Robotics World articles from March 2001

Robotics World archives from March 2001

Boomer Retirement and Productivity?
March 1, 2001... Not long ago I visited with Rick Schneider, president of FANUC Robotics North America; Craig Jennings, president of Motoman Inc.; and Doug Rhoda, vice president of marketing for ABB Flexible Automation. I was interested in their opinion of a...

International Robots & Vision Conference Preview.
March 1, 2001... The International Robots & Vision Conference in Rosemont (Chicago),Ill., June 4-7, will examine a range of issues for current and potential users of robotics and machine vision. Among the highlights are sessions geared to top management on the...

Robotic Material-Handling Market Study Published.
March 1, 2001... A new study on material-handling robots reveals that a large untapped market exists for companies that supply robotics technology. Produced by the Robotic Industries Association, the study shows that 80 percent of the non-users surveyed would...

RIA Sponsors Safety Workshop.
March 1, 2001... "Robotic Safety Solutions for the 21st Century" is the theme of RIA's regional Robot Safety Workshop in Charlotte, N.C., April 3-5. The event will examine the ANSI/RIA national robot safety standard and explain how to comply with the guidelines...

Mike Kelley Elected New President of AIA.
March 1, 2001... Mike Kelley, director of marketing at Electro Scientific Industries' Vision Products Division, has been elected the 2001-2002 president of the Automated Imaging Association. Kelley, a member of the ALA board for the past two' years, has...

Student Competition Returns to Pittsburgh.
March 1, 2001... The Student Robotic Engineering Challenge is the new name of the event sponsored by Robotics International of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Scheduled for April 7-8 at Robert Morris College, Moon Township, Pa., the event is one of the...

San Jose State to Defend Its Title at WESTEC.
March 1, 2001... Grand-prize winner San Jose State University looks to make it two in a row when it defends its title at the Society of Manufacturing Engineers' WESTEC 2001 Student Manufacturing Challenge on March 26 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. ...

Bulkeley Named SME President.
March 1, 2001... Peter Bulkeley, Ph.D., FSME, of Sequim, Wash., has been named president of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers for 2001. As SME's 69th president, the Boston University professor emeritus in manufacturing engineering will work to make SME...

Lean Manufacturing Focus of New Book and E-Newsletter.
March 1, 2001... The Society of Manufacturing Engineers announces a newly published book, "Lean Manufacturing for the Small Shop," and its first monthly e-newsletter, "Lean Directions." Gary Conner, a consultant with Lean Enterprise Training, is the author...

Budding Engineer Shows Promise in Robotics.
March 1, 2001... At age 8, when most children are building wind tunnels with box fans and bedsheets, Gene Burbeck was building radio-controlled robotic arms out of Legos and parts from his father's radio-controlled airplane. Two years later, Burbeck's...

New Motor Allows 3-D Movement.
March 1, 2001... Baltimore, Md. -- Engineers at The Johns Hopkins University have invented a globe-shaped motor that is capable of rotating in any direction. The device, which uses electromagnets controlled by a computer, could give robotic arms greater...

Bipedal Walking Robot Developed in France.
March 1, 2001... Le Chesnay, France -- First shown at Hanover Fair 2000, the BIP 2000 robot is the result of a project started in 1994 by several French laboratories and financed by the Poitou Charentes region and the Vienne General Council. The objective of...

People.
March 1, 2001... Peter Officer has been appointed mechanized marketing/product manager for Hypertherm Inc., and Jim Aitkenhead has been named district sales manager for Oklahoma and southwestern Kansas....Ron Finch has been promoted to materials manager for...

Lincoln Electric Expands Robotic Welding Facility.
March 1, 2001... Cleveland -- Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc. its expanding its Automation Division, based in Euclid, Ohio. The company will more than double space housing the division's manufacturing, engineering, training and service to more than 50,000...

Seiko Instruments.
March 1, 2001... Seiko Instruments has purchased Igenunus Corp.'s Electronic Design Automation products for integration into Seiko's SII product suite.

Robotic Vision Systems Inc.
March 1, 2001... Robotic Vision Systems Inc. has acquiredAutolmagelD, a manufacturer of digital imagers.

DeSta-Co Industries.
March 1, 2001... DeSta-Co Industries, has acquired CPI Products, a global innovator in applications development for automation tooling.

Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc.
March 1, 2001... Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc. has started commercial production at its new plant in Sao Paulo, Brazil.... Meilde Automation has formed a new division, headed by engineering manager Nick Wagner, which will focus on ultra high-precision...

Meikle Automation.
March 1, 2001... Meikle Automation has formed a new division, headed by engineering manager Nick Wagner, which will focus on ultra high-precision automation and meeting the needs of the fiber-optic component manufacturing market.

Axsys Technologies Inc.
March 1, 2001... Axsys Technologies Inc. has opened a 15,000-square-foot facility for its Fiber Automation Division in Pittsburgh, Pa....

Quantum Controls Inc.
March 1, 2001... Quantum Controls Inc., a control systems integrator, has opened new divisional offices in Chicago and Portland, Ore., which will focus on applications development, and expanded its existing facility in Housto....

CDS.
March 1, 2001... CDS, which manufactures cam-operated motion-control components, has opened its first U.S. office. As a partner in the Italian Technology Association, CDS sales, applications, engineering and service operations will be based in Sparta, N.J.,...

Adept Technology Inc.
March 1, 2001... Adept Technology Inc. and JOT Automation Group, headquartered in Finland, have entered into an original equipment manufacturing partnership in which Adept SmartModules, AWC Controllers and AdeptVision AVI will be integrated into JOT's flexible...

AMS Thermotech.
March 1, 2001... AMS Thermotech will provide customer sales, technical and applications support in the United Kingdom for Lytron Inc. products.

Pack It Up.
March 1, 2001... Cross-Marketing Products Ideal Candidates for Robotic Packaging What do S'mores and Lunchables have in common? Other than being a new breed of packaged food items, with multiple foods in the same package, they're typical of consumer...

Servo-Driven Flexible-Fixturing Systems Coming into Their Own.
March 1, 2001... While flexible fixturing is not a new concept, most systems have relied on hard-tooling elements to achieve flexibility. In the past few years, however, automobile makers and integrators have been developing flexible-fixturing systems using...

Software Companies Respond to Needed Improvements in Simulation, Offline Programming.
March 1, 2001... In today's competitive business environment, the need for increased efficiency and productivity permeates every aspect of a company's operation. In the field of robotics, this has some companies turning to computer simulation and offline...

Case Studies.
March 1, 2001... OLP/SIMULATION Since implementing offline programming in 1997 and then refining the process, Johnson Controls Inc. has dramatically reduced programming costs while improving production uptime in its robotic waterjet-cutting cells. To date,...

FLOW SOFTWARE'S WORKSPACE 5.
March 1, 2001... Flow Software Technologies has released the latest version of its robotics simulation and offline programming software, Workspace 5, with several new features. The addition of Visual Basic for Applications provides customization that existing...

COMPUCRAFT'S ROBOTWORKS.
March 1, 2001... Compucraft Ltd. of Israel has released RobotWorks, a robotics interface for SolidWorks. RobotWorks is a CNC-style program for offline programming of industrial robots. Aimed at medium and small companies, RobotWorks gives them power and...

GENERAL CYBERNETICS' ROBCON 2000.
March 1, 2001... World Wise Technologies Inc.'s subsidiary, General Cybernetics Inc., has released its Internet-ready ROBCON-2000 online/offline control and simulation software platform operating on Microsoft Windows 2000 to take advantage of the connectivity...

TECNOMATIX'S EMPOWER.
March 1, 2001... Tecnomatrix's suite of e-manufacturing software solutions, eMPower, includes Workplace Design Applications, formerly known as ROBCAD. Workplace Design Applications enable the design, analysis and optimization of workplace and ergonomic...

CIMETRIX'S CODE.
March 1, 2001... Cimetrix Inc. has ported CODE, its machine modeling and control software package, to RTX, VenturCom's real-time enabling technology for Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows NT Embedded 4.0. Builders of surface-mount technology,...

MOTOMAN'S ROTSY.
March 1, 2001... Motoman's ROTSY (Robot Offline Teaching System of Yaskawa) programming software makes robotic application development simple and reduces its associated costs by implementing robot simulation on a PC. ROTSY users can model a proposed robot cell...

ADEPT'S CIMSTATION.
March 1, 2001... Adept Technology's CimStation Robotics software addresses the difficulties involved in implementing robots to automate a manufacturing process. CimStation Robotics enables manufacturers to quickly and easily design, simulate and offline program...

