion superconductor technologies extend the spectrum of storage and movement possibilities to date: SupraJunction, SupraGripper and SupraTube. These solutions are generating interesting applications in the packaging industry, laboratory automation, medical technology and food and pharmaceutical industries.
The automation specialist will also be introducing its modular handling platform for small scale handling applications, which is a ready-to-operate system allowing automation users to considerably reduce costs and time-to-market. It is particularly suited to electronics and light assembly as well as for laboratory automation, enabling precise curved travel paths to be created for transporting work pieces or tools. Predefined function modules from a software library and intuitive application programming using the sequencer simplify programming and commissioning.
In the Festo Didactic area visitors will be able to learn how the company supports customers through practical training in the use of new technologies. The highlight is a new cyber-physical research and learning platform called the 'CP Factory'. Steve Sands, product manager at Festo says, "Festo takes a holistic view on the fourth industrial revolution, in addition to developing technology, it is looking at the interaction between humans and machinery and the critical issues of training and qualification."
The CP Factory replicates the workstations of a real production facility and enables personnel to learn how to program facilities, set up networks and optimise many other aspects such as energy-efficiency and data management. This comprehensive, modular and expandable factory model for Industry 4.0 integrates all the relevant technologies from mechatronics and automation.
