Both of ABB's new Automation Products Rolling Road Shows now are on the road and in circulation in the U.S. The 45-feet-long, single-chassis vehicles were built out from scratch, starting in early 2009, and went into use the last week of June.

The first stops at LV Products distributors are proving more than promising; reaction has been immediate and extremely positive. "Everyone is pleased, and genuinely surprised,” notes Carl Tuch, a district sales manager for the U.S. Power & Control Sales Team, and the first to utitlize the new Rolling Road Show in his district. “We heard it called ‘an engineering marvel' a time or two,” he noted.

The Rolling Road Show units, which feature expandable sides that double the exhibit and usable space when the vehicles are set up, require a 50 by 40-feet footprint for space. “This definitely has upped the ante significantly for spatial considerations, and where our sales team members are choosing to make tour stops throughout the sales districts,” said Tricia Meye, the tradeshow coordinator for LVD who gathered the ABB equipment used throughout the interior of the units. Set-up and tear-down of the shows, plus travel time from venue to venue, means each vehicle can visit one ABB prospect of customer site each day, she noted.

Called “Expandables,” to distinguish the two new mobile exhibits from the two “Trailers” that Low Voltage Products continues to use, the fleet now reaches four units. “These rolling units illustrate the way ABB is going to customers and prospects -- taking our products right into the parking lots of our targets and customers. In a fiercely competitive market and economy, this tactic makes practical, and economic, sense,” Brown noted. The four units, during the remainder of the year, will be used “to interact with 15,000 to 17,000 prospects and existing customers,” he said.

The new Expandables feature and showcase a deeper array of product and service solutions from the Drives, Low Voltage & Products, and Low Voltage Motors Local Business Units. Working demos include: an Ultra-Low Harmonic Drive /Fan Demo; Dyne Demo; Communication Demo; Motor Control Center Demo, and Switchgear Demo; these work alongside a host of static displays that profile the deep array of ABB’s automation solutions.

 ^{Low Voltage Control Display}

The new units are equipped with solutions that ABB offers to both the Industrial and HVAC markets. Stops at distribution and customer locations are coordinated through district managers, Meye said, “and that gives each LBU a chance to solicit a stop – and bring key prospects to the locations where these units make a visit. The tour stops within each district are mapped out weeks ahead, she said, to make it possible for the drivers dedicated to each unit to plan their travel and set-up times.

The mobile units have proved to be a very powerful sales tool, according to Mark Brown. director of Commercial Marketing for ABB Low Voltage Drives. “Many end users are under pressure to justify spending for travel and time away from their business,” he says, “and these units give them a way to be familiar with the newest technology at their disposal.”

 
The fleet does not replace ABB’s participation in regional and national tradeshows, he said. “They do give us the way to choose our tradeshows to complement rolling shows.”

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^{Image Source: ABB}

Although the economic slowdown has hit many industries in China, industrial Ethernet component revenues from the Chinese market are still forecast to grow continuously from 2008 and 2013, at an average of over 28% per year, according to IMS Research’s recently published report ‘The Chinese Market for Industrial Communications 2009’.

The main factor affecting the growth of industrial Ethernet component market in China is the performance of the end markets that use them. This, in turn, is partly dependent upon the general economic and industrial outlook in China. With the government’s huge investment in expressways, railways and other transport infrastructure, and in energy-saving and emission reduction programs, it is expected that the demand from the end-user markets will continue growing strongly over the next three years.

Compared with Europe and the North America, where the use of Ethernet technology is more developed, the applications and use of industrial Ethernet components in China is currently limited. However, rapid development of Ethernet technologies in China, an increasing acceptance and awareness among customers, and increased promotion by suppliers, means that the number of applications for industrial Ethernet components is expanding all the time. This will help component shipments and revenues to increase almost by a factor of 4, in the five years to 2013.

Oxyser has dramatically increased the throughput of its oxy-acetylene steel cutting machinery, and automated the process, by developing a new twin-head machine controlled by NUM's Axium CNC platform.  In total, this powerful CNC kernel controls 16 motor axes to manage the motion of a gantry with two positioning heads - each fitted with mobile oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

The machine has just been commissioned at Grupo Ros Casares' plant in Aviles, Spain, where it is being used initially to produce steel plate sections required to construct wind turbine generator towers. The shaped plates are typically cut with bevelled edges so that they can be welded together easily on site.

