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Your servo might be in danger!

How can spending an extra 4% on your servo drive be a wise decision?  To easily prevent total failure of your expensive servo drive and the resulting production downtown-time, that’s how! Encoders are commonly used to command a servo, and encoders can be purchased with many types of outputs.  For higher resolution encoder applications, it is important to consider the frequency of the encoder pulses when your machine is running at its maximum speed. For high speed and high resolution, i

Jim Wachtel

Jim Wachtel in Servos

Quickly Create a Complex Robot Toolpath

This how-to guide brought to you by HTE Automation illustrates the ease with which you can train a collaborative robot, or cobot, from Universal Robots, including the models UR3e, UR5e, UR10e, and UR16e to perform a drilling operation along a complex toolpath using the built-in Remote TCP & Toolpath "URCap." The Remote TCP & Toolpath URCap can be used directly from the UR Teach Pendant on UR cobots using Polyscope 5.6 and above software. With this URCap you can easily convert G

Dave Alexander

Dave Alexander in Robots

“We need Higher Performance at a Lower Cost!”

I recently worked with a customer asking for help with upgrading the performance of their feeding machine. The machine indexes material into another machine upon demand, using a simple I/O handshake to feed in material when the processing machine requests it. Their prior designs have used VFDs and even stepper motors. While these low-cost machines did the job, they were unable to keep up with the marketplace’s demand for ever higher accuracy and speed. Our TECHTEAM felt that switching to a

Jim Wachtel

Jim Wachtel in Servos

Simple PLC Positioning Control

Recently we had a request from a customer who wanted to expand and improve his CNC tending operation. For more than a year the plant had been using a UR10e collaborative robot from Universal Robots to load and unload parts from one of his CNC machines. He was very pleased with the initial ROI on the project, and with the ongoing value of that installation that he decided to implement the UR Cobot on a second CNC machine. The idea was to use a single Universal Robot to simultaneously tend both CN

Jim Wachtel

Jim Wachtel in PLCs

A Web Server that Comes with a PLC

The Mitsubishi Electric iQ-F PLC comes with Ethernet built in. One of the many things this Ethernet port may be used for is a Web Portal. This Web Portal gives the user access to important data in the PLC by simply using a standard Web Browser. Things like serial number, firmware version, errors, and diagnostic information are easily accessed. A user can also check actual data running in their PLC program. Not only can they read the data, but if they log in with the right permissions, they

Jim Wachtel

Jim Wachtel in PLCs

When Resistance Won The Day

A Simple, Inexpensive, & Quick Solution Saves the Day! We recently were asked to solve an unexpected issue for one of our PLC customers. They use the high-performance Mitsubishi Electric iQ−F PLC, also known as the FX5U, which is equipped with 2 Analog Inputs and 1 Analog Output. The Analog Inputs are rated for 0 to 10 Volts with a 12-bit Analog to Digital converter allowing for a resolution of 2.5 mVolts. The digital number seen in the PLC will range from 0 to 4000. The Analo

Jim Wachtel

Jim Wachtel in PLCs

The ROI Dimension where Goosebumps Grow!

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.  It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.”  These words from the opening of “The Twilight Zone” drew the viewer into the next few minutes with the hope of goosebumps.  Well, so I’m told. You see I don’t have any pores or hair, and so no goosebumps either.  Anyway, humanity seems to always be hunting for something more, something not readily apparent in life, while at the same time insisting that whatever t

Dave Alexander

Dave Alexander in Robots

Worker Safety and Satisfaction

I saw something on a TV sportscast the other day that would have curled my mother’s toes.  Yes, yes, I said I “saw something”, because even though I’m a Cobot, I CAN see now through the wonders of machine vision, but that’s beside the point.  What I saw was this commentator wearing a suit with a striped tie and a polka-dot shirt.  It made my head spin, all 6 axes!  But here’s the weird thing, he pulled it off.  He looked pretty good in it.  It left me wondering whether I need to

Dave Alexander

Dave Alexander in Robots

5 Myths about Cobots Debunked

Collaborative Robots Deliver Automation to Manufacturers of Every Size   Thanks to the collaborative industrial robot revolution, the ambitions of manufacturing companies are increasingly realized at a much lower cost and with much less effort than expected.  However, the introduction of cobots in automation planning discussions is sometimes met with hesitation which come from people's experience with non-collaborative traditional robots: ROBOTICS AUTOMATION IS FOR COMPLEX, LARGE

Dave Alexander

Dave Alexander in Robots

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