At the 2024 edi­tion of the SPS show in Nurem­berg, Ger­many, glob­al in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion com­pany In­ovance launched its ar­tic­u­lated and SCARA in­dus­tri­al ro­bot ranges in Europe. The com­pany also un­veiled an en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly drive and mo­tor: the MV33 AC mo­tor and the MD630 AC drive, which meet Europe's strin­gent en­vir­on­ment­al re­quire­ments. 

Ro­bot port­fo­lio

As one of China's lead­ing in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion brands, In­ovance has ex­tens­ive ex­per­i­ence in selling its ro­bots in­to al­most every ima­gin­able ap­plic­a­tion, in­clud­ing auto­mot­ive parts, weld­ing, in­jec­tion mould­ing, die cast­ing and lith­i­um bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ing. The com­pany also has ex­tens­ive ex­per­i­ence selling ro­bots to ma­jor smart­phone and laptop man­u­fac­tur­ers. In China, In­ovance's ar­tic­u­lated ro­bots can carry pay­loads of up to 300kg. In Europe, mod­els with pay­loads of up to 20 kg will be launched first, with lar­ger pay­load mod­els to be re­leased pro­gress­ively through to 2025.

New mo­tion products

In­ovance has also launched a new drive and a new mo­tor, both of which are among the most ef­fi­cient op­tions on the mar­ket. The IE5 rated MV33 AC mo­tor is In­ovance's first in­dus­tri­al AC mo­tor in Europe and uses hair­pin tech­no­logy ad­ap­ted from the auto­mot­ive sec­tor. Mean­while, the MD630 AC drive has been de­signed for European cus­tom­ers and has in­teg­rated Eth­er­CAT, PROFINET and Eth­er­NET/IP. It can op­er­ate at tem­per­at­ures up to 60°C and com­plies with all European dir­ect­ives. It is also easy to use, cost-ef­fect­ive and of­fers STO SIL 3 safety and flex­ible pro­gram­mable lo­gic.

Dav­id Bed­ford Guaus, In­ovance’s Bar­celona-based Stra­tegic Mar­ket­ing Man­ager, says: “China is the work­shop of the world, and vast ex­per­i­ence at selling in­dus­tri­al ro­bots in China has giv­en us in­dustry ex­pert­ise that is second to none. In China, our ro­bots are on the pro­duc­tion lines of some of the West’s biggest brands, and there is every chance you own a mo­bile phone that was as­sembled by an In­ovance ro­bot. We really do of­fer a ro­bot for every ap­plic­a­tion. Also, like many people in Europe, I am wor­ried about cli­mate change, and so I am very proud of our new MV33 mo­tor and MD630 drive, each of which is one of the most en­ergy ef­fi­cient solu­tions on the mar­ket.” 

Altair has entered in­to col­lab­or­a­tion agree­ment with the European Space Agency (ESA) through the ESA Part­ner­ship Ini­ti­at­ive for Com­mer­cial­isa­tion (EPIC). Through a let­ter of in­tent, Altair’s aerospace tech­no­logy with­in the Altair® Hy­per­Works® and Altair® Rap­id­Miner® plat­forms will be made avail­able to all star­tups, com­pan­ies, re­search cen­ters, and uni­versit­ies throughout Europe who are col­lab­or­at­ing with ESA or de­vel­op­ing tech­no­lo­gies with ESA sup­port. 

“ESA is a ref­er­ence point for any­one work­ing in the space sec­tor in Europe and across the world, con­stantly work­ing with its loc­al agen­cies to foster in­nov­a­tion throughout its pro­grams. For Altair, part­ner­ing with ESA rep­res­ents the com­ing to­geth­er of two pi­on­eers in the aerospace in­dustry,” said Pietro Cervel­lera, seni­or vice pres­id­ent of aerospace and de­fense, Altair. “We are de­lighted to work to­geth­er with the ESA to of­fer ac­cess to our sim­u­la­tion, AI, and data ana­lyt­ics solu­tions. Our tools help ac­cel­er­ate and de-risk the ex­plor­a­tion of dis­rupt­ive ideas and fur­ther our mis­sion of cre­at­ing a safer, more con­nec­ted, and more sus­tain­able aerospace in­dustry.”

With­in EPIC, Altair’s AI-powered en­gin­eer­ing tech­no­logy will en­able ESA-sup­por­ted star­tups to de­vel­op and test their products faster, giv­ing them an op­por­tun­ity to more quickly cre­ate min­im­um vi­able products (MVP) – a key step in ob­tain­ing fund­ing and reach­ing com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion. Cru­cially, the ini­ti­at­ive gives aerospace star­tups ac­cess to the same Altair sim­u­la­tion, data ana­lyt­ics, and AI tech­no­logy used by the world’s lead­ing aerospace or­gan­iz­a­tions – along with Altair’s best-in-class con­sult­ing and tech­nic­al ment­or­ship.

For the next gen­er­a­tion of in­nov­a­tion

“With nearly 40 years of do­main ex­pert­ise in the in­dustry, Altair’s broad tech­no­logy port­fo­lio plays a lead­ing role in count­less aerospace or­gan­iz­a­tions world­wide,” said Joana Ka­men­ova, EPIC lead, ESA. “We look for­ward to help­ing ex­pand the reach of Altair’s tech­no­logy so or­gan­iz­a­tions throughout Europe can lever­age the best-in-class tools ne­ces­sary to ush­er in the next gen­er­a­tion of space in­nov­a­tion.”

Join­ing the EPIC ini­ti­at­ive fur­ther so­lid­i­fies Altair’s status as a lead­er in the aerospace in­dustry and re­in­forces its com­mit­ment to in­dustry-wide in­nov­a­tion. With its di­verse, scal­able, and uni­fied tech­no­logy port­fo­lio and con­sult­ing ex­pert­ise, Altair helps aerospace or­gan­iz­a­tions of all kinds nav­ig­ate the evolving di­git­al land­scape, build solu­tions at speed, and scale them across the or­gan­iz­a­tion. 

Es­tab­lished in 2022, EPIC con­nects cor­por­ate, aca­dem­ic, and in­sti­tu­tion­al part­ners with ESA-sup­por­ted star­tups. It aims to foster en­tre­pren­eur­ship and en­hance the com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion path­way of European star­tups by stream­lin­ing ac­cess to lead­ing tech­no­logy. EPIC reaches in­to the world’s largest space in­nov­a­tion net­work, in­clud­ing ESA Busi­ness In­cub­a­tion Centres (ESA BICs), ESA Tech­no­logy Brokers, ESA Φ-lab­NET, ESA Φ-lab  (ES­RIN), and the In­Cubed Earth Ob­ser­va­tion com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion pro­gram, along with the hun­dreds of star­tups these pro­grams sup­port. Over­all, EPIC con­nects EPIC part­ners and ESA star­tups to broaden the reach of the in­nov­a­tion eco­sys­tem and fur­ther di­ver­si­fy the aerospace in­dustry.

To learn more about the ESA and its EPIC pro­gram, vis­it ht­tps://com­mer­cial­isa­tion.esa.int/esa-part­ner­ship-ini­ti­at­ive-for-com­mer­cial­isa­tion-epic/.
 

The HART­ING Tech­no­logy Group, man­u­fac­tur­ers of in­dus­tri­al con­nec­tion tech­no­logy, and TTI, spe­cialty dis­trib­ut­or of elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents, are ex­pand­ing their au­thor­ised dis­tri­bu­tion part­ner­ship. With the sign­ing of the con­tract at elec­tron­ica 2024, the co­oper­a­tion between HART­ING and TTI is now to be ex­ten­ded to the Asi­an re­gion. This de­cision is based on the suc­cess­ful col­lab­or­a­tion in the US and Europe.

"This stra­tegic move will strengthen our po­s­i­tion in key in­dustry seg­ments and ex­pand the avail­ab­il­ity of our products throughout Asia," ex­plains Edgar Peter Düning, Man­aging Dir­ect­or for HART­ING's Elec­tric, Elec­tron­ics and Cus­tom­ised Solu­tions di­vi­sions. "We have to meet the chan­ging re­quire­ments of our cus­tom­ers in an in­creas­ingly in­ter­con­nec­ted in­dus­tri­al world. TTI's proven dis­tri­bu­tion mod­el and broad cus­tom­er ac­cess provide the ideal found­a­tion for mu­tu­al growth."

Kings­ley Wong, Pres­id­ent of TTI Asia, em­phas­ises: "The in­teg­ra­tion of HART­ING products in­to our range and their pro­vi­sion to our sales and en­gin­eer­ing teams will of­fer our cus­tom­ers more choice and flex­ib­il­ity in the de­vel­op­ment of their designs. We look for­ward to our fu­ture part­ner­ship and to de­vel­op­ing new busi­ness op­por­tun­it­ies for mu­tu­al growth in Asia."
 

As a res­ult of the on­go­ing di­git­al­isa­tion of pro­duc­tion and lo­gist­ics, Ger­man in­dustry is in­creas­ingly ex­pos­ing it­self to se­cur­ity vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies. Many con­nec­ted devices, ma­chines and sys­tems ac­quired as part of In­dustry 4.0 rely on elec­tron­ic con­trol sys­tems that hack­ers can of­ten in­filt­rate with ease. The main reas­on is that the soft­ware em­bed­ded in these com­pon­ents is of­ten out­dated, as man­u­fac­tur­ers do not con­sist­ently provide the up­dates needed to patch newly dis­covered vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies. These are the find­ings of the "OT+IoT Cy­ber­se­cur­ity Re­port 2024" from the Düsseldorf-based cy­ber­se­cur­ity com­pany ONEKEY. The re­port is based on a sur­vey of 300 in­dustry ex­ec­ut­ives.

"The smart fact­ory is a great concept," said Jan Wenden­burg, CEO of ONEKEY, "but the as­so­ci­ated cy­ber risks are still too of­ten neg­lected." Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, only 29 per­cent of in­dus­tri­al com­pan­ies con­duct a com­pre­hens­ive se­cur­ity as­sess­ment when pro­cur­ing con­nec­ted devices and ma­chines to de­term­ine how well new ac­quis­i­tions are pro­tec­ted against hack­ing. A fur­ther 30 per cent ad­mit to lim­it­ing their as­sess­ments to su­per­fi­cial tests or spot checks. Un­cer­tainty is high, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, with more than a quarter (26 per cent) of re­spond­ents un­able to an­swer the ques­tion. "The num­ber of out­dated soft­ware in­stances in man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­it­ies ap­pears to be alarm­ingly high," ad­ded Jan Wenden­burg.

More Policies for In­dus­tri­al Con­trol Sys­tem Se­cur­ity

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, only 28 per­cent of com­pan­ies have spe­cif­ic com­pli­ance policies for the se­cur­ity of in­dus­tri­al con­trol sys­tems or devices for the In­dus­tri­al In­ter­net of Things. While a good third (34 per­cent) do not have spe­cif­ic OT or IoT se­cur­ity policies, these are in­cluded as part of the com­pany's gen­er­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity guidelines. A fur­ther 19 per cent say they have no spe­cif­ic policy in place.

Firm­ware, the soft­ware em­bed­ded in di­git­al con­trol sys­tems, con­nec­ted devices, ma­chines, and plants, is not sys­tem­at­ic­ally tested for cy­ber re­si­li­ence in the in­dustry, ac­cord­ing to ONEKEY’s “OT+IoT Cy­ber­se­cur­ity Re­port 2024”. Less than a third (31 per cent) of or­gan­isa­tions reg­u­larly test the em­bed­ded pro­grams in con­nec­ted devices to identi­fy and fix vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies that could be entry points for hack­ers. Nearly half (47 per­cent) only test firm­ware oc­ca­sion­ally or not at all. In ad­di­tion, more than half of the com­pan­ies sur­veyed (52 per­cent) re­port that they have been at­tacked by hack­ers via OT or IoT devices at least once. A quarter of them are aware of three or more in­stances in which cy­ber­crim­in­als tar­geted the com­pany via in­dus­tri­al con­trol sys­tems.

In­dustry Should De­mand and Use Up-To-Date Soft­ware

“Con­nec­ted devices some­times run very out­dated soft­ware,” said Jan Wenden­burg. “Be­cause it has worked per­fectly for years, or even dec­ades, no one thinks to up­date it. However, this can have ser­i­ous con­sequences if hack­ers ex­ploit the out­dated soft­ware to at­tack the di­git­al con­trol sys­tem.” The ONEKEY CEO gave an ex­ample from the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dustry: “Through un­pro­tec­ted firm­ware, cy­ber­crim­in­als can re­motely change the in­tern­al con­fig­ur­a­tion of a CNC ma­chine, dam­aging both the ma­chine and the work­pieces. The dam­age to the ma­chine could be ir­re­par­able, and an en­tire pro­duc­tion batch could be rendered use­less.” Hack­ers can also use the firm­ware to in­filt­rate the com­pany’s net­work and launch a ransom­ware at­tack, for ex­ample: In this type of at­tack, crit­ic­al busi­ness data is en­cryp­ted and only re­leased after a ransom is paid.

Time for ac­tion

Jan Wenden­burg poin­ted out that the re­spons­ib­il­ity for out­dated ma­chine soft­ware lies equally with both man­u­fac­tur­ers and users. He ref­er­ences the EU Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act (CRA), which will ban the sale of con­nec­ted devices with known vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies in the European Uni­on start­ing in 2026/2027. In ad­di­tion, the CRA will re­quire man­u­fac­tur­ers to mon­it­or all firm­ware after de­liv­ery and provide up­dated ver­sions im­me­di­ately when new se­cur­ity vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies are dis­covered. However, this is far from the cur­rent real­ity, ac­cord­ing to ONEKEY’s “OT+IoT Cy­ber­se­cur­ity Re­port 2024”, which states that only 28 per­cent of com­pan­ies cur­rently com­ply with the dir­ect­ive, which will be­come man­dat­ory in 2027, and sys­tem­at­ic­ally provide up­dated soft­ware for con­nec­ted devices and ma­chines de­livered to cus­tom­ers. Thirty per­cent carry out oc­ca­sion­al up­dates, while 17 per­cent do not up­date at all. “It’s time for man­u­fac­tur­ers to align their soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and mon­it­or­ing with the up­com­ing leg­al re­quire­ments,” ad­vised Jan Wenden­burg.