DELMIA'S IGRIP AND ULTRA.
March 1, 2001... Delmia Corp., formerly Deneb Robotics Inc., offers IGRIP and Ultra products (UltraPaint, UltraSpot and UltraArc), robotic simulation tools for design, evaluation and offline programming of robotic workcells. Incorporating real-world robotic and...

LINCOLN ELECTRIC/FANUC'S WINOLPC.
March 1, 2001... The Lincoln Electric Co. and FANUC Robotics offer WinOLPC, a robot program designed for FANUG R-J3 robots. The software enables the development of KAREL or teach pendant programs offline on a PC rather than on a robot controller. Users can...

BROOKS AUTOMATION'S CLUSTERSIM.
March 1, 2001... Brooks Automation Inc.'s AutoSimulations Division offers ClusterSim, a new 3-D animated simulation package for modeling cluster tools in semiconductor manufacturing. ClusterSim provides a graphically and statistically accurate simulation model...

PALLETIZING ROBOT.
March 1, 2001... Toshiba Machine's Control Systems Division's new SR-1504HZ robotics palletizer boasts a payload of 70 kg, has an arm length between 1,050 and 1,950 mm and includes an elevation mechanism that optimizes the range of the robot's work envelope....

MITSUBISHI CONTROLLER.
March 1, 2001... Rixan Associates has introduced Mitsubishi's New Architecture Robot Controller (NARC), which uses a 64-bit RISC processor that enhances processing power in a footprint the size of a sheet of paper. The NARC control is featured on Mitsubishi's...

TUBE GRIPPER.
March 1, 2001... A new tube gripper from Techno-Sommer Automatic is designed to hold a wide variety of shapes, including such products as fluorescent tubes, incandescent bulbs, bottles, glasses, cheese and eggs. The gripper's internal bladder conforms to any...

ARC-WELDING CELL.
March 1, 2001... The lincoln Electric Co.'s Automation Division has introduced a family of compact robotic welding cells. The smallest member of the family is the System 10, a two-fixed-table welding workstation designed for small to medium-sized parts that can...

VISION INTERGRATION PACKAGE.
March 1, 2001... Cincinnati Industrial Automation last year introduced the EZVision Integration Package (EZVIP), the unbundled graphical user interface provided with the company's EZVision 12X and EZVision 14C. EZVIP provides users of the Cognex 8100 and...

LASER-CUTTING SYSTEM.
March 1, 2001... Robotic Production Technologies Inc. recently introduced a new laser-beam delivery package that includes the latest in beam-delivery technology for the company's laser-cutting and scoring system. The new technology allows the robotics systems...

DISPENSING CONTROL SYSTEM.
March 1, 2001... Sealant Equipment & Engineering Inc.'s Next Generation Control System is a modular control system designed to integrate dispensing systems components with a robot or other forms of automation. The system's architecture, DeviceNet, is an...

3-D SENSOR.
March 1, 2001... Oxford Sensor Technology has introduced a 3-D vision system capable of performing robotic glass decking on a moving conveyor. The specular reflection system sensor was developed to overcome the problem of imaging highly reflective surfaces. The...

GANTRY PALLETIZING ROBOT.
March 1, 2001... Pacific Robotics Inc. has introduced a dual gantry robot that both depalletizes empty containers and palletizes filled containers. The robot drives accelerate loads at 0.5 g's in both vertical and lateral axes, allowing it to achieve cycle...

COATING/DRYING SYSTEM.
March 1, 2001... Thierica Equipment Co. has developed a compact, automated coating and drying system designed to accommodate a two-stage coating application process in an 11-foot by 11-foot space. The design features a dual temperature-controlled, two-zone oven...

HEAT EXCHANGERS.
March 1, 2001... Lytron Inc. recently improved its 6000 Series Stainless Steel Tube-Fin Heat Exchangers. The larger heat exchangers, such as the 4320, saw a 33 percent performance boost, while the smaller units, such as the 4110, improved 5 percent. Ideal for...

WELDING WATER SAVER.
March 1, 2001... The IntelliFlow II Water Saver from EOA Systems, a unit of De-Sta-Co Industries, can increase welding efficiency while decreasing costs and maintenance downtime. The water saver monitors and detects leaks as small as 3 percent of the monitored...