The First Exciting Days at ATX West 2024

The first days of the IME West show have finished here at the Anaheim Convention Center. Control Automation and EETech’s engineering and editorial team have been making the rounds and visiting many amazing companies - some of them old friends, as well as a great many new faces.

FANUC

FANUC demonstrated a more seamless new generation of machine communication tools with the Robot On-Site, a software application that allows a CNC machine and FANUC robot to share variables as registers without any complex setup procedures. Through this demonstration, a multi-axis motion controller simulated the assembly of brake parts, with the robot loading and unloading the assemblies.

In addition, FANUC also demonstrated SCARA and collaborative robots (CRX) for applications like food, bev, and palletizing.

Phytools

Rugged computing power in a small, flexible form factor is one of the leading trends for industrial automation. One of the brands represented by the distributor Phytools is the Kunbus brand, the creators of the Revolution Pi modular controller. The Rev Pi is a Raspberry Pi-based IIoT controller, built on a Linux platform, with modules for I/O, communication, and power options.

Phytools also carries brands that supply industrial needs in the areas of CAN (controller area networks), industrial controls, and communication gateway devices.

Balluff

I/O is the name of the game for Balluff, known for IO-Link and condition monitoring solutions. One of the exciting new developments from Balluff is the launch of the free hardware configurator tool that allows seamless setup of IO-Link masters and end devices, compatible with any manufacturer’s IO-Link I/O solutions, as long as an appropriate IODD (IO-Link Device Descriptor) file is available.

Balluff also displayed condition monitoring sensors, wireless devices for traceability, and highly customizable machine vision hardware.

Kawasaki Robotics

Moving heavy payloads. If we could sum up industrial robots, that might be the easiest claim to make. Kawasaki Robotics has a long history of robots, particularly in automotive industry segments, but the rise of applications using third-party and AI solutions has given rise to a new strategy. Kawasaki Robotics seeks to provide APIs to software developers that allow the robot arm to be applied to a wide range of new and innovation cases, opening the door to all kinds of new areas for robot development. As Kawasaki Robotics says “they are not robots, they are robotics!”

Kawasaki Robotics also displayed some screwdriving and palletizing demonstrations using a variety of industrial robot arms.

Bosch Rexroth

Designing a single piece of hardware for a control system is a hard enough task. But imagining an entire library of automation - not just the controllers, but the motion, the HMI, and all the software needed to connect the data between machines and up to the enterprise network… Now THAT is a complex job indeed. The ctrlX platform from Bosch Rexroth seeks to create a cohesive system from the ctrlX core (the controller) to the safety, the I/O, the motion controls, the HMI, and the entire factory network. The software is an industrial PC with a host of apps to not only drive the various automation systems, but also to transfer data seamlessly at all levels.

Bosch Rexroth also displayed a 7-axis collaborative robot from Kassow, working alongside a traditional and high-speed conveyance system.

Flexiv

Most robots travel from point to point along an interpolated or prescribed path. If the pick and place locations never change, this is quite simple. But what if the object has some variation, and the path may not be the same straight line each time? Flexiv has a solution for cases like this, such as surface polishing or deburring, where path variations are almost guaranteed. Flexiv robots use a force-torque control instead of point control for their 7-axis robots, the path moves from point A to B, but rather than a linear motion, the path follows a carefully limited compliance to keep a continuous surface pressure, regardless of the path.

Flexiv also develops innovative end effectors that can feature two different grip methods to pick parts that conform to the signature non-linear force-guided path applications.