Articles and News

September U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $176.5 million, up 4.6% from August’s total and up 7.7% from September 2013.

Latest version lets a user search for a desired part across all available catalogs automatically.

A CVL-5000 electric control valve actuator replaced an existing actuator on a blending flow control valve in a trial at the Fluxys booster station in Belgium.

Free app lets a user choose the connector model and size as well as all inserts, see their custom connector coming together on screen, and alter the content and layout.

Agility Config Tool allows straightforward mobile configuration and diagnostics for TT Series Transmitters using Android mobile devices.

LV Drives Performance Service is a monitoring and diagnostic service that tracks the health and performance of low-voltage drives.

Exhibitors at the Digital Factory trade fair at HANNOVER MESSE 2015 will demonstrate what industry needs for this next evolutionary phase.

The facility brings together more than 500 existing employees from the company’s Burlington, MA and Nashua, NH offices, and can accommodate more than 200 additional staff.

Ravnihar produces components for the production of electromechanical meters. Its operations include 18 computer-controlled injection-molding machines and a station equipped with Mettler Toledo scales to count parts and ensure quality.

Matcon’s equipment allows its customers to formulate, blend and pack dry ingredients for the pharmaceutical industry. Matcon uses scales from Mettler Toledo for precise hygienic batching.

December Technical Training and Exam Preparation from ISA

Catalog covers precision gear reducers, servo couplings, and linear mounting kits.

GSM-PRO I/O modules can be monitored and controlled using portal software for PCs or a smartphone app.

The market for thermal flowmeters totaled $154 million in 2013, and is projected to grow to almost $200 million by 2018.

The market for Coriolis flowmeters totaled $1.3 billion in 2013, and is projected to grow to almost $2.0 billion by 2018.

Intelligent MCCs (iMCCs) are boosting overall market revenues, but regular MCCs are witnessing a decline in revenue share due to the standardisation of safety features and performance.

Savigent Workflow software will be deployed as one of the key components to implement common Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) processes in Cargill plants to support its worldwide excellence goals.

Phoenix Contact raised money and awareness for breast cancer research through ‘Rails of Hope’ and Lee National Denim Day campaigns.

There are several ways in which you can get additional use or even make money from automation parts that are no longer needed. In this article leading automation supplier Northern Industrial talk about the different ways you can benefit from obsolete automation.

September U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $647.63 million, up 77.3% from August and up 61.4% when compared with the total of $401.18 million reported for September 2013.

The influx of wireless technologies and intelligent devices has resulted in the rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), a disruptive cross industry force.

According to ARC, the global DCS market grew about 4 percent in 2013.

The tool allows users to generate and customize catalogs from a pre-existing list of pages about the company’s industrial automation software package.

Do you know how much money you could be saving annually with a variable frequency drive?

How to avoid the pitfalls of implementing a calibration process change.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Some industrial automation vendors and computer technology providers are offering cloud services that include historians, analytics, and complete MES (Manufacturing Execution System). These services offer a new way to improve operations by applying more computing power. Another important trend is leveraging new, more powerful controllers within the secure automation system environment. Should you be using one or the other, or both?

By Robert Reid, Panduit, on behalf of Industrial IP Advantage Given that greater than 60% of Ethernet link failures are related to physical infrastructure, it is important from the outset to design and build a resilient network that is architected to recover quickly from a failure condition.

By Paul Brooks, Rockwell Automation, on behalf of Industrial IP Advantage Without standard, unmodified Ethernet on the plant floor, many industrial automation companies can’t easily take advantage of higher-level protocols and the immense functionality they support. EtherNet/IP enables organizations to save money by moving away from expensive, closed, plant floor dedicated networks.

The most common cause of failure or malfunctioning for inverters is an improper installation, often a combination of not following the user manual recommendation and selecting inappropriate cable type, gauges or in line fuses. But there are more.

Enhancements in MTConnect standard version 1.3.0 include inter-device connectivity to enable machine-to-machine communication, and additional data items for equipment and devices.

CyTime Sequence of Events Recorders (SER) and GPS time synchronization products are now suitable for use in European and Australian mission critical facilities.

FDI Cooperation, FieldComm Group and Profibus & Profinet International gave FDI to the FieldComm Group.

The specification makes it possible for automation suppliers to develop products and host systems compatible with FDI.

Payara technical support service delivers software updates, bug fixes and 24/7 support for Oracle’s GlassFish application server, which Oracle stopped supporting.

Three models in the QUINT POWER family of DIN rail DC/DC power converters are listed for IECEx, ATEX, and Class I, Division 2 applications.

Automation Project and Startup Humor – How to Laugh Rather Than Fret

The US chemicals market is expected to make investments of nearly $80 billion by 2020, creating strong opportunities for automation solution providers.

KnowledgeNet collects plant data from an OSIsoft PI historian and then uses computing, rules, fault propagation and workflow engines to reason over the data to identify the cause of performance gaps at Saudi Aramco Abqaiq Plants.

exida has certified RPC Radiy’s FPGA-Based Safety Controller (FSC) RadICS for functional safety, ensuring that it meets the functional safety requirements for Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3 capability per IEC 61508: 2010.

Heide Refinery used two weeks of planned downtime at its pyrolysis plant to migrate to new safety systems.

PLCopen and OPC Foundation created an open standards ecosystem that simplifies the communications of packaging machines with other plant systems and the business enterprise.

By Mike Granby, Red Lion Controls Bringing a factory into the 21st century involves more than just connecting devices to Ethernet and wireless networks. The fundamentals of a successful Connected Factory must be prepared to ensure information can be accessed, monitored and controlled from anywhere.

POSITAL products featured in the Encompass program include LINARIX linear displacement transducers, TILTIX inclinometers, IXARC explosion-proof rotary sensors and IXARC potentiometers

The myths about why there is a lack of qualified, experienced automation professionals in the industrial automation profession.

RFID was invented seven decades ago--however, 23% of all the RFID tags ever sold were sold in 2013. In 2014, a further 1.12 billion RFID tags will be sold.

These events cover a range of topics including Production, Drilling, Completions, Water Management, Facilities Engineering, Oil Sands, Crude By Rail Safety, Pipeline Asset Integrity, NGL Markets, Wellsite Automation, Gas Capture And Flaring, Offshore Flow Assurance and Crude Takeaway.

The machine vision industry in Germany will grow in 2014 by ten percent minimum, exceeding the sales forecast of about 1.8 billion euros by the end of this year.

With these capabilities, the encoders’ performance characteristics can be extensively modified through software changes, without requiring any changes to physical components.

Paine Electronics is a manufacturer of pressure transducers.

The Network Intelligence Alliance (NI Alliance) is an industry organization created for collaboration among vendors of products and solutions based on network intelligence.