Articles and News

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 The improvement of manufacturing productivity and quality requires sharing data and synchronizing controllers. This can now be accomplished by using new standards that were jointly developed by PLCopen and the OPC Foundation.

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.

By Bill Lydon, Editor At the 2013 Rockwell Automation Fair, Cisco described how their routers are becoming distributed embedded computer devices, intended to process and react to information from devices and sensors at the edge of the network. Could your next automation controller be embedded in an Ethernet switch?

By Bill Lydon, Editor With this acquisition, Schneider Electric significantly enhanced its position to serve the process industries and now has a complete portfolio of products to serve the entire industrial and process automation industry. This article highlights a few key aspects of the integration of the two companies.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Helmuth Ludwig, CEO of Siemens Industry Sector USA, provided his views on the 2014 manufacturing outlook and other industry topics, including the first live display of an assembly line at the Auto Show in Detroit, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first assembly line.

Patti Engineering will convert a Siemens S5 Legacy Control System to the S7 Platform at Oetiker’s manufacturing facility in Marlette, MI.

The plant in Akron, Ohio, will transform waste plastics into energy products. Control will be by a PlantPAx Process Automation System.

TMEIC will supply automation equipment, PLCs and drives for a new pickle line and tandem cold mill at Chinese Bengang Steel Plates Co. Ltd. (Benxi).

Designed for machine builders and operators, the Lenze library simplifies implementation of PackML standards using ladder logic.

On-line training Program includes a 20-Course eTraining Program on Electrical and Motor Controls (EMC) and a 17-session course on Programmable Controllers (PLC).

The guide includes both selection criteria and guided workflow steps to help in choosing the controllers and/or system that best meets specific current and future site needs.

Siemens developed the controller of the storage and retrieval machines and the conveyor system for the body buffer on the basis of its Simatic S7 controllers.

The engineers include Jeffrey Anderson, Calvin Anderson, Cameron Johnson, Martin Tato and Tristan McCormick.