Articles and News

The basic concept is to help Advantech expand their “service oriented” business approach. Recognizing that on-line services are becoming a greater player in the businesses of today, Advantech has added this new feature and made it available to registered customers of their eAutomationPro website.

Dick Morley is best known as the father of the programmable controller. He is a leading visionary in the field of advanced technological development. He is an internationally recognized pioneer in the fields of computer design, artificial intelligence, automation, and technology trend forecasting.

The sessions will continue ISA's industry-leading standards development work. The meeting will build on several recent achievements by ISA-SP84 that have provided significant advances in safety across the process industries. Most notable was the publication in late 2004 of ANSI/ISA-84.00.01-2004 Parts 1-3 (IEC 61511 Modified), "Functional Safety: Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector."

The LXI Consortium today announced that Geotest-Marvin Test Systems Inc. has joined the standards organization as an advisory member. LXI (LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation) is a next-generation, LAN-based modular platform for automated test systems. As a leading global supplier of PXI- and PC-based test products, systems and solutions, Geotest expands the growing number of test and measurement companies supporting and promoting the LXI standard.

Cognex Corporation announced that it has served a complaint against Acacia Research Corporation and Veritec, Inc. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court in Minnesota. Cognex is seeking a declaration that U.S. Patent 5,612,524, which claims to cover a system for reading 2D symbology, is invalid, unenforceable, and not infringed by either Cognex or by any users of Cognex products.

The module, available free to educators, provides more than two dozen application notes, case studies and training articles, a PowerPoint presentation with speaker notes, and a poster illustrating common thermography measurements. The Fluke Education Partnership Program combines a wealth of educational materials and application information with product discounts.

This allows Fluke to conduct comprehensive testing for compliance to EN61010-1 (the IEC standard for safety compliance for Test and Measurement Equipment), EN61010-031 (the IEC standard for handheld probes assemblies) and EN61001-2-032 (the IEC standard for current clamps). VDE (The Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies), headquartered in Germany, was founded in 1893 and has evolved into one of the largest technical and scientific associations and well-regarded regulatory agencies in Europe.

Intelligent Instrumentation was established in 1984 as an independent subsidiary of the former Burr-Brown Corporation in Tucson. When Texas Instruments purchased Burr-Brown in 2000, III (or I-Cubed) became a subsidiary of Texas Instruments.

InduSoft has certified more than 20 hardware platforms since last year. Lab certification tests prove that InduSoft Web Studio HMI/SCADA software runs on a wide variety of Windows CE-based hardware platforms from ABB, Arista, Advantech, Beijer, Bosch-Rexroth, ESA, Pilz and Maple Systems, and ARM, MIPS, Power PC, SH and S86 processors.

Listening to the needs of Internet users, Parker Electromechanical Automation has devoted considerable energy to make using its Internet site as easy, efficient and productive as possible for OEMs, machine builders, distributors and end-users. For example, the division recently implemented the Google search engine on parkermotion.com, and Google is powering the site's frequently asked questions and part-number databases. This gives users of the Web site a dramatically enhanced search capability and makes finding product information, documents, tools and other information faster and easier.

Jonathan Knowles will share how Autodesk customers are standardizing on DWF technology and benefiting today. For example, Siemens L&A, the world’s leading supplier of logistics and factory automation solutions, switched from distributing paper-based drawings to Autodesk digital design collaboration processes. Doing so, Siemens L&A had streamlined access to design information to more than 1,700 employees including shop floor personnel, upper management, and external suppliers; drastically reduced the design approval cycles to less than an hour, rather than three days; and decreased manufacturing errors, such as parts being built to the wrong spec level.

Emerson announced it has acquired Bristol Babcock from FKI plc of Loughborough, England, for $121 million.

The 3rd Annual Gadget Freak Workshop Competition, hosted by Design News and sponsored by Allied Electronics, challenges engineers to assemble simple – and not so simple – electronic circuits. The Gadget Freak Workshop Competition runs daily during the show. The National Design Engineering Show and Conference, which will be held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, is the only national event for OEM design engineers.

This program leverages the key elements of our Northern regional user group meeting that has caused it to grow to over 100 attendees per year. The many years of experience and responses from customers has helped us to shape it into meaningful informational day-and-a-half workshop event. This year, we have adapted this model and created additional events in East Chicago, Houston and Las Vegas. All four events are open to any Bristol Babcock product users or engineers who specify or design systems using our products.

Bill Greer, Senior Product Specialist at Contemporary Controls, created this blog to share his thoughts, experiences and insights on this ever-popular technology. Subjects discussed may range from simple to complex to those that challenge at the outset but appear fascinating to our team of engineers once a conclusion has been drawn.

Green Hills Software, Inc. announced that Jack Greenbaum, director of embedded software engineering for Green Hills Software, will present at the Multicore Expo 2006 in Santa Clara, California, on the topic of: A new breed of debugging: addressing the requirements of multicore ARM/DSP processors. Last month, Green Hills Software announced the support of its MULTI integrated development environment (IDE) for DaVinci™ technology from Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) for both DSP and ARM cores, and is also the only embedded tools vendor that supports multi-processor, multi-operating system, multi-threaded, multi-language systems, all from a single environment.

PAS, a leading provider of advanced automation solutions, announced Cory Engel, Vice-President and senior executive at Matrikon, has joined the leadership team at PAS with immediate responsibilities for all of the Americas solutions sales. Mr. Engel brings tremendous experience in the sale and delivery of software solutions for the process industries, having established Matrikon in the US and eastern Canada – regions accounting for nearly half of all Matrikon’s global sales.

This year Danaher Motion, one of the world's leading providers of drive technology, will again be represented at the Hanover Fair. This time the focus is on system control and system solution expertise from the Danaher Motion Group. In Hall 14, Stand J24, Danaher Motion will present its new SERVOSHAFT software package for simplifying system programming together with an animated, multi-axis system, which consists entirely of our own components.

ISA has recently released a fully operational free online demo of its Certified Automation Professional® (CAP) Learning System. The system is a comprehensive CAP exam preparation and professional development tool. The program combines printed textbooks with online review and testing tools to provide automation training.