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Category Archives: Factory Automation
Tackling a Trade Show
A guest blog post from Erin Lease Hall, CTSM at Nook Industries.
According to a CEIR (Center for Exhibition Industry Research) study, 39% of attendees spend less than eight hours visiting a trade show. As the Nook Industries Trade Show Manager, planning and preparation are my essential keys to a successful exhibition, but it is also the main ingredient to maximizing time on the trade show floor as an attendee. Whether you are a first time attendee or an old pro, here are some tips and tricks to get the most out of walking a show.
Game Plan
Plan ahead and set objectives. The more time and effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it! Go over the show guide online and mark your must-see’s and want-to-see’s. Prioritize your route on the online map, with must-see’s first and decide how much time you want to spend at the show and then at each booth. Allow extra time for browsing, distractions and waiting in lines. There are lots of cool things at shows and they are great for sparking ideas. One of the great assets of attending a trade show is that we come face to face with concepts and ideas which we have may never have considered as options or have dismissed.
Divide and conquer! If you are attending with co-workers compare and share your game plans so you aren’t doing double-duty.
Pre-Show Prep
Register for the show with complete information, which will allow vendors to quickly scan your badge and have the information on hand to follow up with you. Register for seminars or workshops you want to attend. These are great networking events!
Book a hotel room using the show rate online and have a transportation plan, whether it be taxi, Uber, show shuttle bus (a perk to booking through the show site – but if you are booked nearby, you can always get the shuttle by waiting in the lobby of a hotel on the shuttle line), or the nearest parking lot to the convention center.
Set appointments with vendors if possible. Pack a small snack, bottle of water, a mobile phone portable charger, a pen and notebook, and lots of business cards. Plan to wear comfortable shoes! Bring a bag or a back pack if you plan to collect materials. Take the alternative to have literature mailed or emailed to you so you don’t end up carrying around a lot of materials.
Game Time!
It is easy to be overwhelmed once you get to the show venue. Take advantage of coat/bag check. Take a minute to check over the printed directory and make sure your game plan is still on track.
Have specific questions ready during your booth visits and don’t be afraid to push for an answer! Don’t be shy about telling a vendor you are on a tight schedule. Avoid casual conversation if you don’t have time for it and focus on the task at hand. Pass by booths that do not interest you, the exhibitors won’t mind. They want to devote their time to potential customers.
Quickly summarize your visit in booths that interest you in your notebook or make a note on your phone about your experience if it is something you want to follow up on. It’s a long day and the appointments might start to run together.
Follow Up
Don’t waste the information gathered at the show – file the information you have gathered or share with your colleagues if you don’t need it, as you probably know someone within your organization who does.
Long hours on the trade show floor are enough to wipe anybody out. But before you hit the bar for happy hour or crash for the night, take some time to organize the information you’ve gathered. If it’s for co-workers back at the home office, sort it into envelopes and address them to the relevant person. If the information is for you, sort it by priority, affixing sticky notes to jog your memory after you’ve returned from the show.
Come check out Nook Industries in booth S-7890 at PackExpo 2105 in Las Vegas, and at the Automation Fair in Chicago this November and see how we Make Motion Work.
Shrinking the Carbon Footprint in the Industrial Sector
To celebrate Earth Day, Design World published an article on how design engineers can help reduce the environmental impact of industry. In 2011, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that the industrial sector was responsible for 51 percent of global energy consumption. Of the Industry’s energy use, 25 percent was in the form of losses. While this poses a major problem, author Danielle Collins offers several tips for how designers can reverse this environmental impact. Here are some of the things we learned:
Proper Sizing Helps Eliminate Inefficiency:
According to the article, “For linear motion components and systems, no other aspect of design has as much influence on energy use and efficiency as their physical size. Not only does proper sizing ensure the best performance for the application, avoiding waste in terms of scrap, rework, and over- or under-production. It also ensures that the driving equipment, whether electric, pneumatic or hydraulic, is not over-sized, which results in higher energy consumption.”
Collins uses linear bearings as an example to make her point. When larger bearings are used, larger motors, couplings and mounts also have to be used to create a proper inertia match, While keeping safety factors in mind, Collins says that all the weight necessary to accommodate the large bearings leads to overall inefficiency.
Regular Maintenance Reduces Energy Consumption:
As equipment goes through cycle after cycle, eventually the lubrication will break down, which increases the friction and decreases efficiency. According to Collins, this leads to other parts such as the motor, gearboxes and cylinders to work harder and consume more energy.
Collins believes that although equipment maintenance isn’t so much the concern of the engineers, designing equipment that is easy to maintain, such as that with ball chains or built-in lubrication systems, will more than likely keep machines running smoother and with less energy than those not built with low-maintenance considerations.
According to Collins, “Reducing the quantity and intervals for lubrication can also have a significant impact on the environmental footprint of a machine. A typical machine tool will have at least three linear axes of motion, with four bearings per axis, for a total of twelve bearings per machine. With approximately 250,000 machine tools produced each year, that’s over 3 million linear bearings to be lubricated! The potential for environmental impact due to lubricating greases and oils is considerable. Not to mention the energy required to move the axes.”
To read the full article and find out more on how designers can reduce energy consumption, click here.
Protecting Your Worm Gear Screw Jacks with Bellow Boots
On the production floor, worm gear jack products are constantly exposed to all kinds of harmful contaminates. With that in mind, it’s important to consider using solutions like bellow boots to protect your worm gear screw jack products. A boot protects the lifting shaft from contamination and helps retain lubricant to ensure long jack life.
Standard boots are sewn from black neoprene-covered nylon fabric for oil, water and weather resistance and are acceptable for use in -30° to +300°F environments. Optional materials are available for specific operating conditions. To understand which boots are best suited for your application, we’ve created a template to make the process easier.
Standard boots are furnished with tie straps for jacks with greater than 65 inches travel. Tie straps are attached from convolution to convolution and help the boot extend uniformly.
Here is a chart of special boot materials and their respective temperature, range and application comments:
Integral Safety Threads
Ball nuts can fail for a variety of reasons. Primarily, it’s fatigue of the bearing balls or the threaded surface, which is why proper lubrication (link to lube blog post) is so important. However, ball nuts can fail prematurely due to misalignment, impact loading, contamination, or external damage to the return circuits. Premature failure may result in the loss of some or all of the balls between the nut and screw. When all the balls are lost the nut is no longer engaged with the screw and therefore may not move when the screw is rotated or, in vertical applications, will free fall along the screw.
In applications where this loss of ball type failure could result in injury or death, this failure needs to be considered in the design. Possible preventative measures include the use of two or more screws supporting the load, use of nuts with multiple independent ball recirculation circuits, use of Ball Deflectors which prevent the balls from exiting the ball nut out the ends.
There is one more preventative measure that has proven itself in testing and in practical use; Integral Safety Threads. These unique solutions that provide the ball nut with a secondary safety thread – a reverse thread in the nut body itself. This special thread extends from the ID (Internal Diameter) of the nut to below the OD (Outside Diameter) of the screw without making contact. In the unlikely event that all the balls in the nut are lost, this “safety” thread will engage the screw and prevent free-fall. Although this thread can be used to lower the load to a safe position, it is not to be used otherwise. This can also be accomplished with the use of a special flange if the ball nut body cannot accommodate the Safety Thread feature.
