Industrial

To ensure they can meet deadlines and deliver products in line with customers’ high expectations, UK manufacturers are looking for ways to increase assembly speed. There are many ways to speed up industrial assembly, such as investing in automation and robotics, but few options can increase manufacturing speed without capital investment. In these cases, perhaps it is the components and not the equipment that needs changing. Here Justin Lawr...

Smart buildings promise automated control of the buildings' operations, along with integrated technology for human-machine interactions. Such functionality requires multiple sensors, to which printed/flexible electronics are very well suited due to their low weight and thin-film form factor. By Dr Matthew Dyson, Technology Analyst, IDTechEx

Encoders provide feedback for accurate motor control relating to speed and positioning. Here Chris Schaefer, Applications Engineer at Portescap, has looked at the technologies involved and explained how to choose the encoder for your application.

The coronavirus outbreak changed the economy. Many professions that the public took for granted were prevented from operating under their normal circumstances. The introduction of social distancing guidelines and new operational safety requirements has forced customer facing roles to adapt to this new situation. However, innovation is at the forefront of our economy and technological and operational advancements have allowed for these goals ...

Naseef Mahmud of Rohde & Schwarz describes a systematic approach on how to perform radiated proximity wireless coexistence testing on a product in its final form - a new form of testing that is slowly picking up pace in popularity, as it not only helps manufacturers testing compliance, but could also double as an end-of-line functionality test.

How intelligent systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) are transforming electric heat tracing operations – from industrial production to home heating. Thomas Vranken, Marketing Manager at nVent explains.

Deciding whether to use removable or embedded memory is one of the earliest decisions a designer has to make, so getting it right is crucial to the rest of the development process. Sometimes the choice is clear cut, but in other situations it’s finely balanced. Cardwave CEO Paul Norbury looks at the pros and cons of each option.

As IoT applications become more complex, designers of IIoT endpoints are being asked to accommodate more complex computing at the edge. Edge computing on endpoint sensor data is a practical way to reduce network bottlenecks to the IIoT hub. This reduces network traffic while also reducing the computational load at the main hub processor. However, the approach has its drawbacks, as Rolf Horn, Applications Engineer at Digi-Key Electronics explains.

Visiting an exhibition that focuses on industrial automation systems, you can be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of different systems. Industrial equipment often seems clunky and bulky by comparison to other modern consumer devices. Some interfaces rely on technology that has been around for decades, but that is really the appeal of many of these solutions: they are established, fulfil the use case, and are reliable. Ariel La...

ASM launched a major survey over the summer, asking more than 450 electronics manufacturers around the world about their situation in the coronavirus crisis, their countermeasures, and their assessment of the medium- and long-term consequences of the pandemic.