READ MORE: Find Out Who’s Exhibiting at IME West 2023
Machine Design asked exhibitors to submit previews of what to expect as we planned to make our rounds at MD&M West, D&M West and ATX West this year. Naturally, we were inundated with press materials, but we will make the effort to sift through each submission.
In the meantime, we’ve picked just a sampling of products to check out as you make your rounds at the tradeshow.
Emerson’s Branson GPX PulseStaking Series
The focus will be on assembly, cleaning and fluid-control solutions at Emerson (booth 3213). The automation solutions company will showcase technologies that demonstrate its compliance with Medical Device Regulations (MDR). Check out the Branson welding equipment and automated solutions for plastics joining and mold cleaning. The series is touted for giving manufacturers greater design freedom by making it possible to join more complex, delicate and sensitive components to plastic moldings. In addition, ASCO miniature valve technologies for fluid control will be on display. The ASCO Series 090 line of miniature solenoid valves were designed for use with air and inert gases and is ideal for portable medical devices.
ABB Robotics GoFa CRB 15000 Collaborative Robot
ABB Robotics (booth 4569) will showcase its 6-axis, GoFa CRB 15000 collaborative robot that supports the growing demand for a cobot capable of handling heavier payloads to enhance productivity and flexibility. Designed to safely work directly and continuously alongside humans and to be very easy to install and use, GoFa helps automate processes involving heavier loads and longer reaches, assisting workers with repetitive and ergonomically challenging tasks.
GoFa has a reach of 950 mm and offers speeds up to 2.2 meters per second. The cobot can be used in a variety of applications, including picking and packaging, material handling, assembly and screw-driving. Users can easily program GoFa via lead-through programming and ABB’s new Wizard easy programming software. More seasoned robot users can use ABB’s RAPID programming language supported by RobotStudio.
Phytools Revolution Pi (RevPi), a Versatile Edge Device
Phytools will showcase a versatile edge device, the Revolution Pi or RevPi (booth 4281). The device exploits the economies of scale derived from the millions of Raspberry PIs in service to provide users with extended functionality and at a much higher price/performance ratio relative to traditional PLCs.
RevPi tackles a variety of industrial needs in the control room, including compute-, connectivity- and calculation-intensive operations. The device was born in 2016 with the launch of an open-source industrial PC (IPC) based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module.
With a modular structure, RevPi can be supplemented by digital or analog I/O modules, and its DIN rail housing ensures easy installation in many environments. It is expandable with fieldbus gateways, enabling industrial network connectivity via protocols like PROFINET, PROFIBUS, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP/IP.
Phytools further noted that it can facilitate the design of custom-built devices, specific to OEM’s application-specific software and functional needs.
Flexiv Adaptive Robotic Solutions
Visit Flexiv robots (booth 4328) for a demonstration of material removal, dispensing, assembly, material handling and even ball balancing. Flexiv develops and manufactures adaptive robots, and also focuses on integrating industrial-grade force control, computer vision and AI technologies.
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“We’ve seen a real boom in demand for robotic automation recently, and I am happy that our technology can help clients facing labor bottlenecks or simply looking to improve their production efficiency,” said Howard Huang, Flexiv’s North American regional director.
Flexiv’s automation experts can answer questions on what work adaptive robots can be automated for, as well as how the self-learning reinforcement AI works.