Ac­cord­ing to the “OT+IoT Cy­ber­se­cur­ity Re­port 2024” by ONEKEY, only about a quarter (26 per­cent) of com­pan­ies as­sess their op­er­a­tion­al ma­tur­ity in product and project de­vel­op­ment as ad­equate in terms of cy­ber re­si­li­ence. These com­pan­ies have a defined pro­cess for a se­cure de­vel­op­ment cycle that is act­ively pur­sued. An­oth­er 12 per­cent have es­tab­lished such a se­cur­ity pro­cess, but ac­cord­ing to their own as­sess­ment, it is poorly man­aged and mainly handled in a re­act­ive man­ner. In nearly one in ten of the sur­veyed com­pan­ies (9 per­cent), no such pro­cess for qual­ity as­sur­ance in product and project de­vel­op­ment ex­ists.
 

The large lan­guage mod­el of the OpenG­PT-X re­search project is now avail­able for down­load on Hug­ging Face: "Teuk­en-7B" has been trained from scratch in all 24 of­fi­cial lan­guages of the European Uni­on (EU) and con­tains sev­en bil­lion para­met­ers. Re­search­ers and com­pan­ies can lever­age this com­mer­cially us­able open-source mod­el for their own ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) ap­plic­a­tions. 

Fun­ded by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Cli­mate Ac­tion (BM­WK), the OpenG­PT-X con­sor­ti­um – led by the Fraunhofer In­sti­tutes for In­tel­li­gent Ana­lys­is and In­form­a­tion Sys­tems IAIS and for In­teg­rated Cir­cuits IIS – have de­veloped a large lan­guage mod­el that is open source and has a dis­tinctly European per­spect­ive.

“In the OpenG­PT-X project, we've spent the last two years re­search­ing the un­der­ly­ing tech­no­lo­gies for large AI found­a­tion mod­els and train­ing mod­els with lead­ing in­dustry and re­search part­ners. We are de­lighted to be able to make our 'Teuk­en-7B' mod­el freely avail­able, provid­ing a pub­lic, re­search-based al­tern­at­ive for use in aca­demia and in­dustry,” says Prof. Stefan Wrobel, Dir­ect­or of Fraunhofer IAIS. “Our mod­el has demon­strated its cap­ab­il­it­ies across a wide range of lan­guages, and we hope that as many people as pos­sible will ad­apt and de­vel­op the mod­el for their own work and ap­plic­a­tions. In this way, we want to con­trib­ute, both with­in the sci­entif­ic com­munity and to­geth­er with com­pan­ies from dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries to the grow­ing de­mand for trans­par­ent and cus­tom­iz­able gen­er­at­ive AI solu­tions.”

Mul­ti­lin­gual from scratch

Teuk­en-7B is cur­rently one of the few large lan­guage mod­els de­veloped mul­ti­lin­gually from the ground up. It con­tains ap­prox­im­ately 50 per­cent non-Eng­lish pre-train­ing data and has been trained in all 24 of­fi­cial European lan­guages. It has proven to be stable and re­li­able in its per­form­ance across mul­tiple lan­guages. This provides ad­ded value, par­tic­u­larly for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pan­ies and or­gan­iz­a­tions with mul­ti­lin­gual com­mu­nic­a­tion re­quire­ments, products and ser­vices. The open-source mod­el al­lows com­pan­ies and or­gan­iz­a­tions to run their own cus­tom­ized mod­els in real-world ap­plic­a­tions. Sens­it­ive cor­por­ate data can re­main with­in the com­pany.

In ad­di­tion to mod­el train­ing, the OpenG­PT-X team also ad­dressed a num­ber of re­search ques­tions, such as how to train and op­er­ate mul­ti­lin­gual AI lan­guage mod­els in a more en­ergy- and cost-ef­fi­cient way. To this end, the project de­veloped a mul­ti­lin­gual “token­izer”. The task of a token­izer is to break down words in­to in­di­vidu­al word com­pon­ents – the few­er tokens, the more (en­ergy-) ef­fi­ciently and quickly a lan­guage mod­el can gen­er­ate the an­swer. The de­veloped token­izer leads to a re­duc­tion in train­ing costs com­pared to oth­er mul­ti­lin­gual token­izers like Llama3 or Mis­tral. This is par­tic­u­larly valu­able for European lan­guages with longer word struc­tures such as Ger­man, Finnish or Hun­gari­an.

The OpenG­PT-X project was fun­ded by the BM­WK pro­gram "In­nov­at­ive and prac­tic­al ap­plic­a­tions and data spaces in the Gaia-X di­git­al eco­sys­tem". Teuk­en-7B is ac­cess­ible via the Gaia-X in­fra­struc­ture. Act­ors in the Gaia-X eco­sys­tem can thus de­vel­op in­nov­at­ive lan­guage ap­plic­a­tions and trans­fer them in­to con­crete ap­plic­a­tion scen­ari­os in their re­spect­ive do­mains. Un­like ex­ist­ing cloud solu­tions, Gaia-X is a fed­er­ated eco­sys­tem that al­lows ser­vice pro­viders and data own­ers to con­nect. Data re­mains se­curely with its own­ers and is only shared un­der defined con­di­tions.

“I am ex­cited to wit­ness today’s pub­lic­a­tion of Teuk­en-7B, a large lan­guage mod­el based on Gaia-X, and would like to con­grat­u­late the OpenG­PT-X project on hav­ing reached this im­port­ant mile­stone. A spe­cial fea­ture of Teuk­en-7B is that it en­ables the se­cure use of sens­it­ive cor­por­ate data, as the Gaia-X stand­ards guar­an­tee data stor­age and pro­cessing in ac­cord­ance with the strict­est European data pro­tec­tion and se­cur­ity reg­u­la­tions. This new mod­el and in­nov­a­tions like this strengthen the di­git­al sov­er­eignty, com­pet­it­ive­ness and re­si­li­ence of Ger­many and of Europe. This is why the Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Cli­mate Ac­tion is fund­ing the project with ap­prox­im­ately 14 mil­lion euros in total,” says Dr. Fran­ziska Brant­ner, Par­lia­ment­ary State Sec­ret­ary at BM­WK.

Prof. Bernhard Grill, Dir­ect­or of Fraunhofer IIS, em­phas­izes the mod­el’s po­ten­tial for safety-crit­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions: “With this in­de­pend­ently de­veloped lan­guage mod­el, the project part­ners demon­strate their abil­ity to gen­er­ate their own large mod­els. Ac­cess to a large lan­guage mod­el en­ables ap­plic­a­tions that of­fer much great­er con­trol over this tech­no­logy without the need for opaque third-party com­pon­ents – for ex­ample, in safety-crit­ic­al fields such as auto­mot­ive, ro­bot­ics, medi­cine and fin­ance. By train­ing on data rel­ev­ant to a spe­cif­ic ap­plic­a­tion and us­ing ap­plic­a­tion-spe­cif­ic ar­chi­tec­tures, com­pan­ies can cre­ate cus­tom­ized AI solu­tions that do not re­quire ‘black box’ com­pon­ents.”

Gen­er­at­ive AI by a strong con­sor­ti­um – with a European per­spect­ive

Im­port­ant re­search res­ults from the OpenG­PT-X project have been in­cor­por­ated in­to the mod­el de­vel­op­ment, such as tools and tech­no­lo­gies for pro­cessing large amounts of data, lever­aging power­ful European HPC in­fra­struc­ture and per­form­ing ef­fi­cient mod­el train­ing. Teuk­en-7B was trained on the JUWELS su­per­com­puter at Forschung­szen­trum Jülich. In ad­di­tion to the two Fraunhofer In­sti­tutes and Forschung­szen­trum Jülich, the con­sor­ti­um’s part­ners in­clude TU Dresden, the Ger­man Re­search Cen­ter for Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (DFKI), IONOS, Aleph Al­pha, Con­trol­Ex­pert, West­deutscher Rund­funk (WDR) and the Ger­man AI As­so­ci­ation (KI Bundes­verb­and). The tech­no­logy de­veloped in OpenG­PT-X will also provide the part­ners with a basis for train­ing their own mod­els in the fu­ture.

“OpenG­PT-X is an ex­ample of how the re­sources of a pub­licly fun­ded project and the col­lab­or­at­ive ef­forts of a broad con­sor­ti­um can de­liv­er valu­able found­a­tion­al tech­no­logy – from un­der­ly­ing in­fra­struc­ture to mod­el train­ing to pro­duct­ive ap­plic­a­tions. In the in­terest of tech­no­logy and data sov­er­eignty, it is im­port­ant to build on this found­a­tion: Our hope is that OpenG­PT-X will lay the ground­work for many sub­sequent activ­it­ies,” em­phas­izes Daniel Ab­bou, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of the Ger­man AI As­so­ci­ation and Pres­id­ent of the European AI For­um.

The re­search project, which was launched at the be­gin­ning of 2022, is now near­ing com­ple­tion. It will run un­til 31 March 2025 so that fur­ther op­tim­iz­a­tions and eval­u­ations of the mod­els can take place.

The path to us­ing Teuk­en-7B

In­ter­ested de­velopers from aca­demia or in­dustry can down­load Teuk­en-7B free of charge from Hug­ging Face and work with it in their own de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment. The mod­el has already been op­tim­ized for chat through “in­struc­tion tun­ing”. In­struc­tion tun­ing is used to ad­apt large lan­guage mod­els so that the mod­el cor­rectly un­der­stands in­struc­tions from users, which is im­port­ant when us­ing the mod­els in prac­tice – for ex­ample in a chat ap­plic­a­tion.

Teuk­en-7B is freely avail­able in two ver­sions: one for re­search-only pur­poses and an “Apache 2.0” li­censed ver­sion that can be used by com­pan­ies for both re­search and com­mer­cial pur­poses and in­teg­rated in­to their own AI ap­plic­a­tions. The per­form­ance of the two mod­els is roughly com­par­able, but some of the data­sets used for in­struc­tion tun­ing pre­clude com­mer­cial use and were there­fore not used in the Apache 2.0 ver­sion.

Down­load op­tions and mod­el cards can be found at the fol­low­ing link: ht­tps://hug­ging­face.co/openG­PT-X

The OpenG­PT-X Dis­cord Serv­er is avail­able to the spe­cial­ist com­munity for tech­nic­al feed­back, ques­tions and spe­cial­ist dis­cus­sions: ht­tps://dis­cord.gg/RvdHpGMvB3

Com­pan­ies also have the op­por­tun­ity to take part in free demo ses­sions in which Fraunhofer sci­ent­ists ex­plain which ap­plic­a­tions can be real­ized with Teuk­en-7B. Re­gis­tra­tion for demo ap­point­ments is pos­sible via www.iais.fraunhofer.de/openg­pt-x-en

De­tailed tech­nic­al back­ground in­form­a­tion and bench­marks as well as an over­view of all re­search res­ults from the OpenG­PT-X project can be found on the project web­site at ht­tps://openg­pt-x.de/en/mod­els/teuk­en-7b
 

Alan Baird brings a depth of ex­pert­ise in AC drive sales and a proven track re­cord of de­liv­er­ing growth. In his new role, he will lead the glob­al sales of Gen­er­is, Sprint Elec­tric’s in­nov­at­ive AC mo­tor drive solu­tion with in­her­ent en­ergy re­cov­ery and ul­tra-low har­mon­ics.

Sprint Elec­tric dir­ect­or, Mark Gardiner, com­men­ted: “Alan’s com­pre­hens­ive ex­per­i­ence in AC drives, span­ning sales, field ser­vice, mar­ket­ing, and cus­tom­er ser­vice, makes him the standout can­did­ate to spear­head the mar­ket in­tro­duc­tion of Gen­er­is. […]His pas­sion for pro­mot­ing the be­ne­fits of AC drive tech­no­logy - such as en­hanced en­ergy ef­fi­ciency, de­car­bon­isa­tion, and im­proved pro­cess con­trol - aligns per­fectly with our mis­sion. 

Alan will be work­ing closely with Sprint dir­ect­or, Gary Keen, and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ager, Neill Dren­nan, who lead the sales op­er­a­tions for Sprint Elec­tric’s DC busi­ness. He will also sup­port the know­ledge trans­fer activ­it­ies with the Uni­versity of Not­ting­ham, as the Sprint team con­tin­ue to ad­vance this new AC drive tech­no­logy. Most re­cently, he led the AC drive busi­ness across the UK and Ire­land for a glob­al lead­er in auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy.

Gen­er­is rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant step for­ward in AC mo­tor con­trol. With fea­tures such as low in­put cur­rent har­mon­ics, en­ergy re­cov­ery, im­proved mo­tor ac­cur­acy, and en­hanced sys­tem ef­fi­ciency, Gen­er­is is de­signed to re­duce op­er­a­tion­al costs while de­liv­er­ing ex­cep­tion­al per­form­ance.

Dur­ing the pro­duc­tion pro­cess, the glass used for wind­shields is sub­jec­ted to tem­per­at­ures as high as 400 °C in the grav­ity bend­ing fur­nace. Bend­ing is a cent­ral pro­cess in the man­u­fac­ture of wind­shields that re­quires ab­so­lute pre­ci­sion. Even slight de­vi­ations in the geo­metry can im­pair the func­tion and cause pre­ma­ture wear of wiper blades. Fur­ther­more, sensor plates, seals or frames in­teg­rated in the wind­shield can dis­lodge or leak.

In­spec­tions should be sched­uled at start of pro­duc­tion pro­cess

To pre­vent such prob­lems and to en­sure com­pli­ance with the man­u­fac­turer’s ex­act spe­cific­a­tions, manu­al spot checks are con­duc­ted to con­trol the qual­ity dur­ing pro­duc­tion, in ad­di­tion to more in-depth in­spec­tions at the end of the pro­duc­tion pro­cess. By that time, however, the de­fect­ive wind­shields have already gone through the en­tire pro­duc­tion cycle, res­ult­ing in un­ne­ces­sary costs. That is why nokra Optische Prüftechnik und Auto­ma­tion GmbH de­veloped a laser-based glass meas­ur­ing sys­tem that is placed dir­ectly down­stream from the bend­ing fur­nace for auto­mat­ic con­tact­less in­spec­tion of the glass panes early on in the pro­duc­tion pro­cess – without the ne­ces­sity of re­mov­ing the panes from the line. The al­pha.glass meas­ure­ment sys­tem im­me­di­ately de­tects any qual­ity de­fi­cien­cies so the de­fect­ive com­pon­ents can be re­moved from the pro­duc­tion pro­cess. Fast and auto­mat­ic meas­ure­ment by the sys­tem also al­lows per­son­nel to make ad­just­ments to the bend­ing fur­nace in the event of fre­quent de­fi­cien­cies, in or­der to pre­vent fur­ther re­jects.

