As many of you know, SMC Corporation offers a great lineup of electric actuators from rotaries and grippers for end of arm tooling, as well as linear and ball screw and belt drive. Now, the cool thing about SMC many people do not know is that they offer transition plates so you can mount a ball screw and a belt drive to make a gantry or Cartesian up to three axes.

Lidar (light detection and ranging) uses eye-safe laser beams to "see" the world in 3D, providing machines and computers an accurate representation of the surveyed environment.  Lidar sensors work by emitting pulsed light waves into the surrounding environment. The light waves bounce off surrounding objects and return to the sensor.  The sensor then uses the time it took for each pulse to return to the sensor to calculate the distance the beam traveled.  The sensor repeats this process millions of times per second to create a real-time 3D map of the environment.  Using this information, an onboard computer can utilize this map for safe navigation.

Baumer knows that technical developments and new innovations are in ever-increasing demand.  Baumer has developed their Connected Smart Sensor Solutions to provide you with the signals, information and data you need to make your processes and plants even more efficient.  Below are some selected innovations from Baumer.

IO-Link makes the integration of smart devices into installation concepts easy. Murrelektronik's new dream team of IO-Link masters, hubs, and analog converters now goes one step further. They make accessing and evaluating data particularly easy by creating transparency from the device level to the cloud. You’ll find Murrelektronik's team is hard to beat in terms of flexibility, usability, and performance.

Okay, kids Welcome to Science class. Today we are going to do several things. First, we are going to create some static electricity with this piece of styrofoam and this PVC pipe. Then we are going to measure the static electricity with SMC’s ESD meter to measure the amount of static electricity in kilovolts. The we are going to use their fan type ionizer to remove the static electricity.

As robotic automation is becoming more attainable and easier to program, reprogram and repurpose, it is not unheard of to have a larger wish list of what robots can accomplish.  One of the biggest challenges with robotic applications is speed and efficiency.  A popular solution to solve this challenge is either automatic or manual tool changers.   Tool changers are devices designed to allow the to robot to quickly change their end-effectors to accomplish different jobs without human intervention.

PATLITE's first product innovation dates back to 1955 when they developed the micro-motor.  The creation of this revolutionary product led to the development of a wide-range of warning devices included their first flagship product, the SK-12 rotating beacon light.  Since then, signal beacons have been adopted worldwide as a primary device for warning and status indication applications.

PATLITE has designed a line of products specifically for the needs of the Food and Beverage industry.  The LED Signal Towers, LED Work Lights, and Smart Alert MP3 products in this line all meet the various requirements of Food and Beverage procesing facilities.  PATLITES IP69K rated products are durable, designed and smooth surfaces and fully enclosed for reguar, high temperature, high pressure wash downs.

The PATLITE LR6-IL, an IO-Link compatible LED signal tower light, is designed to be installed and configured directly through an IO-Link master.   Complex wiring or expensive interface converters are no longer required to integrate PATLITE signal towers into IO-Link infrastructures.

The SMC DAS-X946 deceleration controller allows adjustment of deceleration position (cusion timing) and deceleration speed (cusion intensity) in a high speed application.  Optimization of cushion timing and intensity reduces impact at the stroke end without the need to add and install shock absorber.  Example application is to reduce impact when opening/closing machine door.