Articles and News

The US manufacturing industry is enjoying something of a resurgence, with the local mechanical and plant engineering sector in particular benefiting from the current reshoring trend.

A single hybrid temperature controller can effectively monitor and control temperature loops in a process control system.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Manufacturers worldwide are in a productivity race enabled by a wide range of new automation technology. In order for your company to remain competitive, it needs to apply new technology to grow and survive in the world economy. To do this, manufacturing companies must stay up to date on the latest developments.

By Greg Hood, Rockwell Automation In end-user facilities that heavily rely on legacy equipment, the right line-integration system can provide real-time insights to prevent and diagnose production issues.

Electroland used Phoenix Contact PLCs and relays to control the lights of the display, and terminal blocks to provide reliable connections.

By Dr. Alex Tarter, Ultra Electronics For less than the price of a nice dinner, and a weekend's effort, almost anyone can build a penetration device that can be slipped into a pocket, surreptitiously connect to the network, and used to remotely access systems anytime and from anywhere desired.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Industrial control systems are the “brains” of any automated manufacturing system. Many of these systems require motion systems - “brawn” - to accomplish the physical aspects of automation. Motion technologies have improved and are refined to meet the new manufacturing requirements. MDA North America provides the opportunity for engineers to sharpen motion knowledge and learn from industry experts first hand.

Blakeway also is Omron Corporation Executive Officer, and Chairman, President and CEO of Omron Management Center Of America.

March U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $492.78 million, up 38.5% from February and up 2.9% when compared with the total of $479.04 million reported for March 2013.

The safety PLC provided the platform for Sandvik Materials Technology to add zoned safety guarding to a large cold rolling mill at its Sandviken plant in Sweden.

February U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $354.40 million, down 6.6% from January and down 6.2% when compared with the total of $377.82 million reported for February 2013.

The training center at Gibson Engineering in Norwood, Mass., will serve customers in the Northeastern U.S.

The PLC/Programming Learning Package provides Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) hands-on training for schools, universities, individual study and company employee education.

Modular liquid-cooled drives and PLCs from ABB have been included in VARD ELECTRO’s innovative, application-specific propulsion and thruster power solutions for offshore supply vessels.

eWON offers industrial VPN routers and Ethernet modems for remote access to PLCs and machines.

The PLCs will control the sedimentation process of the concentrating mill at Europe's largest gold mine: Agnico Eagle's mine in northern Finland which is 150 km inside the Arctic circle near the town of Kittila.

10 Pitfalls of DIY Control Systems

By Bill Lydon, Editor At Automation Fair 2013, I spoke with Rockwell Automation’s Frank Kulaszewicz about the progress on their new architecture developments. The new controller architecture will consist of a backplane and each module will have its own IP address. Every motor drive, intelligent overload, intelligent sensor, intelligent light curtain, and other device will have an IP address.