Laser tri­an­gu­la­tion en­ables fast in-line meas­ure­ment

In ad­di­tion to the glass meas­ure­ment sys­tem, nokra also pro­duces sys­tems for meas­ur­ing the clear­ance, thick­ness, pro­file and shape of belts, met­al sheets, forged parts or moun­ted com­pon­ents, such as cam­shafts or cross mem­bers. The com­pany’s cus­tom­ers in­clude auto man­u­fac­tur­ers, plant en­gin­eer­ing com­pan­ies and glass man­u­fac­tur­ers, as well as steel and alu­min­um pro­duc­tion plants. “Auto­mat­ic feed­back of the meas­ure­ments to the pro­duc­tion pro­cess al­lows our cus­tom­ers to greatly in­crease their pro­ductiv­ity,” says Man­aging Di­rec­t­or Günter Lauven.

All meas­ur­ing sys­tems are based on the prin­ciple of laser tri­an­gu­la­tion, which nokra has been us­ing since 1991 for the in-line in­spec­tion of geo­met­ric di­men­sions in in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions. The pro­cess al­lows fast, pre­cise and con­tact­less meas­ure­ment of the dis­tance of an ob­ject from a ref­er­ence plane.

Sensors must be tem­per­at­ure con­trolled

Ef­fect­ive thermal man­age­ment is ne­ces­sary for the high-pre­ci­sion nokra sensors to func­tion op­tim­ally. For one thing, the ob­jects be­ing meas­ured – such as glass – are very hot. This heat has to be dis­sip­ated away from the sensors quickly, to pre­vent dam­age to the sens­it­ive elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents. For an­oth­er, the sys­tems op­er­ate at am­bi­ent tem­per­at­ures of 50°C or high­er.

In the search for a heat sink sup­pli­er, nokra en­gin­eer Mi­chael Schreiber and his col­leagues dis­covered CTX Thermal Solu­tions GmbH. The com­pany, with headquar­ters in Nettet­al, North-Rhine West­phalia, spe­cial­izes in ap­plic­a­tion- and project-spe­cif­ic cool­ing solu­tions. CTX of­fers a wide range of cool­ing solu­tions – in­clud­ing li­quid-cooled heat sinks. These heat sinks are ideal for use in nokra meas­ur­ing sys­tems since they dis­sip­ate heat much more ef­fi­ciently than fan sys­tems. “CTX li­quid-cooled heat sinks have a max­im­um height of 15 mm, which al­lows a close fit to our sensors,” ex­plains Mi­chael Schreiber. “This en­sures fast and ef­fi­cient heat dis­sip­a­tion away from the sensors, which is es­sen­tial for the meas­ur­ing sys­tems to func­tion op­tim­ally.”

Wa­ter is the ideal cool­ing me­di­um

Nokra has been equip­ping their meas­ur­ing sys­tems with CTX li­quid-cooled heat sinks since 2017. De­pend­ing on the am­bi­ent tem­per­at­ure, they have a dis­sip­a­tion ca­pa­city between 10 W and 100 W. The cool­ing cir­cuits of li­quid-cooled heat sinks can be filled with flu­ids such as wa­ter, oil, glycol or gases, de­pend­ing on the re­quired thermal dis­sip­a­tion power. The nokra en­gin­eers chose wa­ter as the cool­ing me­di­um since it has the highest spe­cif­ic thermal ca­pa­city of all flu­ids and achieves the most ef­fect­ive dis­sip­a­tion of heat from the sensors. Fur­ther­more, li­quid-cooled heat sinks are very com­pact due to their small heat trans­fer sur­face area. This fa­cil­it­ates in­teg­ra­tion in the meas­ur­ing and in­spec­tion sys­tems, which have lim­ited in­stall­a­tion space.

Heat sinks are cus­tom man­u­fac­tured

CTX pro­duces the li­quid-cooled heat sinks to the ex­act spe­cific­a­tions of nokra’s draw­ings for op­tim­al com­pat­ib­il­ity with the sensors of the meas­ur­ing sys­tems. The cool­ing plates are either milled or fric­tion stir wel­ded, de­pend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar sensor and meas­ur­ing device. Fric­tion stir weld­ing cre­ates an ab­so­lutely tight con­nec­tion between the top and bot­tom plates of the heat sink, which en­sures op­tim­al thermal con­duct­iv­ity. The pro­duc­tion tech­no­logy also of­fers max­im­um flex­ib­il­ity in the design of the cool­ing cir­cuit, which is lim­ited neither by min­im­al bend­ing ra­di­uses nor by pre-spe­cified in­ner pipe dia­met­ers. Fric­tion stir weld­ing there­fore makes it pos­sible to cus­tom tail­or the cool­ing sys­tem to the par­tic­u­lar ap­plic­a­tion.

Fast de­liv­ery

However, nokra was con­vinced not only by the per­form­ance of CTX heat sinks. The cost-ef­fect­ive cus­tom­iz­a­tion of the cool­ing sys­tems even with re­l­at­ively small quant­it­ies and short de­liv­ery times were like­wise de­cis­ive. “CTX de­livered a cus­tom fric­tion stir wel­ded heat sink with­in six weeks – an­oth­er sup­pli­er would have needed twice that long,” says nokra en­gin­eer Mi­chael Schreiber.
 

Puls­iv Lim­ited, the Cam­bridge (UK) in­nov­at­or of power elec­tron­ics tech­no­logy has an­nounced the de­liv­ery of 240W from a single USB-C port. This ground-break­ing achieve­ment has been de­veloped by com­bin­ing a Puls­iv OS­MI­UM front-end design with an in­dustry stand­ard fly­back which passes strict EMC/Line Cur­rent re­quire­ments. 

Ex­ist­ing 240W USB-C char­gers dis­trib­ute the power across mul­tiple ports with a max­im­um of 140W be­ing de­livered from a single 1C port. This leaves many high­er power ap­plic­a­tions such as mon­it­ors, gam­ing laptops, and small do­mest­ic ap­pli­ances un­able to be­ne­fit from the com­mon USB-C in­ter­face and fast-char­ging pro­tocol. Tra­di­tion­al Boost PFC+LLC based designs are no­tori­ously noisy, so EMC com­pli­ance can be a chal­lenge. They are also ex­pens­ive and do not re­spond well to vari­able out­put voltages or rap­idly chan­ging load re­quire­ments. Puls­iv OS­MI­UM tech­no­logy en­ables a fly­back to­po­logy to be used at high­er power levels which solves all of these prob­lems. 

De­liv­er­ing 240 Watts of power has an im­mense im­pact on re­du­cing the charge time of vir­tu­ally all bat­tery-powered products. Chief Product Of­ficer at Puls­iv, Dr Tim Moore, who was also former Chief Tech­no­logy Of­ficer at con­sumer brands, SharkNinja and GHD, un­der­stands this more than most and com­ments: “The small do­mest­ic ap­pli­ance mar­ket has been anxiously wait­ing for USB-C tech­no­logy to achieve high­er power levels. Cord­less power/garden tools, va­cu­ums and port­able kit­chen ap­pli­ances are just a small se­lec­tion of products that can be­ne­fit from su­per-fast ef­fi­cient USB-C char­ging. With bat­tery tech­no­logy already well ad­vanced, 240W en­ables charge times to be re­duced by up to 80%, smash­ing charge anxi­ety and driv­ing a new paradigm for small do­mest­ic ap­pli­ances.”

Puls­iv’s Dir­ect­or of Glob­al Sales, Nick Theodor­is has been col­lect­ing valu­able feed­back from cus­tom­ers around the world and adds: “240W USB-C is caus­ing huge ex­cite­ment in the in­dustry. Man­u­fac­tur­ers of in-wall sock­ets, in-desk solu­tions, and after-mar­ket char­gers can now bring new levels of char­ging with­in ex­ist­ing products, but this fur­ther en­ables them to de­vel­op en­tirely new solu­tions too. However, the in­terest doesn’t stop there. Ap­plic­a­tions such as tele­vi­sions, mon­it­ors, pro­ject­ors, and games con­soles which don’t re­quire char­ging, can be­ne­fit from 240W USB-C power sup­plies. It en­ables the en­tire power elec­tron­ics to be re­moved from the product which sig­ni­fic­antly re­duces the over­all size, weight, and cost. We’re ex­pect­ing to un­cov­er even more ap­plic­a­tions which can be­ne­fit from our ground-break­ing solu­tion and the level of in­terest so far has been un­pre­ced­en­ted. I’m look­ing for­ward to how Puls­iv will com­pletely re­define the fast-char­ging space.” 

The com­pany’s strategy for de­ploy­ing its tech­no­logy adds fur­ther flex­ib­il­ity for cus­tom­ers. Three op­tions are set to be offered: 

• Ref­er­ence Design. A ref­er­ence design con­tain­ing a data­sheet, schem­at­ic, and bill of ma­ter­i­als will be pub­lished on www.puls­iv.com in the com­ing weeks. This will en­able any­one to start design­ing and lay­ing out their own 240W USB-C solu­tion and be­come one of the first in the world to ad­opt 240W USB-C. 
• Stand­ard As­sembled Mod­ule. For those whose re­sources and time are lim­ited, Puls­iv will of­fer a stand­ard fully as­sembled mod­ule with 1 x USB-C con­nect­or. The spe­cific­a­tion and design of this stand­ard mod­ule has already star­ted and pre-or­ders for samples can be placed now for de­liv­ery in late March 2025, with mass pro­duc­tion quant­it­ies be­ing de­livered from Ju­ly 2025 on­wards. A num­ber of Puls­iv’s dis­trib­ut­ors, in­clud­ing Di­gikey, will also stock the stand­ard mod­ules for fast de­liv­ery to cus­tom­ers glob­ally. 
• Cus­tom As­sembled Mod­ule. For any­one that has more spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments, cus­tom as­sembled mod­ules will also be offered. This en­ables cus­tom­ers to de­term­ine their own spe­cific­a­tion, which can in­clude the num­ber and loc­a­tion of USB con­nect­ors, in­put voltage range, and any spe­cif­ic mech­an­ic­al form factor re­quire­ments. This flex­ible op­tion will come with an NRE of just $10,000 and an MOQ of 500pcs provid­ing a very reas­on­able entry point for every­one. 

TDK-Lambda an­nounces the in­tro­duc­tion of the DUSH series in a com­pact DIN rail mount pack­age. The DUSH series provides backup power in the event of a power loss. It builds the heart of the DC-UPS sys­tem and con­nects power sup­ply, load and bat­tery. Un­der nor­mal con­di­tions, the load is powered by the power sup­ply con­nec­ted to the in­put. The DUSH series also man­ages the char­ging of the con­nec­ted bat­tery. In the event of a power out­age, the DUSH mod­ule will main­tain a reg­u­lated out­put voltage, us­ing the bat­tery as the power source for the load.

Bat­tery health man­age­ment

Cap­able of op­er­at­ing from an in­put voltage of 10 to 60V, the DUSH series can be pro­grammed to provide a reg­u­lated 10 to 58V out­put rated at 20A. Ad­di­tion­ally, an un­reg­u­lated 5A aux­il­i­ary out­put is avail­able (-0M suf­fix mod­el). Mul­tiple bat­tery tech­no­lo­gies can be ac­com­mod­ated, in­clud­ing lead, nick­el, lith­i­um and su­per­ca­pa­cit­ors, up to a ca­pa­city of 1000Ah. An in­teg­rated DC-DC buck/boost con­vert­er de­couples the bat­tery from the load voltage. The DUSH mod­ule man­ages the health status of the bat­tery by pre­vent­ing deep dis­char­ging, en­abling tem­per­at­ure-com­pensated char­ging, and mon­it­or­ing the in­tern­al res­ist­ance.

High op­er­at­ing ef­fi­ciency

A front pan­el user in­ter­face is avail­able with a 1.5-inch col­our graph­ic LCD and four con­trol keys (-0M suf­fix mod­el). The DUSH series of­fers mul­tiple in­ter­faces and sig­nals, in­clud­ing two con­fig­ur­able alarm re­lays, an isol­ated re­mote on/off con­tact, status LEDs, and a bat­tery tem­per­at­ure sens­ing in­put. A Mini USB-B or RS485 port for Mod­bus is provided for mon­it­or­ing and pro­gram­ming pur­poses. The Con­trol and Mon­it­or­ing Cen­ter soft­ware (Power­CMC) as­sists with com­mis­sion­ing and main­ten­ance, holds an alarm log, and provides real-time status val­ues for mon­it­or­ing. The op­er­at­ing ef­fi­ciency is between 96 and 98%, de­pend­ing on the char­ging and op­er­at­ing mode. The DUSH series meas­ures 54mm wide, 115mm high and 131mm deep, with a weight of 500g, and op­er­ates between -25 and up to +50°C. Both mod­els carry the CE and UKCA marks for the Low Voltage and RoHS Dir­ect­ives and are cer­ti­fied to the IEC/EN/UL/CSA 61010-1, 61010-2-201, and IEC/UL/CSA/EN 62368-1 Ed.3 safety stand­ards.
 

Traco Power is ex­tend­ing their new TXN line with ad­di­tion­al power levels between 35 and 800 Watt. These cost ef­fi­cient, met­al en­closed AC/DC power sup­plies de­signed for in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions are an act­ive re­place­ment for the older TXL, TXM and TXH lines and is built on sim­il­ar design prin­cipals to make the trans­ition to the new TXN series as easy as pos­sible. With a low-pro­file met­al case and screw ter­min­al block con­nec­tion, they are easy to in­stall in any equip­ment. 

The TXN power sup­plies are com­pletely con­vec­tion cooled up to the TXN 200 (200 Watt series) and fea­ture an act­ive PFC (>0.9) above 100 Watt. They can be op­er­ated in a tem­per­at­ure range from –30°C to +70°C. In­tern­al EMC fil­ter and high I/O-isol­a­tion (3000VAC) qual­i­fy them for nu­mer­ous in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions. All mod­els in the TXN line have uni­ver­sal in­put (90-264 VAC) and com­ply with the latest in­dus­tri­al stand­ard IEC/EN/UL 62368-1, European EMC stand­ards and the Low Voltage Dir­ect­ive (LVD).

Belden has an­nounced the re­lease of its new Lum­berg Auto­ma­tion In­ner M12 Push Pull con­nect­ors, which com­ply with the In­ter­na­tion­al Elec­tro­tech­nic­al (IEC) stand­ard 61076-2-010. Fea­tur­ing a se­cure, quick-lock­ing con­tact meth­od, the M12 Push Pull con­nect­ors are ideal for use in harsh en­vir­on­ments to pre­vent ac­ci­dent­al dis­con­nec­tions that cause down­time, dis­rupt data col­lec­tion or cre­ate safety haz­ards. As or­gan­isa­tions pur­sue di­git­al trans­form­a­tion, con­nect­ing more op­er­a­tion­al tech­no­logy (OT) devices and in­form­a­tion tech­no­logy (IT) sys­tems en­ables them to col­lect and trans­fer more data, pro­mote up­time and gain op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­cien­cies. The M12 push-pull con­nect­or an­swers the call with its simple, se­cure con­tact­ing meth­od and a port­fo­lio of X-coded, D-coded and A-coded vari­ants to meet a wide range of in­dus­tri­al and trans­port­a­tion use cases. 

