Festo recently held a series of business breakfasts countrywide to introduce its customers to the latest trends in industrial automation and present its value proposition. Festo MD, Brett Wallace explained how the company has structured itself into five business units to meet the challenge of today’s ever-changing markets. These are Festo Didactic (the education unit); pneumatic automation; factory automation; process automation (food and beverage, water treatment, industrial); and electric automation. Electric automation manager, Skye Prato then traced the development of electric automation from mechanical synchronisation, through to pneumatics and PLCs, to today’s advanced systems, the big differences today being their speed and flexibility.
Skye Prato, electric automation manager.
Festo can offer a seamless, unique and modern product portfolio for both pneumatic and electric actuators – the complete solution – all the way from the mechanical components to the motors to the controller/CNC to the reporting level, all from a single source. These include complete multi-axis handling units and an extensive range of over 500 motors. Part of the package are Festo’s vision systems, where a camera checks the position and orientation of an object and sends information to the handling system.
Another strength of Festo is its special software selection tool. Handling guide online (HGO) is an intuitive engineering tool that makes it easy to design, configure and order the right handling system from scratch. In addition, Festo’s applications centre in Johannesburg allows customers to test any new potential electric drive application in a controlled environment to confirm details like maximum speed, accuracy and cycle time.
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