Capacitive proximity switches.

With its new range of capacitive products, Leuze electronic is introducing contactless, wear-free switches which are resistant to electromagnetic influences, interference and contaminants in the air such as dust.

The capacitive switches are available in cylindrical or cubic designs with flush and non-flush mounting options to suit the widest range of applications. Due to their semiconductor technology they have an extremely long life expectancy, regardless of the detection and switching frequency. Whether solid, liquid or granular - capacitive sensors are capable of detecting various objects independently of their material and shape, without contact and without reaction.

They are particularly suitable for detecting objects in harsh and dirty environments due to their IP67 housing. Because of their ability to "see through" certain materials they are particularly suited for use in the packaging industry, detecting products in outer packaging and behind container walls, checking and monitoring fill levels for completeness.

@TheSensorPeople #PAuto

Changes at the board!

The board of directors of Kennametal Inc., has appointed Christopher (Chris) Rossi as president and chief executive officer and has named him a director. Chris succeeds Ron De Feo whom the board has appointed executive chairman of the board. Both appointments are effective August 1, 2017.

Chris Rossi

“With more than 30 years of leadership experience, Chris has delivered sustainable results across a breadth of functions including operations, marketing and sales, R&D, product management, supply chain and technology innovation,” said Lawrence W. Stranghoener, Kennametal chairman of the board of directors. “We expect Chris will bring continuity to the transformation presently underway at the company while evolving a strategy and vision for the future that will continue to deliver results for our customers, team members and shareholders.”

“We want to thank Ron De Feo for the dramatic progress he has made to reposition Kennametal over the past 18 months,” Stranghoener continued. “Ron will work closely with Chris to ensure a smooth transition for all our stakeholders and we appreciate his continuing leadership.”

Rossi previously served as the chief executive officer of Dresser-Rand at Siemens from September 2015 through May 2017. Prior to that, Rossi held numerous leadership positions at Dresser-Rand Group Inc., its affiliates and predecessor companies since he joined in 1987, including executive vice president of global operations, vice president of technology and business development and executive vice president of global aftermarket sales. Rossi holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA in corporate finance and operations management from the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business.

Ron De Feo

“I am excited to join a company with such well-respected brands and a legacy of continuous innovation and customer commitment,” commented Rossi. “I look forward to working together with the Kennametal team across the globe to continue building a strong future for the company, our customers, its shareholders and our communities.”

“We look forward to the perspective Chris’ experience will bring to lead Kennametal into the next chapter of its transformation,” commented Ron De Feo, current Kennametal president and CEO. “It has been my pleasure to lead the Kennametal team over the past 18 months and together we have made great strides in positioning the company for a successful future.”

High Power Regenerative DC Load.

The ELR9000 HP Series of regenerative, programmable electronic DC loads has been introduced by Intepro Systems. This latest version of their ELR Series is designed to accommodate three-phase mains between 360V – 528V AC. The increased power density of HP Series units provides load ratings of up to 15kW in a single 3U rack-mounted instrument. A master-slave bus can be used to connect as many as 16 units in parallel to test loads of up to 240 kW. A unique feature of the ELR 9000 HP Series is an integral, grid-synchronized inverter designed to return up to 94.5% of the load test energy back to the grid. 

“The wide input voltage of the new ELR 9000 HP Series of electronic DC loads is especially important to our customers who have manufacturing facilities in multiple global locations,” said Gerard Sheehan, Intepro's Chief Technical Officer. “In addition, the regenerative output is even more valuable in these higher power density units, eliminating the need for expensive cooling systems used by conventional air- and water-cooled loads to dissipate energy as heat.”

The ELR 9000 HP Series offers four common regulation modes: constant voltage, constant current, constant resistance and constant power. The FPGA-based operational controls include a function generator and a table-based regulation circuit for the simulation of non-linear internal resistances. Intepro’s PowerStar 6 software package enables the creation of test routines using a drag-and-drop menu where coding can be performed without programming.  

@InteproSystems  #PAuto @proactivefleet

Acquisition to strengthen digital grid portfolio and focus.

ABB to acquire the mission-critical communication business of the KEYMILE Group to strengthen its communication networks portfolio.

The acquisition will bring with it key products, software and service solutions, as well as research and development expertise. These will further enhance ABB’s digital offering, ABB Ability, by adding extremely reliable communications technologies that are essential to maintain today’s dynamic and complex digital electrical grids. The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of 2017. Both parties have agreed not to disclose the value of the deal.

“Reliable telecommunications become increasingly important as the number of connected devices increases. While digitalization provides opportunities for operational efficiencies and asset optimization, it also brings new complexities in maintaining mission-critical operations,” said Rolf Unterberger, CEO of KEYMILE. “We are very pleased that industry leader ABB will acquire our mission-critical communication networks business, which will enable the continued development of cutting-edge products, software and service solutions for grid operations.”

KEYMILE is headquartered in Hanover (D), with 350 employees globally and was founded in 2002 through a merger of three technology companies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. It is a leading manufacturer of mission-critical and broadband telecommunication solutions, with installations across 100 countries.

Reliable information is key to quick and accurate decision making in today’s increasingly automated world; this is particularly true of sprawling, connected networks. The operation of mission-critical systems such as electrical grids requires communication networks with unparalleled performance and robustness based on special technology, protocols and software. KEYMILE’s communication portfolio is geared to meet the demands of network operators for reliability, availability and cyber security, making KEYMILE a leader in the field of mission-critical communications.

“ABB is a global leader in communication networks for utility customers. The acquisition of KEYMILE’s mission-critical communication business will strengthen this position and extend our market reach in the industrial, transportation and infrastructure sectors,” said Claudio Facchin, president of ABB’s Power Grids division. “This move supports our growth plans and digitalization push as part of our ABB Ability offering, as we strengthen our position as the partner of choice in enabling a stronger, smarter and greener grid.”