Con­tact without tools

M12 push-pull con­nect­ors provide se­cure, tool-free con­tact even in tight spaces, such as on in­put/out­put (IO) mod­ules or switches. Sim­pli­fied in­stall­a­tion and main­ten­ance without the need for screw con­nect­ors can re­duce in­stall­a­tion time by up to 80%. The M12 push-pull con­nect­or meets the strin­gent re­quire­ments of a wide range of in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing rail vehicles, ports, in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics or­gan­isa­tions, sup­ply chain and ma­ter­i­al hand­ling, as well as tra­di­tion­al auto­ma­tion en­vir­on­ments.

Ma­chine tools and ma­chin­ing centres gen­er­ate large quant­it­ies of vari­ous, some­times hot, chips, met­al particles or emul­sions that can dam­age cables and hoses. In the worst case, this type of dam­age can cause the en­tire pro­duc­tion pro­cess to fail. TSUBAKI KA­BELSCHLEPP's sol­id plastic TKA cable car­ri­ers with their par­tic­u­larly tight design re­li­ably pro­tect cables from dirt, chips and splash wa­ter and pre­vent prob­lems such as the in­gress of coolants and lub­ric­ants. With the en­cap­su­lated lift­ing sys­tem and pin/hole con­nec­tion, even large quant­it­ies of at­om­ised oil and ejec­ted particles are no longer a prob­lem when clean­ing the work area. This par­tic­u­larly high level of pro­tec­tion for the in­stalled cables and hoses right up to the con­nec­tion area has been tested to IP54 and con­firmed by TÜV NORD for type TKA55 with Bi 50 - 175 mm.

Re­li­able guid­ing over ex­tens­ive un­sup­por­ted lengths

Oth­er key fea­tures of the TKA range in­clude op­tim­ised link geo­metry, high tor­sion­al ri­gid­ity and a triple stroke sys­tem that al­lows long un­sup­por­ted lengths. The cov­er, which can be eas­ily opened from the side in any po­s­i­tion, and the par­tic­u­larly smooth and dirt-re­pel­lent sur­face fa­cil­it­ate main­ten­ance. Ho­ri­zont­al and ver­tic­al di­viders al­low for op­tim­al use of the car­ri­er's in­teri­or.

The TKA series of closed cable car­ri­ers is avail­able with a pitch of 30, 38, 45 and 55 mm and vari­ous in­tern­al widths between 15 and 250 mm. The in­tern­al height is between 20.5 and 45 mm. De­pend­ing on the ap­plic­a­tion and type, the TKA al­lows un­sup­por­ted lengths of up to 6.5 m and travel lengths of up to 150 m for glid­ing ap­plic­a­tions. Ad­di­tion­al loads of up to 15 kg/m and travel ac­cel­er­a­tions of up to 50 m/s² can be achieved de­pend­ing on the ap­plic­a­tion.

Space is al­most al­ways at a premi­um in con­trol cab­in­ets for in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions in the 3-phase range (e.g. mo­tor drives, con­trol sys­tems). SCHURTER ad­dresses this prob­lem with a com­plete new fil­ter design that is just 44 mm in width. The new, single-stage fil­ter series FPAC RAIL is con­struc­ted with a prin­ted cir­cuit board in a plastic hous­ing. It has screw ter­min­als for the three phases and a ter­min­al on the met­al base plate for the earth con­nec­tion.

Stand­ard and High-Per­form­ance Ver­sions

In the stand­ard ver­sion with a fer­rite core, the new fil­ters already of­fer very im­press­ive at­ten­u­ation be­ha­vi­or. The high-per­form­ance ver­sions with nano­crys­tal­line cores achieve up to 8 dB more at­ten­u­ation.

Low Leak­age Cur­rents

The new fil­ter fam­ily has par­tic­u­larly low leak­age cur­rents of just 1.3 mA. All ver­sions can be used from -40 °C to 100 °C. The fil­ters are de­signed for cur­rents from 3 A to 32 A at a max­im­um of 520 VAC in ac­cord­ance with IEC and UL stand­ards. They fea­ture EN­EC and cUR­us ap­prov­al and are suit­able for ap­plic­a­tions in ac­cord­ance with IEC 62368-1. FPAC Rail fil­ters are re­com­men­ded for devices with high EMC loads (switch­ing power sup­plies, con­vert­ers, etc.). Typ­ic­al areas of ap­plic­a­tion are there­fore in­dus­tri­al or ma­chine con­trol sys­tems, but the high-per­form­ance, slim­line fil­ters are also ideal for labor­at­ory, tele­com and IT devices.
 

The new ver­sions of the Near­Fi couplers from Phoenix Con­tact make it pos­sible to double the range for wire­less data trans­mis­sion. In ad­di­tion, they provide double the power for auto­mat­ic cur­rent com­pens­a­tion or the for­ward­ing of two elec­tric­ally isol­ated voltages (US/UA) with par­al­lel con­nec­tion. The achiev­able range is doubled to up to 100 mm dur­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion due to the par­tic­u­larly high-per­form­ance wire­less boards. The par­al­lel con­nec­tion of two Near­Fi coupler paths en­ables either double the power trans­mis­sion (up to 100 W) or the trans­mis­sion of two elec­tric­ally isol­ated voltages (50 W US/UA each). The IP65 devices fea­ture new stand­ard­ized M12 con­nec­tions (L-/D-coded) with duo con­tour. This en­sures flex­ible field wir­ing with clas­sic M12 screw con­nect­ors or push-pull fast-lock­ing. 

Min­im­iz­ing down­times

Near­Fi is a con­tact­less real-time trans­mis­sion tech­no­logy. It al­lows the trans­mis­sion of power and data across an air gap. Thanks to pro­tocol-in­de­pend­ent and latency-free Eth­er­net com­mu­nic­a­tion, it opens up flex­ible ap­plic­a­tion op­tions for all Eth­er­net pro­to­cols up to 100 Mbps. This means that wear-prone con­nec­tions and slip rings in in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions can be eas­ily re­placed and down­time costs can be min­im­ized. Suc­cess­ful data ex­change is in­dic­ated by an LED ring that provides all-round vis­ib­il­ity from every po­s­i­tion. In this way, the Near­Fi couplers can be put in­to op­er­a­tion as eas­ily as a con­nect­or. In the fact­ory of the fu­ture, there will no longer be any phys­ic­al con­nec­tions in mov­ing ap­plic­a­tions. Pro­duc­tion down­times due to bent or worn con­tacts are a thing of the past. Ro­bots change tools quickly and ef­fi­ciently. Auto­mated guided vehicle sys­tems re­ceive their trans­port or­ders con­tact­lessly.
 

For the use of em­bed­ded PCs, Fisc­her Elektronik of­fers spe­cially de­veloped cases with a mod­ern design and prac­tic­al and func­tion­al fea­tures. The spe­cially shaped alu­mini­um case pro­files of the EMB series have in­teg­rated ex­tern­al cool­ing fins for bet­ter heat dis­sip­a­tion and in­tern­al guide chan­nels for slid­ing square nuts or threaded strips, which are used to se­cure the main­board by means of spacer bolts of vari­able length. In ad­di­tion, the lat­er­al guide grooves, also in­teg­rated in­to the case pro­files, al­low for dif­fer­ent main­board formats as well as non-stand­ard PCBs, elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents or mount­ing plates. Front cov­er plates and a 2 mm thick base plate com­plete the ro­bust and dur­able case design.

Dif­fer­ent mount­ing op­tions 

De­pend­ing on the re­quire­ments and ap­plic­a­tion, all EMB en­clos­ures can be fit­ted with mount­ing brack­ets for wall and ceil­ing mount­ing or with a DIN rail mount­ing for DIN EN 50022 rails. Fisc­her Elektronik has ad­ded a new ver­sion to the EMB series. The new case, part num­ber EMB 215 T, is sim­il­ar to the ex­ist­ing EMB 215 case in terms of di­men­sions and heat dis­sip­a­tion char­ac­ter­ist­ics, but in­stead of ex­truded threaded chan­nels, it has T-slots in­to which threaded strips can be in­teg­rated to se­cure the base plate. This design is par­tic­u­larly ad­vant­age­ous in ap­plic­a­tions where the base­plate may need to be re­moved from time to time for re­place­ment or ser­vi­cing of elec­tron­ic devices, etc., or where the case is to be used in a rugged ap­plic­a­tion sub­ject to vi­bra­tion, e.g. on a ma­chine, us­ing mount­ing brack­ets or mount­ing rails. All sizes of the em­bed­ded PC en­clos­ure are avail­able as stand­ard in three dif­fer­ent fin­ishes (nat­ur­al an­od­ised, black an­od­ised or a com­bin­a­tion of both) and four lengths (105, 150, 200, 250mm). Ad­di­tion­al mech­an­ic­al ma­chin­ing, sur­face treat­ment and la­belling are avail­able to cus­tom­er spe­cific­a­tion.
 

IEN Europe: JUMO celebrated a big anniversary in 2023, the 75th anniversary of the company. Can you briefly introduce our readers to some of the most important development highlights on the way from thermometer manufacturer to global supplier of sensor and automation solutions? 
D. Charisiadis: The M. K. JUCHHEIM thermometer factory was founded in Fulda in 1948, even before two German states were founded, and exhibited at HANNOVER MESSE 1949. In 1966, the production of platinum-glass sensors began, and measuring and control devices on an electronic basis were also added to the product range. In 1978, JUMO was the first company to use processors in control technology. In the 1990s, JUMO produced high-tech devices, process control systems, smart transmitters, bus technology, and state-of-the-art visualization software. At the beginning of the 2000s, JUMO grew in the Asian and Eastern European markets and was able to open up new target groups with complete automation systems.

Today, we position ourselves as a leading system and solution provider for a wide range of industries. We offer an innovative range for the entire automation pyramid. 

IEN Europe: What is the current situation of the JUMO Group in terms of turnover and number of employees? How are the production and sales locations distributed?
D. Charisiadis: We still generate the largest turnover in Germany, where we also have the highest number of employees of around 2,500 worldwide with around 1,500 employees.

In view of our new SENSILO plant, Fulda remains our most important production location. We still have larger production units in China, Romania and France, and smaller production facilities in Belgium and Austria, for example. Local conditions play a major role here. We want to be close to our customers, but we also need a certain degree of flexibility. For example, the glass industry is an important JUMO customer in Spain and the railroad industry in Switzerland. All of this has to be taken into account in the global production process. We are represented by sales companies in all relevant and fast-growing markets. 

At the moment, the order and sales situation is challenging. We are also feeling the effects of the recession in Germany, as we are broadly positioned with our portfolio and supply many industries. We are taking all measures to safeguard the jobs of our employees.

IEN Europe: A brief enquiry in the direction of international activities, India is increasingly becoming a focus for many companies. What is the situation at JUMO?
D. Charisiadis: JUMO has been active in the Indian market for 16 years, but we import most of our products. Our customers value ‘Made in Germany’. However, we naturally want to continue to grow in India, and in the medium term this will also involve setting up our own production capacities. One example of how the situation on a market can change quite quickly is China. German products were also very popular there, but today people there ask whether a product is manufactured locally. If not, that is a clear disadvantage.

IEN Europe: In your opinion, what are the core elements in the JUMO DNA that have made it possible to develop and expand the product and solution portfolio so consistently over such a long period of time?
D. Charisiadis: Our JUMO DNA is defined by the following topics: 

• Innovative strength and technology leadership: JUMO has always placed a strong focus on research and development. Through early investment in new technologies and continuous innovation, we have succeeded in keeping our finger on the pulse and always being able to offer our customers state-of-the-art solutions.
• Customer proximity and market orientation: Close cooperation with our customers has enabled us to understand their requirements and challenges precisely and to respond to them in a targeted manner. This customer orientation flows into the development of customized products and solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of the respective industries.
• Employees and corporate culture: Our employees are the key to our success. Long-term expertise, a high level of commitment and a culture of cooperation and mutual trust have created the basis for continuous growth and further development as a company. This strong foundation has allowed us to sustainably expand our portfolio and establish ourselves as a reliable partner in the market.

These elements are deeply anchored in our corporate DNA and enable us to remain competitive.

IEN Europe: A current milestone for JUMO is the decision to build the new plant in Fulda. The plans include 10,000 m² of production space, a total of 13,000 m² of building space and an investment of around 50 million euros. What is the vision behind the new building project? And what is the current status?
D. Charisiadis: The construction work at the JUMO SENSILO plant in the Fulda-West Technology Park is progressing rapidly. After the planned relocation at the end of the year, production is to be gradually ramped up in spring 2025. The new building is primarily about digitalization, material flow optimization, reduction of cost structures and thus ultimately about efficiency gains in order to remain globally competitive. Sustainability is also important to us: the new plant will be energy self-sufficient. At around 50 million euros, the new building is the largest investment in JUMO's history. The new building is still on schedule and on budget. This is due in no small part to the dedication of project manager Stefan Reith and his team. .

IEN Europe: JUMO is known for its innovative products and systems - what are the current highlights that potential users can look forward to?
D. Charisiadis: At SPS 2024, which took place just recently, we didn't focus on a single product, but rather presented ourselves as a leading system and solution provider for a wide range of industries. With our innovative range, we cover the entire automation pyramid, from sensors to the cloud. We made this clear at SPS using the example of our brewing system. We will drive forward our positioning as a system and solution provider even more strongly in 2025. 

IEN Europe: The current economic situation in Germany and Europe is challenging, in which areas and sectors will JUMO see the drivers for positive development in the coming years? 
D. Charisiadis: At JUMO, we see that Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) is significantly driving automation in the process industry. The topic of SPE was already present at the last SPS trade fairs and will be again this year. SPE is important for sensor and measurement technology as it simplifies the infrastructure and reduces installation costs. SPE also offers high data rates and is robust against industrial interference. In the future, I believe SPE will play a key role in the further digitalization of industrial environments by providing a simple, cost-effective and efficient way to integrate a large number of sensors in a network. This will play a significant role especially in Industry 4.0 and IIoT applications. JUMO offers three sensors that are SPE and IO-Link capable. In addition to this technological driver, it is the focus industries we have defined in which we are aiming for double growth. These coincide with megatrends such as clean water, food and investments in infrastructure (railroads).

