Three products that keep industrial automation humming

Keeping modern industrial automation humming — from maintaining assembly lines running to managing power distribution — requires a multitude of devices for businesses of all sizes. Manufacturers continually strive to create and refine products that will enhance productivity and safety while controlling costs. Maintaining automation standards means better customer service, the lifeblood for manufacturers in a competitive environment. This means increasing and upgrading quality, flexibility, and data analysis collection in the manufacturing process and building on the productivity gains associated with automation, including robots and collaborative robots.

With so many moving parts, it’s a process that seems to have no end.

Robots and cobots are significant to industrial automation’s progression. The evolution of Industry 4.0 has room for humans and bots working together on the factory floor. A 2017 International Federation of Robotics’ positioning paper maintains that automation and the ongoing development of robotics have a positive impact on employment, job quality, and wages.

To accomplish this progression, automation developers require a diverse array of parts — sensors providing raw data and feedback, control systems, programmable logic, connected embedded devices.

From actuators to switchgear to position sensor

The Trinamic PD42-1-1243-IOLINK PANdrive IO-Link Actuator enables smart factories to remotely adjust an actuator’s electrical characteristics to minimise factory downtime and maximise throughput. The device combines a NEMA-17 stepper motor with a controller and drive electronics. The actuator monitors 50% more configuration and performance parameters to reduce commission times and improve predictive maintenance data quality. It might be small (2.6 times smaller than its competitors), but it incorporates motion-control technology into a plug-and-play solution.

Omron Industrial Automation J7 low-voltage switchgear is suitable for motor application solutions in every industry and conforms to space-saving control panel design’s main safety standards. The push-in plus-style gear connects J7KC magnetic contactors, J7MC manual motor starters, J7KC/J7KCA industrial relays, and the J7TC thermal overload relays. The metal-enclosed switchgear is a three-phase power distribution product designed to safely, efficiently, and reliably supply power at voltages up to 1 kV and current up to 6 kA.

The Bourns HES38U-RS485 hybrid position sensor is designed for heavy-duty industrial applications requiring long cycle life and high reliability. The Bourns sensor comes in the form of a 6 mm diameter slotted shaft that provides position feedback on automated manufacturing robotics, 3D imaging, pneumatic control valves, draw wires, actuator motors, and electric linear actuators. Available in a servo-mount configuration, the sensor is durable with a rotational life of up to 5 million shaft revolutions.

Conclusion

Industrial automation is regarded as the second step beyond mechanisation in the scope of industrialisation. For designers and developers, the human element means keeping up with a lot of diverse moving parts — from actuators to switch gear to sensors — in maintaining the hum of the industrial automation machine.

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