KEYMILE’s mission-critical communication business base includes network operators of energy grids, railways, oil and gas pipelines, as well as public authorities. The 120 employees of the acquired business will join the Grid Automation business unit of ABB’s Power Grids division.

@ABBgroupnews #PAuto 

Users driving digital transformation.

We always enjoy these user-group events because they offer the opportunity for Editors/Journalists to meet those who use equipment rather than those who make the instrumentation. Their focus is not necessarily the same as that of the manufacturers. We have been attending Emerson events (#EMREX) for many years now and they do have a special atmosphere. Indeed the user groups of each manufacturer have a different feel and in some ways present the ethos generated by the ethos of the supplier company.

The worldwide Emerson user community "at the heart of the industrial digital transformation" will host two Emerson Global Users Exchange conferences "to collaborate, network and solve the challenges in achieving Top Quartile performance – representing the top 25 percent of peer companies in operations and capital performance." Professionals from industries who provide the backbone of everyday life including oil and gas, power generation, water and wastewater, life sciences, refining and chemical share better performance solutions that can improve earnings up to 15 percent.

Emerson Global Users Exchange: The Americas

Registration is open for the Americas annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, Oct. 2-6, 2017. The event theme is ‘Powering Collaboration’ and will include keynotes, technical paper presentations, industry forums, workshops, technology roundtables, ‘Meet the Experts’ sessions, exhibits, awards and Emerson technology roadmaps. The event also features a keynote presentation by world champion adventure racer Robyn Benincasa and an address by Mike Train, executive president, Emerson Automation Solutions, as well as an evening networking event at US Bank Stadium – the future site of Super Bowl LII. (Mike Train was at the joint NIBRT/Emerson Biopharma event in Dublin last month - see our report!)

Emerson Global Users Exchange: Europe, Middle East and Africa

The Europe, Middle East and Africa biennial conference will be at The Hague, NL, March 7-9, 2018. The Hague conference theme is ‘Connect, Communicate, Create’ and will build upon the increasing success of its predecessors, allowing delegates an even greater opportunity to network with peers and explore new industry opportunities to expand digital intelligence to the entire manufacturing enterprise. (The last European Meeting was held in Brussels last year (2016) - see our report!)

For Users, By Users
The Emerson Global Users Exchange is a user community committed to extracting the most from their automation investments and enables global industry to achieve Top Quartile performance in the areas of safety, reliability, production and energy management. Shaped by users, for users, the event is managed by an Emerson customer board of directors, comprising users from a range of industries who formulate the conference content and guide the direction of the users group at large.

Presentations from both events will provide delegates peer-to-peer best practices to extract the greatest value from technology investments, solve engineering challenges, drive improved performance, dramatically enhance safety and compliance, reduce capital and engineering costs, increase profitability through effective energy management, and create successful system migration and lifecycle management paths.

TFT LCD Modules.

Diamond Electronics has introduced new 2.4" & 2.8" TFT LCD Modules from Winstar Display Co. Ltd.* The WF24E and WF28E modules are small format TFT displays with full colour 240 x 320 RGB TFT LCD modules and have diagonal sizes of 2.4 & 2.8 inches respectively.

Both modules have a built in ILI9341V driver IC which supports an 8 or 16bit 8080-series Parallel MCU Interface.  The WF24H model has dimensions of 42.72 x 60.26 mm and active area size of 36.72 x 48.96 mm whilst the WF28E model’s dimensions are 50.0 x 69.2 mm with an active area size of 43.2 x 57.6 mm.

Both displays are designed for portrait mode applications, for landscape mode please contact Diamond for technical support. Logic input supply voltage range is from 2.5V to 3.3Vdc. Display brightness is measured at up to 500 cd/m², making either device ideal for handheld and bench-top instruments. 

* Established in 1998, Winstar Display Co., Ltd. is a leading LCD Display Module Manufacturer and LCD Panel Supplier. Winstar continuously develops high-quality display module products. Their product range includes LCM Modules including monochrome TN/STN/FSTN LCM, COG LCD, TFT LCM, FSC-LCD, graphic LCM, OLED display modules, custom OLED and LCD panels.

@diamondhmi #PAuto @proactivefleet 

Research for new tesla coil sesigns.

Thomson Industries has donated a high-precision ball screw assembly to The Geek Group National Science Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to help develop revolutionary designs of Tesla Coils (TC). An ambitious R&D program has been initiated there to discover new uses for the TC with help from a new automated process for winding coils.

Thomson was selected because of their top-notch application engineering support and breadth of product offerings, which enabled delivery of an optimal complete ball screw assembly. That Thomson ball screw assembly will help The Geek Group’s high-energy engineering team convert from typical manual winding to a much faster, more accurate automated process for winding thousands of coils required to conduct their experiments.

A Thomson customer support engineer guided The Geek Group engineering team in selecting the exact configuration to best match their needs. The product selected was a quick-install ball screw assembly that avoids any precision problems that may result from assembling components on site. The final configuration consisted of a Thomson FSI Style ball nut along with an eight-foot-long ball screw just under an inch in diameter.

"We set our IRC team on the task of finding the best linear motion technology in the industry,” said Chris Boden, CEO of The Geek Group. “The team, composed of a couple hundred experts from many science and technology disciplines, analysed about a dozen different products and concluded that only the Thomson drive could do exactly what we needed and exactly how we wanted to do it”.

The TC production program has already begun, and The Geek Group has plans for experimenting with larger coils in the future.

@Thomson_Ind @thegeekgroup