IEN Europe: When it comes to data, digitalization and automation, the keyword AI has come up almost automatically in recent years. If you search for it on your website, there are currently no hits. How is JUMO positioning itself here, alone or with partners?
D. Charisiadis: AI is an important topic for us, and we will optimize its visibility on the homepage. For example, we are currently using AI as a supplement in the search function of our Software Help Center. Both customers and employees can use it to enter questions about our software products directly into the search field. The AI generates an immediate answer based on the online documentation. A time-consuming search within the operating instructions is not necessary. 
We have our own working group dedicated to this topic. The first AI optimizations were already implemented in our production two years ago. We are currently in the process of introducing our own JUMO GPT internally.

In the future, we will also integrate AI into our products where it makes sense.

IEN Europe: Short final question: Is there a particularly outstanding application that has been successfully realized with JUMO products?
D. Charisiadis: Yes, the JUMO brewing plant designed for our 75th anniversary year was such an example and illustrates our expertise as a comprehensive system and solution provider. A total of 14 JUMO products were installed in the brewing system. Not only the brewing process is possible, but also CIP cleaning. We want to implement such applications even more worldwide with a focus on specific industries. 
IEN Europe: Thank you for the interview!
 

Ef­forts to mim­ic hu­man vis­ion to identi­fy ob­jects are noth­ing new. The first di­git­al im­age pro­cessing tech­no­lo­gies were first de­veloped in the 1960s, and have been con­stantly re­fined and im­proved ever since. Re­cent ad­vances in AI have served to in­tensi­fy these ef­forts fur­ther. Achiev­ing a com­puter-based vis­ion sys­tem that can­not just match but ex­ceed the ac­cur­acy and un­der­stand­ing of hu­man vis­ion com­bined with a hu­man brain has been no­tori­ously dif­fi­cult. Un­lock­ing this tech­no­logy could po­ten­tially her­ald a re­volu­tion in hu­man pro­gress, re­volu­tion­ising everything from ag­ri­cul­ture to med­ic­al sci­ence, as well as in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions.

The hu­man body is the product of hun­dreds of thou­sands of years of evol­u­tion, and as such is in­cred­ibly soph­ist­ic­ated. Com­puters have long been able to de­tect and un­der­stand 2D pic­tures, but dy­nam­ic three-di­men­sion­al en­vir­on­ments are a step far bey­ond this. In­deed, hu­man vis­ion is not just about simply per­ceiv­ing the world around us; it is also about un­der­stand­ing it. Our brains are able to con­stantly provide the vi­tal con­tex­tu­al in­form­a­tion to al­low us to make sense of our sur­round­ings in real-time. Com­puters have tra­di­tion­ally been un­able to match this level of soph­ist­ic­a­tion, that is un­til re­cently.

Chal­len­ging sub­jects

Train­ing a ma­chine to not only per­ceive but un­der­stand the world around it presents com­plex tech­no­lo­gic­al and com­pu­ta­tion­al chal­lenges. De­tect­ing hu­mans adds yet an­oth­er lay­er of com­plex­ity. In­deed, the unique­ness and di­versity of hu­mans them­selves make them one of the most chal­len­ging sub­jects to re­li­ably de­tect without train­ing any sys­tem ex­tens­ively on spe­cif­ic in­di­vidu­als. 

Even a change of cloth­ing or hair­style can present prob­lems. When you add in ad­di­tion­al factors such as the wider en­vir­on­ment with which hu­mans are in­ter­act­ing, com­bined with the un­pre­dict­ab­il­ity of hu­man be­ha­viour, the tech­nic­al chal­lenges quickly mount up. Any vi­able solu­tion also has to be cost-ef­fect­ive and eco­nom­ic­al in size in or­der to be prac­tic­al in every­day en­vir­on­ments.

Solv­ing these prob­lems is not easy. In fast-mov­ing in­dus­tri­al set­tings for in­stance, sev­er­al hu­mans may all be work­ing at speed, car­ry­ing out vari­ous dif­fer­ent du­ties with­in the same space. At­tempt­ing to track their move­ment from a side-on or even an iso­met­ric view has tra­di­tion­ally proven an im­per­fect solu­tion, as this re­quires the sys­tem to have an un­der­stand­ing of the depth of vis­ion. In a single-cam­era con­fig­ur­a­tion, one per­son can also very eas­ily ob­scure an­oth­er from view and cre­ate blind spots.

In ad­di­tion, one of the ma­jor chal­lenges in the de­vel­op­ment of vis­ion sens­ing tech­no­lo­gies is not so much in the cap­ture of im­ages, but in pro­cessing them. For a ma­chine to un­der­stand hu­man move­ment in real-time re­quires a large amount of com­pu­ta­tion­al power to en­sure high speed and ac­cur­acy. Since no two en­vir­on­ments are the same, de­vel­op­ing a sys­tem that can not only un­der­stand the nu­ances of hu­man move­ment, but also ad­apt to dif­fer­ent scenes and light­ing levels, has tra­di­tion­ally been a bar­ri­er to such tech­no­lo­gies be­com­ing vi­able on a wide scale.

Tak­ing a vir­tu­al step back

Om­ron’s AM1 hu­man de­tec­tion sys­tem tackles these chal­lenges quite lit­er­ally from a dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive. De­signed for op­tim­ising hu­man pro­ductiv­ity in in­dus­tri­al set­tings, it util­ises a single top-down cam­era, com­bined with soph­ist­ic­ated soft­ware op­tim­ised spe­cific­ally to de­tect and in­ter­pret hu­man move­ment. In do­ing so, it can provide a more ac­cur­ate pic­ture of where in a giv­en space hu­man work­ers are loc­ated, while also re­du­cing the like­li­hood of over­lap­ping and blind spots. The AM1 soft­ware has been trained to un­der­stand typ­ic­al pat­terns of hu­man move­ment, and can track up to 10 in­di­vidu­als with­in a 7m x 7m area with an ac­cur­acy ex­ceed­ing 95 per­cent.

Hav­ing this cap­ab­il­ity al­lows or­gan­isa­tions to track where and how work­ers are mov­ing, or how long they’re stay­ing at a par­tic­u­lar sta­tion for. This in­form­a­tion can in turn be used to de­tect bot­tle­necks, and en­sure that space util­isa­tion and work­flows are as ef­fi­cient as pos­sible. In prac­tice this could mean re­mov­ing obstacles, or short­en­ing routes that are most fre­quently used, or re­du­cing the like­li­hood of work­ers hav­ing to cross each oth­er’s path. By identi­fy­ing and un­der­stand­ing the prob­lems earli­er, solu­tions can be found more quickly, un­der­pinned by a data-driv­en ap­proach.

Use­full in dif­fer­ent scen­ari­os

AM1’s ac­cur­acy is achieved through the sys­tem’s 10fps frame rate. Im­age data from the cam­era (or mul­tiple cam­er­as) is fed in­to a pro­cessing hub via Eth­er­net, which is powered by an In­tel Open­VINOTM ac­cel­er­at­or. This is the cru­cial in­nov­a­tion that al­lows the sys­tem to turn raw data in­to use­ful in­form­a­tion quickly. Once pro­cessed, the in­form­a­tion is then con­veyed for hu­man op­er­at­ors to a stand­ard PC or PLC. Om­ron’s vast lib­rary of data, ac­cu­mu­lated through years of de­vel­op­ing vis­ion solu­tions, means that the sys­tem does not need to be trained on par­tic­u­lar in­di­vidu­als, and can de­tect any hu­man body type. As such, no spe­cif­ic pro­gram­ming skills are re­quired for users.

Aside from op­tim­ising pro­ductiv­ity, oth­er po­ten­tial uses for this tech­no­logy could in­volve oc­cu­pancy de­tec­tion to de­term­ine the ap­pro­pri­ate HVAC con­di­tions, or in­tru­sion de­tec­tion dur­ing non-work hours. There are also po­ten­tial use cases in shared res­id­ences for op­tim­ising the lay­out and en­vir­on­ment of com­mun­al areas.

While the ac­cur­ate de­tec­tion of hu­mans across all en­vir­on­ments con­tin­ues to present chal­lenges, sys­tems like Om­ron’s AM1 are prov­ing that hu­man mo­tion de­tec­tion has fi­nally reached ma­tur­ity as a vi­able tech­no­lo­gic­al solu­tion. In the fu­ture these sys­tems hold im­mense prom­ise for re­volu­tion­ising pro­ductiv­ity, as well as oth­er as­pects of so­ci­ety.

Au­thor: Gab­ri­ele Fulco, Product Mar­ket­ing Man­ager, Om­ron Elec­tron­ic Com­pon­ents Europe B.V.

 

The Volume3D from Pep­perl+Fuchs is easy to in­stall, al­lows non­con­tact meas­ure­ment, and is low main­ten­ance. The sys­tem is suit­able for vari­ous ap­plic­a­tions such as in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics and min­ing, boast­ing high ac­cur­acy, re­li­ab­il­ity, and easy in­teg­ra­tion. The Volume3D volume de­tec­tion sys­tem of­fers pre­cise meas­ure­ments for bulk ma­ter­i­al and chaot­ic con­vey­ing ap­plic­a­tions. It con­sists of a R2000 2-D LiD­AR sensor, a Multi-Scan Eval­u­ation Unit (MSEU), an ENI58IL rotary en­coder, and the re­quired con­nec­tion cables. The non­con­tact concept re­duces main­ten­ance costs and pre­vents un­ex­pec­ted fail­ures.

Op­tion­al multi-sensor setup for high­er ac­cur­acy

The R2000 LiD­AR sensor de­liv­ers an an­gu­lar res­ol­u­tion of 0.042° and scan rates up to 50 Hz. The R2300 is op­tion­ally avail­able up to 100 Hz. For es­pe­cially de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions, up to three LiD­AR sensors can be con­nec­ted to ex­tend the sens­ing range and in­crease ac­cur­acy. The pre-in­stalled soft­ware of the eval­u­ation unit fil­ters in­val­id meas­ur­ing points, in­creas­ing the pre­ci­sion of the res­ults.

From min­ing to in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics

The sys­tem de­tects the volume, flow rate, di­men­sions, and oth­er load in­dic­at­ors of the con­vey­or belt. In ad­di­tion, the pol­lu­tion de­gree of the LiD­AR is mon­itored to ini­ti­ate clean­ing in time. The con­vey­ing speed is de­tec­ted by a rotary en­coder. The sys­tem also al­lows for oth­er ways to source this in­form­a­tion. Volume3D is suit­able for many ap­plic­a­tions, from in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics to min­ing. It mon­it­ors con­vey­or belts and en­ables pre­cise con­trol of ma­ter­i­al flows. The cost-ef­fect­ive­ness of the sys­tem is based on its high meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy, re­li­ab­il­ity due to the non­con­tact meas­ur­ing prin­ciple of the 2-D LiD­AR sensor sys­tem, and easy in­teg­ra­tion, even in ex­ist­ing sys­tems.
 

"To­geth­er with our M12 cable as­sem­blies, sensor-ac­tu­at­or as­sem­blies and Eth­er­net patch cables, the new re­mote I/O devices form a per­fect over­all solu­tion for in­ter­linked sys­tems," says Jürgen Greger, Product Man­ager In­dus­tri­al Com­mu­nic­a­tion at LAPP. With the re­mote I/O devices, LAPP en­ables bi­d­irec­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion up to field level. The new port­fo­lio in­cludes the IO-Link mas­ters UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS MP08 IOL and UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS SP08 IOL as well as the IO-Link hub UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS HUB08 IOL with glob­ally stand­ard­ised IO-Link tech­no­logy. This al­lows di­git­al sensors and ac­tu­at­ors to be con­veni­ently in­teg­rated in­to the IO-Link net­work. IO-Link also al­lows ex­ten­ded dia­gnostics of sensors and ac­tu­at­ors and fa­cil­it­ates the com­mis­sion­ing and re­place­ment of IO-Link devices thanks to plug-and-play.

Multi-pro­tocol op­tions avail­able

A spe­cial fea­ture is the wide range of func­tions and pro­tocol op­tions. The IO-Link mas­ter (single pro­tocol), the IO-Link mas­ter (multi-pro­tocol) and the IO-Link hub all sup­port IO-Link. The single pro­tocol and multi-pro­tocol vari­ants are avail­able for the In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net pro­to­cols PROFINET, Eth­er­net/IP, Eth­er­CAT, Mod­bus TCP and CC-Link IE, de­pend­ing on the art­icle. The re­spect­ive pro­tocol is set us­ing a rotary cod­ing switch.

The IO-Link mas­ter and the di­git­al mod­ule are con­figured via a web in­ter­face. The IO-Link hub is set up us­ing the IO-Link mas­ter. Both shiel­ded and un­shiel­ded stand­ard cables can be used for IO-Link com­mu­nic­a­tion. The max­im­um length is 20 metres. Jürgen Greger sum­mar­ises: "Com­pared to Eth­er­net com­mu­nic­a­tion, IO-Link is more cost-ef­fect­ive and easi­er to in­teg­rate. The di­git­al mod­ule UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS MP08 DIO is avail­able for ap­plic­a­tions that do not re­quire IO-Link tech­no­logy.

Wieland Electric's samos© PRO MOTION is a new all-in-one safety controller with integrated motion functionality. A total of six TÜV-certified motion function blocks ensure that up to 60 per cent fewer modules are required than with comparable suppliers, thus creating more space in the control cabinet. Among other things, the compact, programmable controller enables safe standstill monitoring, even for vertical and slow-moving axes, and also scores points with an anti-vibration toolbox for macro- and micro-vibrations.

Intuitive configuration options

Whether in mechanical engineering or intralogistics, the compact safety controller from Wieland Electric with up to 70 kHz motion inputs on the base module is suitable wherever reliable standstill, speed, direction and position monitoring is required. The integrated motion function modules include safe standstill monitoring (SSM). This can be implemented with either a speed window or a position window. The limits of the position window or hysteresis can be easily defined using intuitive configuration options. This enables reliable and continuous monitoring of vertical and slow-moving axes, e.g. in construction cranes, lifting platforms, high-bay warehouses or presses.

Filtering of micro- and macro vibrations

Also on board the samos© PRO MOTION is an anti-vibration toolbox, available via the samos© PLAN6 software, which supports reliable standstill monitoring during commissioning, calibration, maintenance, cleaning or even tool changes. This is precisely where vibrations can occur, which can be eliminated with the appropriate functions: The "standstill" function module is used for macro vibrations. For micro vibrations, Wieland Electric has integrated a professional "vibration filter" into the motion functions. Within the framework of three options, the user can thus find the optimum compromise between availability and safety. The documentation for the safety controller is also helpful, as it provides a clear overview of which safety level can be achieved with which filter option.