Believed to be the first of its kind, the machine introduces automatic programmed control of shape cutting in an application sector used to much simpler machines: traditionally, only three CNC-controlled axes are employed and the initial positioning of the oxy-acetylene tool for linear cuts is performed manually. The gantry runs over very long worktables.  This allows raw steel plate to be loaded on one side of the gantry while cutting operations are in progress on the other side. Combined with dual cutting heads - which may be used individually or simultaneously in a master-slave configuration - the new machine more than doubles throughput.

Renolit Cramlington Ltd. in Cramlington, Northumberland UK, produces a range of decorative surfacing materials. The laminates are applied to domestic furniture such as speaker cabinets and kitchen cupboards. Many of these PVC-based laminates are embossed with a wood-grain finish and the embossing line is an important part of the production process. Recently, Renolit Cramlington’s existing embossing line’s control system was becoming obsolete and difficult to maintain, which meant downtime was becoming a problem.

After an engineering survey, Oracle Drive Systems, a variable speed drive specialist based in Batley, West Yorkshire, presented two ways to upgrade the drives and the control system: One using AC drives and motors and another using DC drives sourced from Sprint Electric - nineteen 10KW and two 20KW digital PL/X DC drives.

“The DC solution offered the best value for money. And because of Sprint Electric’s small drive footprint, the drives were retrofitted into the existing control panel”, explains John Mullins, Oracle Drive Systems’ Technical Director.

The retrofit took place within a shutdown period of two weeks, replacing single-phase DC drives, a Leonard and Bauer digital phase locking unit and a Dingden unit, which was a large rack of analogue and digital control cards used to control the line drive system. Bardac Ethernet cards were fitted to the DC drives and a Bardac Smarty, which also sat on the Ethernet network, a DIN rail mounted processor unit, was used to control the phase locking. The functionality of the Dingden unit was replaced by utilising the software within the Ethernet cards and the built-in software blocks of the DC drives.

The whole retrofit and re-commissioning of 21 DC drives and the control system refurbishment was completed in two weeks, with Oracle Drive Systems working with shift engineers from Renolit Cramlington. The wireless network allowed commissioning to be done quickly and easily because it was possible to check in/out signals directly using a laptop computer. And because Renolit Cramlington’s shift engineers were involved in the commissioning process, they could get hands-on experience with the new equipment from the start. John Mullins concludes, “Renolit Cramlington’s new digital emboss line has much improved repeatability, is less prone to variation and is much easier to maintain.”

Increase in accuracy and productivity, and lower energy consumption make DC drives ideal for retrofits when a more effective, modern drive system is required. Sprint Electric offers a full range of PLX digital DC drives from 12 Amps up to 1850 Amps, with all models available from stock. Whether in retrofits or original equipment, DC Drives from Sprint Electric are being used in many different applications including metal processing, the pulp and paper industry, rubber and plastic processing, lifting equipment, food processing, leisure industries and many more.

Bosch Rexroth expanded its capacity for producing large wind-turbine gearboxes by opening a new facility recently in Nuremberg, Germany. The plant, which covers a surface area as large as five football fields, will manufacture around 300 large gearboxes in 2009 for the latest generation of multi-megawatt turbines.

Approximately $246 million (180 million euros) will be invested in the new gearbox plant by 2013. The company also produces large wind-turbine gearboxes in Witten, Germany and Beijing, China, and intends to expand its U.S. presence for this industry in the near future.

“The long term forecasts continue to predict global growth for the wind-power market,” said Reiner Leipold-Büttner, member of the executive board, responsible for engineering and manufacturing at parent company Bosch Rexroth AG. “As the world’s largest independent supplier of gearboxes and automation solutions for wind turbines, Bosch Rexroth will benefit from this market development.” Leipold-Büttner said the Global Wind Energy Council forecasts that installed wind-power output will nearly triple by 2013. In 2008, the U.S. became the country to install the most new wind-power output, and has surpassed Germany as the leading country for wind-power utilization. Encouraged by comprehensive economic incentives, Leipold-Büttner said he expects the U.S. market will continue to grow rapidly.

