Machines are talking
I am starting to hear more and more about the fourth industrial revolution and it looks like a sea change is underway. In Europe it is known as Industry 4.0, while GE coined the term the Industrial Internet. More broadly Jim Pinto refers to the Internet of Things (IoT), which is driven largely by the consumer market. Everyday objects are connected via wireless networks to the Internet and interact with people to seamlessly retrieve knowledge and function on a day-to-day basis without having to sit at a computer. It will extend to homes, cars, businesses, buildings and systems.
On the industrial side, this emerging communication infrastructure that connects people, data and machines will control mechanical devices in unprecedented ways. Machines embedded with sensors and sophisticated software will connect to other machines and end users in order to extract data, make sense of it and use it effectively.
Machines from jet engines to gas turbines to automobiles connected via the Industrial Internet will have the intelligence to self-diagnose and self-correct. When a machine is fitted with sensors, it can show what condition it is in and when necessary initiate its own maintenance. Electro-mechanical components can share information to make manufacturing processes more efficient. Decisions on manufacturing processes and production paths will no longer be handled by human beings. The machines themselves will work out the best way forward. With this will come new roles. The next generation of engineers will blend traditional disciplines such as mechanical engineering with information and computing skills to create new specialised fields. And it’s already happening: engineers monitoring equipment through their phones, driverless cars, drones delivering packages ordered from Amazon.
I recently attended Festo South Africa’s first online preview of the Hanover Messe fair and was impressed by the exciting new technologies they are presenting, not only the CPX automation platform which is setting Festo on the road towards Industry 4.0, but also the company’s new bionic developments. The latest is the BionicKangaroo, complete with 3D-printed tail, which like its natural model can recover the energy generated from jumping, store it and efficiently use it for the next jump. Festo experts also demonstrated another groundbreaking technology with huge possibilities – linear motion without contact using superconductor technology. This is the frictionless movement of hovering objects without any contact – with huge potential applications in tomorrow’s manufacturing world.
Manage your energy
The world is getting smarter at an incredible rate and all these new developments need energy. One of our features is energy efficiency, ranging from Axiom’s energy saving valves to SKF’s electric cylinder that reduces CO2 emissions to Airgas’s energy efficient motor technology to SEW-Eurodrive’s energy-saving Movigear. I was recently privileged to be at Schneider Electric’s international forum to present its goals and vision, where the company showed how it is taking advantage of this new convergence of energy and IT. I was staggered by the breadth and depth of Schneider’s energy management initiatives, from major industrial projects to smart buildings, smart cities and microsystems for rural areas – definitely in line with the fourth industrial revolution.
We have more energy efficiency in our cover story, where Beckhoff shows how its TwinCAT 3 software was able to solve the problem in high-bay warehouses of having a small payload in relation to the total mass to be moved, using parallel cable robots. The inexpensive and flexible control technology was through PC-based control. It also resulted in massively improved energy efficiency, with a reduction in energy consumption of about 70% compared to a conventional storage and retrieval machine.
Aerospace
In our ‘Aerospace and automotive’ feature we have a story on motion control company, Moog’s driving simulator for race cars. Another very interesting application is also a simulator, this time a flight simulator for pilots put together by Hydrastatic Sales & Service. The new hydraulic system allows the flight crew to simulate an emergency evacuation door procedure during training; and DNH Tradeserve’s brushed motors from maxon motor are used by Sitec Aerospace for the actuators supplied to the two largest aircraft manufacturers.
Advances in hydraulics
The new pressure equipment regulations have a number of legal ramifications with respect to pressure vessels and accumulators. All accumulators greater than a litre must be pressure tested every three years in general industry, and every two years in mining. In our hydraulics section we have a feature on Tectra Automation’s solution for testing accumulators, a first for South Africa; and Eaton Hydraulics’ LifeSense is an intelligent hose condition monitoring system which can result in up to 50% more service life – definitely a candidate for the Industrial Internet.
Kim Roberts
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