As is the case for the samos© PRO safety controller, Wieland Electric also offers a high-performance programming software for the new samos© PRO MOTION. The intuitive samos© PLAN6 configuration tool has an extensive library of TÜV-certified function blocks containing typical, application-specific safety functions. It is easy to use via drag & drop. This significantly reduces engineering effort, project planning time and the possibility of errors. Users also benefit from easy documentation and save time when it comes to CE declaration of the machine. With the integrated One-Click Documentation, the documents for the CE declaration of conformity are available at the push of a button, saving time in the approval process.
 

Moxa an­nounces the launch of its MPC-3000 Series pan­el com­puters. De­signed to ad­dress the di­verse needs of in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments, the MPC-3000 pan­el com­puters of­fer a range of screen sizes, a ro­bust fea­ture set, and in­dustry cer­ti­fic­a­tions aimed at re­li­ab­il­ity, dur­ab­il­ity, and ver­sat­il­ity in de­mand­ing op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ments. The series is powered by In­tel Atom® x6000E pro­cessors, of­fer­ing ex­cep­tion­al ver­sat­il­ity with six screen sizes ran­ging from 7 inches to 15.6 inches. De­signed for use in harsh in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments, these pan­el PCs come with ad­vanced glove-friendly touch­screen func­tion­al­ity and sun­light-read­able dis­plays, and sup­port wide-tem­per­at­ure op­er­a­tions from -30 to 60°C, mak­ing them well-suited for a vari­ety of out­door ap­plic­a­tions. Wheth­er de­ployed in oil and gas fields, mar­ine op­er­a­tions, out­door ap­plic­a­tions, or oth­er de­mand­ing set­tings, the MPC-3000 pan­el PCs are re­li­able and ef­fi­cient, even in tough con­di­tions.

Cer­ti­fied for safe op­er­a­tions

Fur­ther­more, the mod­u­lar design of the rugged pan­el PCs sim­pli­fies main­ten­ance and min­im­izes down­time in de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments. By of­fer­ing a cable­less ap­proach on both the front and rear pan­els, the design re­duces com­plex­ity, mak­ing com­pon­ent re­place­ment quick and easy. This stream­lined, mod­u­lar ar­chi­tec­ture en­hances op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency, en­sur­ing main­ten­ance tasks cause min­im­al dis­rup­tion.

De­signed spe­cific­ally for in­dus­tries such as oil and gas, mar­ine, and out­door ap­plic­a­tions, the MPC-3000 pan­el PCs are cer­ti­fied to meet the rig­or­ous de­mands of ex­treme op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ments. Cer­ti­fic­a­tions in­clude Class I Di­vi­sion 2, ATEX Zone 2, and IECEx Zone 2 for haz­ard­ous loc­a­tions, as well as DNV, IEC 60945, and IACS stand­ards for mari­time op­er­a­tions. These cer­ti­fic­a­tions, along with the pan­el PCs’ rugged con­struc­tion, en­sure de­pend­able per­form­ance and safety, mak­ing them an ideal choice for mis­sion-crit­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions in chal­len­ging set­tings. 
 

Aero­tech Inc. has been sup­ply­ing stand­ard product solu­tions such as mo­tors, drives, con­trols and po­s­i­tion­ing tables since 1970. Cus­tom­ised mo­tion sub­sys­tems in­clude po­s­i­tion­ing sys­tems on gran­ite struc­tures with un­der­car­riage and vi­bra­tion isol­a­tion as well as ex­tern­al meas­ure­ment sys­tems. The in­teg­rated sys­tems are al­most turn­key ma­chines that have been de­veloped to­geth­er with the cus­tom­er for the im­ple­ment­a­tion of an auto­mated pro­cess. These in­clude not only pre­ci­sion com­pon­ents man­u­fac­tured in-house for mo­tion con­trol, but also com­plete auto­ma­tion in­teg­ra­tion for e.g. parts hand­ling, pro­cess in­stru­ments, safety ele­ments and cus­tom­ised soft­ware.

De­vel­op­ing hol­ist­ic pro­cesses

"Over the past few years, we have worked closely with cus­tom­ers from a wide range of in­dus­tries and have pro­gressed fur­ther and fur­ther in­to the field of pro­cess auto­ma­tion," says Si­mon Smith, European Dir­ect­or at Aero­tech. When it comes to drive com­pon­ents and con­trol ele­ments in par­tic­u­lar, the mo­tion con­trol ex­perts now have a high level of ver­tic­al in­teg­ra­tion. Thanks to the ac­cu­mu­lated ap­plic­a­tion know­ledge from the in­di­vidu­al in­dus­tri­al sec­tors, the right com­pon­ents for the right use in the ap­plic­a­tion can be re­com­men­ded after a short time. The ideal solu­tion is then de­veloped to­geth­er with the cus­tom­er. "As a man­u­fac­turer of auto­ma­tion sys­tems, we sup­port man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies hol­ist­ic­ally from the ini­tial idea through to im­ple­ment­a­tion. We there­fore al­ways en­sure that our cus­tom­ers can op­tim­ally auto­mate their pro­cess with the pre­ci­sion mo­tion sys­tems we man­u­fac­ture."

Work­ing to­geth­er to find the best solu­tion

Aero­tech thus of­fers its cus­tom­ers the com­plete spec­trum of in­teg­ra­tion op­tions, from low in­teg­ra­tion, i.e. only mo­tion com­pon­ents, to high in­teg­ra­tion, i.e. only mo­tion com­pon­ents. This clearly sets the mo­tion con­trol ex­perts apart from stand­ard sup­pli­ers or tra­di­tion­al in­teg­rat­ors. "Some cus­tom­ers want to build the ma­chine them­selves, while oth­ers are not en­tirely com­fort­able with this op­tion," Si­mon Smith knows from nu­mer­ous projects. "We are flex­ible in our ap­proach and work closely with cus­tom­ers to find the best solu­tion for their re­quire­ments. For ex­ample, if we de­vel­op a turn­key sys­tem for one of our cus­tom­ers, we see this as a part­ner­ship. The cus­tom­er knows the ap­plic­a­tion and un­der­stands the pro­cess for man­u­fac­tur­ing their part - we are ex­perts in cor­rectly cat­egor­ising the cus­tom­er's pro­cess in or­der to build a ma­chine based on it that car­ries out this pro­cess with the highest ac­cur­acy and the highest pos­sible through­put."

Laser pre­cise con­trol of pro­cesses

The basis for all this is Aero­tech's philo­sophy of ver­tic­al in­teg­ra­tion, which has ma­tured over many years and makes it pos­sible to be flex­ible and at the same time guar­an­tee qual­ity and per­form­ance at all levels of the ma­chine. Aero­tech man­u­fac­tures its own drives, mo­tors, con­trols and po­s­i­tion­ing mech­an­ics, so the ex­perts know ex­actly how they work to­geth­er and with­in a ma­chine, in­ter­act with each oth­er and with­in a sys­tem. This en­ables the team to ad­apt and op­tim­ise a ma­chine so that it pro­duces the best pos­sible out­put dur­ing op­er­a­tion.

For ex­ample, if it is a laser pro­cess in which the laser beam needs to be de­flec­ted as quickly and pre­cisely as pos­sible, the ex­perts at Aero­tech work out which axes are suit­able for this in com­bin­a­tion with which galvo scan­ner. 

"We can then pre­pare this ac­cord­ingly so that the cus­tom­er ul­ti­mately only has to couple in their laser and con­trol it," ex­plains Si­mon Smith. "They may also use our con­trol plat­form to con­trol their lasers and com­plete their laser sys­tem straight away."

Ex­actly what is needed

In ad­di­tion, cus­tom­ised spe­cific­a­tions can be in­cor­por­ated in­to the sub­sys­tem that go far bey­ond Aero­tech's com­pon­ent level. For ex­ample, if the cus­tom­er uses a con­trol cab­in­et, the Aero­tech con­trol elec­tron­ics can be flex­ibly in­teg­rated in­to it. Oth­er ele­ments, such as those re­quired to con­trol the laser when meas­ur­ing parts, can also be in­stalled in the con­trol cab­in­et.

On the mech­an­ic­al side, Aero­tech also sup­plies par­tially in­teg­rated sys­tems, which the cus­tom­er only has to com­plete. If an ad­just­ment sys­tem on gran­ite is re­quired for the ma­chine, for ex­ample, the ex­perts pre­pare this for the cus­tom­er. The user can then in­teg­rate oth­er ad­di­tion­al ap­plic­a­tions such as laser beam guid­ance or sensor tech­no­logy as re­quired. "These are tasks that we are faced with here every day," em­phas­ises Si­mon Smith. "The aim is to of­fer the cus­tom­er a freely ex­pand­able solu­tion that is ready for use as quickly as pos­sible without much ef­fort and can also be flex­ibly ad­ap­ted to fu­ture pro­cess re­quire­ments."

However, the first step to­wards ac­tu­al in­teg­ra­tion at Aero­tech al­ways be­gins with a de­tailed ap­plic­a­tion con­sulta­tion. Cus­tom­ers also learn that Aero­tech con­trol tech­no­logy can be used to move far more than the 6 axes of a hexa­pod po­s­i­tion­ing sys­tem, for ex­ample. If, for ex­ample, the laser needs to be triggered de­pend­ing on the po­s­i­tion of the hexa­pod and pulse-fire at a cer­tain point, this can be real­ised us­ing the Automation1 con­trol plat­form. In this way, the en­tire pro­cess can be op­er­ated from a cent­ral con­trol unit. Meas­ure­ment pro­cesses can also be triggered via the Automation1 plat­form in such a way that meas­ured val­ues are also pro­cessed and stored via ana­logue in­puts so that the en­tire res­ult is stored in a cent­ral con­trol unit.

Ahead in med­ic­al tech­no­logy too

Over the years, Aero­tech has also be­come one of the main sup­pli­ers of mo­tion con­trol sys­tems in the med­ic­al tech­no­logy sec­tor. The grow­ing port­fo­lio in­cludes laser weld­ing and stent cut­ting solu­tions as well as match­ing mo­tion sys­tems and com­pon­ents, which, ac­cord­ing to Aero­tech, can in­crease through­put by a factor of two to five with max­im­um pre­ci­sion. Oth­er ex­amples from the med­ic­al tech­no­logy seg­ment in­clude stent cut­ting, pace­maker laser weld­ing sys­tems and the pro­duc­tion of in­traocu­lar lenses (IOLs) and con­tact lenses, po­s­i­tion­ing sys­tems for DNA and blood se­quen­cing, haptic milling cut­ters and drills, po­s­i­tion­ing sys­tems for X-ray ma­chines, mag­net­ic res­on­ance tomo­graphs and CAT scan­ners.

Si­mon Smith con­cludes by em­phas­ising: "Our en­tire busi­ness strategy is geared to­wards close co­oper­a­tion and giv­ing our cus­tom­ers a long-term com­pet­it­ive ad­vant­age in their re­spect­ive mar­ket seg­ments. That's why we ask in­tens­ively in ad­vance what is to be achieved. In this way, we pen­et­rate deep­er and deep­er in­to the ac­tu­al ap­plic­a­tion. Ideally, we can of­fer the cus­tom­er a sys­tem where everything is already pre­pared so that all they have to do is con­fig­ure their ma­chine."
 

With the AF1000, Beck­hoff now also of­fers a fre­quency in­vert­er that provides a cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion for simple drive ap­plic­a­tions such as con­vey­ors, pumps and fans. The fre­quency in­vert­er is fully in­teg­rated in­to the Twin­CAT sys­tem via Eth­er­CAT and of­fers the fa­mil­i­ar ease of com­mis­sion­ing and dia­gnostics of servo drive tech­no­logy.

Sup­port of dif­fer­ent mo­tor tech­no­lo­gies

The AF1000 fre­quency in­vert­er is avail­able in two dif­fer­ent ver­sions: one for a single-phase sup­ply of 1 x 230 V AC with a power range from 0.37 kW to 1.5 kW, and one for a three-phase sup­ply of 3 x 400 V AC with a power range from 0.37 kW to 2.2 kW. Des­pite its com­pact size, the AF1000 can ac­com­mod­ate an in­teg­rated con­trol power sup­ply, DC link ca­pa­cit­ors and a bal­last cir­cuit. The con­trol voltage is gen­er­ated by the in­teg­rated power sup­ply from the DC link. Both ver­sions of the drive are avail­able as a single ax­is mod­ule and as a highly cost-ef­fect­ive dual ax­is mod­ule. Sup­por­ted mo­tor types in­clude syn­chron­ous ser­vo­mo­tors, as well as asyn­chron­ous and re­luct­ance mo­tors without feed­back, op­er­at­ing in UF mode or vec­tor con­trol.

The AF1000 fre­quency in­vert­er is fully in­teg­rated in­to the Twin­CAT sys­tem via Eth­er­CAT. Like Beck­hoff servo drives, the AF1000 is com­mis­sioned us­ing the Twin­CAT Drive Man­ager 2, so users do not have to fa­mil­i­ar­ise them­selves with a new, ad­di­tion­al tool.
 

The new FAUL­HABER MC 3602 B and MC 3606 B mo­tion con­trol­lers make the se­lec­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of drive sys­tems now even sim­pler. With the com­pact MC 3602/06 B, DC-mo­tors, brush­less DC-mo­tors and lin­ear mo­tors can be op­er­ated with the typ­ic­al po­s­i­tion en­coders as servo drive in ac­cord­ance with CiA 402. Also new is the sup­port of step­per mo­tors with en­coder as servo or without en­coder in open-loop op­er­a­tion. The new MC 3602 B vari­ant is equipped with up to 2 A con­tinu­ous out­put cur­rent for smal­ler mo­tors and the MC 3606 B vari­ant has up to 6 A con­tinu­ous out­put cur­rent for me­di­um-sized mo­tors which sim­pli­fies work for en­gin­eers. For ap­plic­a­tions in which more than one mo­tor tech­no­logy is used, just one mo­tor con­trol­ler and a GUI are needed. The free FAUL­HABER "Mo­tion Man­ager 7" soft­ware is avail­able for in­stall­a­tion and com­mis­sion­ing. With this, the drive is run­ning in just a few steps. All main op­er­at­ing modes of the CiA 402 servo drive are offered. In­teg­ra­tion is per­formed via CAN­open or RS232, and for com­mis­sion­ing, primar­ily the USB in­ter­face is used. Ad­di­tion­ally, an op­tion­al Eth­er­CAT mod­ule en­ables cycle times as short as 1 ms. In con­clu­sion, the mo­tion con­trol­lers can also be op­er­ated without cent­ral con­trol in stand-alone mode.