Rexroth is a long-time key supplier to the wind energy industry, and has built gearboxes for wind turbines for more than 15 years. In addition, the company recently acquired a majority share in IGUS ITS Gmbh, a manufacturer of condition monitoring systems for wind energy plants. These systems monitor the condition of rotor blades and also offer the option of diagnosing the formation of ice on the blades. With this addition, Rexroth offers an extended range of products for the growing wind energy industry, including dynamic rotor blade pitch adjustment systems, drive train and yaw drive brakes, and more. The company also provides in-the-field support in more than 80 countries for everything from failure analysis to repairs on a 24/7 basis.

ORMEC has announced the enhancement of its ServoWire Motion & Logic Controller (SMLC) family. Now with four available models, the SLMC family is designed to provide fully integrated and centralized machinery motion, I/O and networking control, well-suited for a variety of packaging, material handling, medical, pharmaceutical, and general assembly applications.

Available in 3-, 8-, 16- and 24-axis models, the SMLC family offers the benefits of both motion control and PLC functions within a single package. With high-performance computing capability and a true real-time operating system, powered by Intel® 32-bit processors, the SMLC is able to provide cost-effective, robust computing power for even the most demanding multi-axis motion and I/O control applications.

The company says that the lineup facilitates a multi-tiered, flexible approach to machinery I/O applications with high-speed drive-based I/O, microsecond position capture, and single servo update response to sensor signals. It also provides sub-millisecond programmable limit switch outputs, tightly coupled to the motion control. For general purpose I/O applications, a variety of analog and digital modules can be cost-effectively connected to and controlled by the SMLC. When combined with pre-written Application Specific Function Blocks, the SMLC promises lower programming time and cost.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing energy efficiency as a means of promoting economic prosperity, energy security, and environmental protection, has released a new report about the future of drives.

John A. "Skip" Laitner, Director, Economic and Social Analysis, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said: "In many ways, the story of the gains in energy efficiency since the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s, in particular, is the story of the rise of the semiconductor. However, the powerful connection between semiconductors and energy consumption is more than just unappreciated; it is actually misunderstood by some. Despite the immediate growth in electricity demands to power the growing number of devices and technologies, semiconductors have enabled a surprisingly larger energy productivity benefit in that same period." 

The report calls for widespread drive use. It states: "We estimate these to begin with a modest $7.1 billion of incremental investments in 2010, rising to as much as $28.7 billion by 2030. The average annual investment over the next two decades is about $22.5 billion. Cumulatively, the market for these new technology investments is about $472 billion over the period 2010 through 2030. But there is a hefty return on these investments. We estimate the electricity bill savings to average just over $61 billion over that same period of analysis, producing a cumulative electricity bill savings on the order of $1.3 trillion over that same time horizon. What's the bottom line? The savings are about 2.7 times the investment cost."

The report suggests that drives will save billions.

Read the complete release here: (http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-13-2009/0005025482&EDATE= )

Or download a copy of the report at: http://www.aceee.org/

Tapflo is launching the first diaphragm pump in the company’s new aseptic series at the Achema Show in Frankfurt, between May 11-15. The series will be available in three sizes for sterile applications in primarily the pharmaceuticals, bio-technology and foodstuffs industries. This is the first Tapflo series to be approved according to EHEDG regulations.  EHEDG, the European Hygienic Engineering Design Group, is the leading organization for hygienic industry equipment certification in Europe.

In order for a pump to be EHEDG certified the pump must not feature any internal horizontal surfaces. The reason for this is to prevent any liquid from remaining in the pump after it stops. The pumps are supplied on a platform that allows them to be rotated. Rotation allows the pumps to be emptied and cleaned simply, without dismantling.

The aseptic pump series will come in three sizes and cover most market needs. The first to be launched is the smallest, with a maximum flow of 94 litres per minute.

The pumps are both EHEDG and also ATEX certified, a mandatory requirement for use in markets where inflammable liquids are used. Moreover, pump components are approved by FDA, the Food and Drug Administration and USPVI, United States Pharmacopeia and has been tested and approved by DTI, the Danish Technological Institute.

The pumps are powered by compressed air or other suitable propellant. Pump capacity is adjusted by altering the air pressure, which makes it easy to adjust to the manufacturing process. The pumps are simple to fit and require no special training. Few moving parts contribute to long working life and reduce risk of breakdown in the process.