For use with stand­ard mo­tors

In com­bin­a­tion with FAUL­HABER mo­tors, the MC 3602 B and MC 3606 B de­liv­er a soph­ist­ic­ated drive sys­tem with ex­tens­ive pro­tect­ive func­tions. The products were de­veloped for the op­er­a­tion of mo­tors with iron­less wind­ing and of­fer high dy­nam­ics here. Stand­ard mo­tors – such as NEMA step­per mo­tors – can like­wise eas­ily be op­er­ated with the MC 3602/06 B. They thereby rep­res­ent a sol­id basis for a range of ap­plic­a­tions. Re­gard­less of wheth­er the ap­plic­a­tion uses a step­per mo­tor in open-loop or closed-loop op­er­a­tion, or in com­bin­a­tion with brush­less, lin­ear or DC ser­vo­mo­tors, the MC 3602/06 B provides a solu­tion for nearly every re­quire­ment – in in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion or in labor­at­ory auto­ma­tion, ro­bot­ics, semi­con­duct­or pro­cessing or in use with meas­ure­ment sys­tems.

Trio Mo­tion Tech­no­logy is launch­ing a new ma­chine con­trol­ler for large ma­chines with con­trol for up to 128 servo drive and ro­bot axes over high speed Eth­er­CAT. The new quad-core Flex-7 Flex­ible Ma­chine Con­trol­ler also in­creases ma­chine auto­ma­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies by ex­pand­ing net­work con­nectiv­ity and data pro­cessing power, com­bin­ing con­trol flex­ib­il­ity and com­pact di­men­sions. It fea­tures ded­ic­ated cores for high per­form­ance com­mu­nic­a­tions and mo­tion. The new Flex-7, a single con­trol­ler for ma­chine, mo­tion, and ro­bot­ics, pre­cisely co­ordin­ates high ax­is counts while op­tim­ising con­trol and in­teg­ra­tion with ex­pan­ded auto­ma­tion sys­tems. The multi-ax­is ma­chine con­trol­ler is de­signed for large ap­plic­a­tions in man­u­fac­tur­ing auto­ma­tion, pack­aging, and ma­ter­i­al hand­ling.

High-speed Eth­er­net ports

Provid­ing power­ful ma­chine con­trol, Flex-7 fea­tures high-speed Eth­er­net to give fast, re­li­able data ex­change, op­tim­ising com­mu­nic­a­tions with wider con­trol­lers and net­works. This is achieved with two, 1Gbps Eth­er­net ports, com­pat­ible with In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net pro­to­cols in­clud­ing Eth­er­net/IP and Mod­bus TCP. The Flex-7 in­creases con­trol to 128 servo or ro­bot axes and provides the high pre­ci­sion mo­tion co­ordin­a­tion that Trio is renowned for. Flex-7 achieves Eth­er­CAT up­date rates as fast as 125µs for up to eight axes, and the full 128 axes are co­ordin­ated with up­date rates down to 4ms. En­sur­ing con­sist­ent mo­tion syn­chron­isa­tion for large ma­chines, Flex-7 fea­tures <5µsec jit­ter and can con­trol a wide vari­ety of Eth­er­CAT devices in­clud­ing servo drives and I/O.

Com­pact con­trol­ler size

A theme of Trio’s Flex con­trol­ler range is com­pact size, and this is con­tin­ued with the Flex-7. Just 51mm wide, 147mm high, and 107mm deep, the DIN rail-moun­ted ma­chine con­trol­ler en­ables simple design in­teg­ra­tion and in­stall­a­tion. Ma­chine con­trol func­tion­al­ity can be ad­ded dir­ectly with Trio’s range of click-in Flexslice I/O mod­ules that com­mu­nic­ate with the Flex-7 us­ing Eth­er­CAT via the Ebus in­ter­face. Flexslice I/O slices give ma­chine build­ers flex­ib­il­ity in adding re­quired func­tion­al­ity while min­im­ising space and cost.

Flex-7’s mo­tion syn­chron­isa­tion cap­ab­il­ity is powered by Trio’s Mo­tion-iX mo­tion en­gine. Mo­tion-iX is based on a com­mand set for servo and ro­bot axes, in­clud­ing multi-ax­is co­ordin­a­tion in mul­tiple di­men­sions, as well as nu­mer­ous kin­emat­ic mod­els for ro­bot­ics. The mo­tion en­gine is ac­cessed through Trio’s Mo­tion Per­fect soft­ware in­ter­face, and pro­gram­ming can be achieved with Trio Ba­sic, de­signed to speed-up de­vel­op­ment through its Eng­lish lan­guage-based ap­proach, as well as IEC lan­guages in­clud­ing ST and LD, as well as PLCopen.
 

The new lin­ear mo­tor mod­ules (LMM) from Bosch Rexroth are avail­able in sizes 140, 180 and 220 and fea­ture a zero-back­lash dir­ect drive. They com­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing lin­ear mo­tion tech­no­logy port­fo­lio as a ready-to-in­stall solu­tion. All mod­ule sizes are avail­able with iron-core lin­ear mo­tors. The sizes 180 and 220 are also avail­able with an iron­less mo­tor. This opens up a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions with stand­ard strokes of up to 1,540 mm and forces of up to 2,400 N. At speeds of up to 5 m/s and with ac­cel­er­a­tions of up to 250 m/s², the LMMs achieve re­peat­ab­il­ity of ± 1.0 µm. These per­form­ance fig­ures al­low very short cycle times – an im­port­ant con­sid­er­a­tion for the pro­duc­tion of elec­tron­ic and op­tic­al com­pon­ents, semi­con­duct­ors or in elec­tro­mobil­ity. Typ­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions in­clude high-pre­ci­sion pick-and-place, elec­tron­ic com­pon­ent hand­ling and auto­mated op­tic­al in­spec­tion. 

Max­im­um ef­fi­ciency in the smal­lest of spaces

The high ef­fi­ciency of the new lin­ear mo­tor mod­ules is partly due to the in­teg­rated screw-free dir­ect drive which re­places mech­an­ic­al power trans­mis­sion. This sig­ni­fic­antly in­creases dy­nam­ics and mech­an­ic­al ef­fi­ciency and al­lows great re­peat­ab­il­ity. At the same time, the mod­u­lar design of the ready-to-in­stall LMM re­duces the in­stall­a­tion ef­fort. The new lin­ear mo­tor mod­ules also re­duce main­ten­ance costs, on the one hand due to the main­ten­ance-free lin­ear mo­tor and on the oth­er hand due to the high-qual­ity, long-last­ing ball rail sys­tems with long re­lubric­a­tion in­ter­vals.
 

The SFU 0303 is the power solu­tion for all types of spindles in the BMR product range. The main fea­tures of the ver­sat­ile fre­quency con­vert­er in­clude the vari­able DC link voltage for op­tim­um spindle voltage, which en­sures ideal con­trol and smooth run­ning. In ad­di­tion, the spindle is kept at an ex­tremely low tem­per­at­ure, which means that the use of si­nus­oid­al fil­ters or out­put chokes can reg­u­larly be avoided in the ac­tu­al ap­plic­a­tion on site; a fur­ther cost sav­ing. The device can also be used to op­er­ate low-voltage spindles. In­teg­rated brake chop­per res­ist­or of 200 watts, auto­mat­ic spindle brak­ing when the mains is switched off dur­ing op­er­a­tion, pulse block­ing are stand­ard fea­tures, an op­tion­al Safe Torque Off is avail­able. The ver­sat­ile in­vert­er is also avail­able as a ta­ble-top unit. 

“In ad­di­tion to these fea­tures, this fre­quency in­vert­er can eas­ily re­place ex­ist­ing old devices without any ad­di­tion­al ef­fort. This is a state-of-the-art ret­ro­fit that saves costs, brings ex­ist­ing ma­chin­ing cen­ters, such as grind­ing and milling ma­chines, up to date at low cost and con­trib­utes to re­du­cing CO₂ emis­sions“, says Man­aging Dir­ect­or Susanne Brit­tling.
 

Sol­id State Re­lays (SSRs) and Sol­id State Con­tact­ors (SSCs) are ideally suited for con­trolling dy­nam­ic loads such as mo­tors, par­tic­u­larly where fre­quent or mul­tiple start/stop cycles are re­quired in an ap­plic­a­tion. Prop­er se­lec­tion of a Sol­id State Re­lay/Sol­id State Con­tact­or to re­li­ably start and stop a mo­tor in each ap­plic­a­tion re­quires an un­der­stand­ing of the de­mands placed on the Sol­id State Con­trol by the mo­tor and ap­plic­a­tion. Mo­tor Con­trol rat­ings in Horsepower (HP) or Kilo­watt (KW) avail­able on many Sensata | Cry­dom Sol­id State Re­lays and Con­tact­ors sim­pli­fy the se­lec­tion pro­cess, but Sol­id State Re­lays with only Gen­er­al Pur­pose Rat­ings can also be used to con­trol mo­tors.

Note: Sol­id State Re­lays (SSRs) and Sol­id State Con­tact­ors (SSCs) are es­sen­tially if not ex­actly the same func­tion­ally. The dif­fer­en­ti­ation between them is that by defin­i­tion a “con­tact­or” must carry a mo­tor con­trol rat­ing in HP or KW, where­as a sim­il­ar Sol­id State Re­lay with a Gen­er­al Pur­pose rat­ing may or may not carry a mo­tor con­trol rat­ing as well. Aside from the eval­u­ation (test­ing) pro­cess and the res­ult­ing ap­proved rat­ings co­ordin­a­tion, there is no dif­fer­ence between a Sol­id State Re­lay with and without a HP mo­tor rat­ing.

This white­pa­per dis­cusses the pro­cess that can be fol­lowed to se­lect the cor­rect Sol­id State Re­lay for mo­tor con­trol in those situ­ations where Horsepower (HP) or Kilo­watt (KW) rat­ings of the Sol­id State Re­lay may not be known or avail­able.

The rugged Vais­ala WM80 ul­tra­son­ic wind sensor is de­signed to with­stand the unique chal­lenges and wide range of con­di­tions in wind en­ergy and mari­time ap­plic­a­tions. It provides ac­cur­ate wind in­form­a­tion for wind tur­bine con­trol, off­shore ves­sel dy­nam­ic po­s­i­tion­ing and nav­ig­a­tion sys­tems, im­prov­ing per­form­ance and safety. Vais­ala's proven WIND­CAP® sensor tech­no­logy uses three trans­ducers to cap­ture 50% more wind sig­nal com­pared to con­ven­tion­al ul­tra­son­ic tech­no­lo­gies. This en­sures meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy and re­li­ab­il­ity. Its com­pact design makes it easy to in­stall in con­fined spaces and its rugged, ro­bust tech­no­logy with­stands ex­treme con­di­tions. The fully heated an­em­o­met­er en­sures stable per­form­ance even in arc­tic en­vir­on­ments.

Re­li­able wind dir­ec­tion data is es­sen­tial to max­im­ise avail­able en­ergy. In ad­di­tion to ex­cel­lent meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy, cor­rect sensor align­ment is crit­ic­al for high qual­ity wind dir­ec­tion data. The mod­u­lar design of the sensor to­geth­er with the easy to use align­ment tools en­sures that the sensor is al­ways in per­fect align­ment. These re­li­able wind meas­ure­ments also help mari­time ves­sels to im­prove dy­nam­ic po­s­i­tion­ing and nav­ig­a­tion­al safety.

Ro­bust, easy to in­stall and main­ten­ance free

De­signed to im­prove both safety and per­form­ance, the new ul­tra­son­ic wind sensor provides real-time wind in­form­a­tion to help max­im­ise op­er­at­ing win­dows and in­crease ef­fi­ciency. The WM80 uses a nov­el, pat­ent-pending re­flect­or design that fo­cuses the ul­tra­son­ic sig­nal onto the trans­ducers and main­tains fo­cus des­pite chan­ging wind speeds of up to 90m/s. This means that even in harsh on­shore and off­shore en­vir­on­ments, un­in­ter­rup­ted and ac­cur­ate wind speed and dir­ec­tion meas­ure­ments can be made. The WM80 has been spe­cific­ally de­signed to with­stand harsh con­di­tions such as ex­treme heat, icing, high winds, pre­cip­it­a­tion, vi­bra­tion and shock. The hous­ing is made from cor­ro­sion-res­ist­ant, an­od­ised mar­ine-grade alu­mini­um in a com­pact form factor.

The sensor's in­nov­at­ive design with push-pull con­nect­or and align­ment tools sim­pli­fies setup, re­duces in­stall­a­tion time and provides a stable, se­cure con­nec­tion. With no mov­ing parts and no need for cal­ib­ra­tion, the sensor is free from the lim­it­a­tions of mech­an­ic­al wind sensors, en­abling long-term, trouble-free op­er­a­tion.

Turck is now of­fer­ing its QR20 in­clino­met­ers with a CAN­open in­ter­face, thus ex­pand­ing the ex­ist­ing range with IO-Link, switch­ing and ana­log out­puts. The new CAN­open in­clino­met­ers with their large power sup­ply range from 8 to 36 VDC and the E1 ap­prov­al are ideal for use in mo­bile ma­chinery such as wheel load­ers, tip­pers and tele­scop­ic plat­forms. The pat­en­ted spir­it level func­tion en­ables quick and easy in­stall­a­tion.

All QR20 in­clino­met­ers are avail­able as single-ax­is devices for stat­ic (B1N) or dy­nam­ic ap­plic­a­tions (B1NF) and as dual-ax­is sensors for stat­ic (B2N) or dy­nam­ic ap­plic­a­tions (B2NF). The in­clino­met­ers use a fu­sion of a gyro­scope sig­nal and MEMS ac­cel­er­a­tion meas­ure­ment, which makes them more ef­fect­ive at com­pens­at­ing for shocks and vi­bra­tions than con­ven­tion­al sensors. This en­sures pre­cise and stable meas­ure­ment even in mov­ing or vi­brat­ing en­vir­on­ments.
 

The new Mi­cro Ep­si­lon IMP-DS10/90/VAC mini­ature sensor is de­signed for use in a va­cu­um and can be in­teg­rated without tak­ing up too much space thanks to its 90-de­gree beam path. The sensor is com­pat­ible with the in­ter­fer­o­MET­ER IMS5400 or IMS5600 con­trol­lers. The in­ter­fer­o­MET­ER 5400-DS and 5600-DS ab­so­lute in­ter­fer­o­met­ers are used for dis­tance meas­ure­ment with nano­met­er ac­cur­acy. The product group has now been ex­pan­ded to in­clude new sensors with a large off­set dis­tance of 10 mm. These are de­signed for high-pre­ci­sion ap­plic­a­tions in clean room en­vir­on­ments and in a va­cu­um, for ex­ample for meas­ure­ments on coated wafers. A non-mag­net­ic ti­tani­um UHV ver­sion also al­lows for use in strong mag­net­ic fields, for ex­ample in MRI scan­ning or elec­tron beam mi­cro­scopes.

Re­duced in­stall­a­tion space

The design with a 90° beam path sig­ni­fic­antly re­duces the re­quired in­stall­a­tion depth. Lin­ear­it­ies of < ±50 nm or < ±10 nm are pos­sible, de­pend­ing on the choice of con­trol­ler. The in­nov­at­ive ab­so­lute in­ter­fer­o­met­ers have ex­tens­ive con­nec­tion op­tions for op­tim­al in­teg­ra­tion in­to vari­ous con­trol sys­tems and pro­duc­tion pro­grams. They in­clude di­git­al in­ter­faces such as Eth­er­net, Eth­er­CAT, RS422, PROFINET and Eth­er­Net/IP as well as an ana­log out­put. The en­tire con­fig­ur­a­tion of the con­trol­ler and its sensors is car­ried out as usu­al via the web in­ter­face without ad­di­tion­al soft­ware.

Met­is En­gin­eer­ing an­nounces the launch of its latest sensor, the “Cell Guard with Hy­dro­gen”. This new sensor, an evol­u­tion of the ori­gin­al Cell Guard, is ex­pertly en­gin­eered to de­tect hy­dro­gen (H₂) in en­ergy stor­age sys­tems, of­fer­ing es­sen­tial safety en­hance­ments for hy­dro­gen-based ap­plic­a­tions and bat­tery packs alike.

Why is Hy­dro­gen Dan­ger­ous? 

In air hy­dro­gen has a wide flam­mab­il­ity lim­it from 4 to 77% by volume and an ex­plos­ive lim­it from 18 to 59%. The ac­tiv­a­tion en­ergy for ig­ni­tion is ex­tremely low and can be triggered by a very small spark or stat­ic dis­charge. Hy­dro­gen is an odour­less, col­our­less gas and can go un­detec­ted without spe­cial­ised tech­no­logy.

Early de­tec­tion of hy­dro­gen leaks is crit­ic­al to main­tain­ing safety throughout the hy­dro­gen li­fe­cycle - from pro­duc­tion, stor­age, trans­port, use in fuel cells and H₂-ICE. With ap­plic­a­tions in the trans­port, mar­ine, avi­ation and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors, Met­is En­gin­eer­ing's new sensor ad­dresses this crit­ic­al need and sets a new bench­mark for safety in hy­dro­gen tech­no­lo­gies.

The latest hy­dro­gen de­tec­tion sensor ad­dresses key safety re­quire­ments with in­nov­at­ive, high-per­form­ance fea­tures, build­ing on the found­a­tion of the ori­gin­al Cell Guard sensor. 

Wider range of op­er­a­tion

The sensor of­fers un­par­alleled ac­cur­acy in de­tect­ing even trace hy­dro­gen leaks, en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with the most strin­gent safety stand­ards and pro­tect­ing against the risk of fire or ex­plo­sion in hy­dro­gen stor­age sys­tems. Cell Guard with Hy­dro­gen ex­cels in en­vir­on­ments with high levels of volat­ile or­gan­ic com­pounds (VOCs). For ex­ample, where large amounts of ad­hes­ives have been used in the con­struc­tion of an en­ergy stor­age sys­tem, am­bi­ent VOC levels can re­main very high; this sensor can still de­tect thermal run­away. With an ex­ten­ded op­er­at­ing range of -40°C to +85°C (-40°F to +185°F), the sensor is de­signed for ex­treme con­di­tions where oth­er sensors may un­der­per­form, mak­ing it ideal for a vari­ety of de­mand­ing en­vir­on­ments. Low power mode op­er­a­tion en­sures con­tinu­ous mon­it­or­ing with low power con­sump­tion (<1mA). Upon de­tec­tion of a level that meets a pre-con­figured threshold, Cell Guard with Hy­dro­gen wakes the CAN in­ter­face and toggles a low-side drive pin, provid­ing low-power de­tec­tion of hy­dro­gen leaks and wa­ter in­gress. The sensor de­liv­ers im­me­di­ate hy­dro­gen meas­ure­ments without the need for warm-up, en­sur­ing real-time safety mon­it­or­ing from power-up. With its wide de­tec­tion range of 0% to 20% H₂ the sensor meas­ures hy­dro­gen with pre­ci­sion across a wide range, of­fer­ing de­pend­able data in vari­able con­di­tions.
 

Form­al­de­hyde, com­monly found in wood-based fur­niture, floor­ing, paints, and cos­met­ics, is a haz­ard­ous in­door pol­lut­ant. Even at very low con­cen­tra­tions, it can cause res­pir­at­ory ir­rit­a­tion and is clas­si­fied as a car­ci­no­gen­ic chem­ic­al. To ad­dress the chal­lenge of de­tect­ing form­al­de­hyde at con­cen­tra­tions as low as tens of ppb, Sensiri­on has de­veloped the SFA40 – a highly sens­it­ive and se­lect­ive sensor that ac­cur­ately dis­tin­guishes harm­ful form­al­de­hyde in the pres­ence of oth­er typ­ic­ally harm­less Volat­ile Or­gan­ic Com­pounds (VOCs). The SFA40 is a game changer in form­al­de­hyde sens­ing, de­signed for seam­less in­teg­ra­tion in­to in­door air qual­ity mon­it­or­ing devices, air pur­i­fi­ers, and air con­di­tion­ers. Meas­ur­ing just 10 x 13 x 2.4 mm³, it un­locks new ap­plic­a­tions where space is lim­ited.

In­teg­ra­tion in bat­tery powered devices

The en­ergy-ef­fi­cient design makes it ideal for bat­tery-powered devices, en­sur­ing ex­ten­ded op­er­a­tion­al life without com­prom­ising per­form­ance. Build­ing on the suc­cess of the SFA30, the SFA40 main­tains an ac­cur­ate di­git­al, cal­ib­rated and com­pensated out­put throughout the en­tire sensor life­time. The sensor is de­signed, man­u­fac­tured, and cal­ib­rated in Switzer­land to en­sure the highest qual­ity stand­ards, elim­in­at­ing the need for ad­di­tion­al cal­ib­ra­tion by the cus­tom­er. Sensiri­on works to­wards third-party cer­ti­fic­a­tion of SFA40 to val­id­ate the sensor’s ac­cur­acy. The SFA40 is set to enter mass pro­duc­tion in early 2025
 

Yokogawa Test & Meas­ure­ment Cor­por­a­tion an­nounces the re­lease of its DLM3000HD series high-defin­i­tion os­cil­lo­scopes sup­por­ted by new IS8002CDV Clas­sic Data View­er (CDV) soft­ware. The com­pact and light­weight mul­tichan­nel DLM3000HD meets mar­ket de­mand for high-pre­ci­sion, high-speed meas­ure­ment of com­plex di­git­al wave­forms dur­ing in­vert­er/mo­tor de­vel­op­ment and test­ing. With a lineup span­ning 500 MHz and 350 MHz fre­quency band­width mod­els, the com­bin­a­tion of pro­pri­et­ary low-noise de­tec­tion and high res­ol­u­tion al­lows tech­ni­cians to per­form stud­ies in minute de­tail, faster than be­fore.

De­vel­op­ment Back­ground

Build­ing on the ex­ist­ing DLM3000 mixed­sig­nal os­cil­lo­scope series launched in 2018, Yokogawa ap­plied its 100+ years of ex­pert­ise and in­nov­a­tion in meas­ur­ing in­stru­ment tech­no­logy to de­vel­op the DLM3000HD. The product stems from re­quests made by cus­tom­ers for a light­weight, com­pact os­cil­lo­scope with high­er pre­ci­sion and rap­id start-up speed that sup­ports the on­go­ing re­quire­ment for more en­ergy-ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able mo­tors and in­vert­ers. Ad­opt­ing the DLM3000HD to cap­ture highly ac­cur­ate voltage and cur­rent wave­forms with high sample rates ad­dresses the cap­ab­il­it­ies of elec­tric mo­tors and drives to en­sure ef­fi­ciency in trans­port­a­tion sec­tor ap­plic­a­tions, for ex­ample. An­oth­er de­vel­op­ment driver is next-gen­er­a­tion power devices de­ploy­ing sil­ic­on-carbide (SiC) tech­no­logy, which can switch on and off in a few nano­seconds. Os­cil­lo­scopes of­fer­ing band­widths of 350 MHz or great­er are ne­ces­sary to cap­ture the fast rising and fall­ing edges of the tran­si­ent (high-in­tens­ity voltage spike dur­ing switch­ing). Thanks to its multi-chan­nel meas­ure­ment, wide band­width cap­ab­il­it­ies and vastly im­proved ver­tic­al ax­is res­ol­u­tion the series steps up to the chal­lenge of per­form­ing high-pre­ci­sion para­met­er meas­ure­ments, stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is, and real-time math­em­at­ic­al func­tions.

Fea­tures

In com­par­is­on with the ex­ist­ing DLM3000, res­ol­u­tion some 16 times great­er (12 bit) in the ver­tic­al ax­is cap­tures wave­form over­shoot and ringing for more ac­cur­ate ob­ser­va­tion of tiny changes in high-speed sig­nals. A long 1 Gpoint memory (double the 0.5 Gpoint memory of the DLM3000) sup­ports the de­vel­op­ment and eval­u­ation of next-gen­er­a­tion in­vert­er devices by re­cord­ing mul­tiple chan­nels sim­ul­tan­eously, greatly in­creas­ing work ef­fi­ciency. En­gin­eers can make ac­cur­ate ob­ser­va­tions of subtle changes in meas­ure­ment tar­get sig­nals over a long peri­od of time (even at high sample rates up to 2.5 GS/s), con­firm sig­nal wave­forms, and de­tect sig­nals caus­ing un­ex­pec­ted an­om­alies.

An­oth­er unique fea­ture of the DLM3000HD series is the pi­on­eer­ing auto set-up func­tion for in-vehicle seri­al bus de­vel­op­ment and eval­u­ation, a cap­ab­il­ity that is also pos­sible dur­ing post data ac­quis­i­tion ana­lys­is. This time-sav­ing func­tion, which auto­mat­ic­ally con­fig­ures the op­tim­al bit rate and threshold level, ac­cel­er­ates the de­liv­ery of se­cure, re­li­able meas­ure­ment res­ults in the auto­mot­ive in­dustry.

Emer­son ex­pan­ded its NI™ USB data ac­quis­i­tion (DAQ) product line with the new NI mi­oDAQ device. To help en­gin­eers meet the in­creas­ing de­mand to im­prove qual­ity and re­duce time-to-mar­ket when de­vel­op­ing ad­vanced elec­tron­ic tech­no­lo­gies, the NI mi­oDAQ solu­tion of­fers im­proved meas­ure­ment per­form­ance, more power­ful soft­ware and an easi­er setup ex­per­i­ence. Elec­tron­ic products, from smart­phones to laun­dry ma­chines to hu­man-con­nec­ted bi­o­sensors, con­tin­ue to grow in com­plex­ity. En­gin­eers need ac­cess to more power­ful tools to design and test the in­creas­ingly soph­ist­ic­ated products that have be­come in­teg­ral to users’ daily lives. Emer­son’s NI mi­oDAQ bus-powered USB DAQ device, the com­pany’s most power­ful to date, fea­tures up to 16 chan­nels of 20-bit res­ol­u­tion and de­liv­ers 1 mil­lion sim­ul­tan­eous samples per second. 

De­bug­ging com­plex designs

It was built for op­tim­al per­form­ance, of­fer­ing im­proved meas­ure­ment cap­ab­il­it­ies, sim­pli­fied setup and up­graded soft­ware. Its mod­ern mech­an­ic­al design and USB type-C con­nectiv­ity sim­pli­fy setup and in­crease ac­cess­ib­il­ity to en­gin­eer­ing teams. This cap­ab­il­ity en­ables en­gin­eers to de­bug com­plex designs early in the de­vel­op­ment cycle, sig­ni­fic­antly re­du­cing costs. De­signed for the desktop but ro­bust enough for fully auto­mated test benches, the hard­ware fea­tures up to 32 ana­log in­put chan­nels, four high-speed ana­log out­puts, 16 flex­ible di­git­al lines, four coun­ters, and guar­an­teed specs for two- and 10-year cal­ib­ra­tion cycles.

The NI mi­oDAQ device’s setup page stream­lines the ini­tial user setup pro­cess. By simply scan­ning a QR code on the device, en­gin­eers gain im­me­di­ate ac­cess to es­sen­tial soft­ware and star­tup re­sources, in­clud­ing the pin map, manu­al, drivers, setup videos and oth­er tech­nic­al doc­u­ments. This ef­fi­cient ac­cess min­im­izes setup time and frus­tra­tion, al­low­ing en­gin­eers to start us­ing the solu­tion quickly. Each device ships with all ne­ces­sary con­nectiv­ity ac­cessor­ies and a USB cable, fur­ther re­du­cing con­fig­ur­a­tion time and en­han­cing the ac­cess­ib­il­ity of qual­ity meas­ure­ments.

Ver­sat­ile soft­ware sup­port

NI mi­oDAQ devices now sup­port Flex­Log­ger™ Lite data log­ging soft­ware, ideal for en­gin­eers need­ing quick data ac­cess. It in­teg­rates seam­lessly with Emer­son’s NI Lab­VIEW soft­ware and the Lab­VIEW+ suite for lab and man­u­fac­tur­ing test sys­tems. With more than two dec­ades of us­ing the same DAQ driver, en­gin­eers us­ing ex­ist­ing NI DAQ hard­ware can ex­pect back­ward com­pat­ib­il­ity and easi­er per­form­ance up­grades. Ad­di­tion­ally, the NI mi­oDAQ solu­tion and its driver sup­port soft­ware de­vel­op­ment with C/C++, C#, Py­thon and oth­er lan­guages. Emer­son of­fers en­hanced Py­thon sup­port, sim­pli­fy­ing pack­age and driver soft­ware in­stall­a­tion with a com­mand line pack­age script. Full doc­u­ment­a­tion is avail­able on Read the Docs host­ing plat­form, and full open-source ac­cess to the Py­thon Pack­age, in­clud­ing over 50 ex­ample pro­grams, is avail­able through Git­Hub.