Controls & Machine Components

Nexen Group: Servo motor brakes

Nexen Group’s (Vadnais Heights, MN) Eclipse™ servo motor brakes provide emergency holding and stopping to increase safety in vertical and horizontal applications.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components: Page 277

Secondary Packaging

Hershey speaks out

Hershey Foods engineers speak candidly about standardization, globalization, obsolescence, modularity, and harmonizing end user and machine builder standards.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

Pilz International: Safety relays

For use with optical sensors, proximity switches, inductive sensors, and mechanical switches, the PMUT X1P muting controller is available from Pilz Automation Safety (Canton, MI).

February 28, 2002

Bag/pouch fill/seal (pre-made bags)

Rockwell Automation: Rockwell Automation: Controls improve vf/f/s operations

Bosch Packaging (Bridgman, MI) adds controls and servomotor drives from Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, WI) to Model SVE 2510 vf/f/s machines. With Allen-Bradley ControlLogix™ networking onboard, the improvement allows users to customize and adjust the continuous-motion machine’s settings quickly and precisely.

February 28, 2002

Conveying & accumulation

Q&A: Melding packaging and electronics expertise

A discussion with Hershey Foods' Tom Hernley (top left), a 30-year packaging veteran; Wade Latz, packaging systems engineering manager (bottom right); and Keith Campbell, director of automation and integration.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

Companies

–Marconi Data Systems (Wood Dale, IL) was acquired by Danaher Corp. (Washington, DC), and the company will do business as Videojet Technologies Inc..

February 28, 2002

Flexible packaging

Reclosure features dominate

Four FPA winners in the Packaging Excellence category are zippered pouches. A produce pack, a coffee carafe, and a shrink-sleeve label round out the category.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

Opening up access to production data (sidebar)

Distributed data server

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

Opening up access to production data

Italian label converter enjoys easier access to production data and e-mail notification of production events via standard Web software.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

PLCopen releases motion specification

PLCopen, a vendor- and product-independent association supporting standardized approaches to machine control, has released a motion-control specification that it hopes will take hold in the packaging community.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

OMAC at interpack 2002

The interpack trade show will be the site of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup’s next meeting, to be held April 24 from 2 to 5 p.m. in Room 27, second floor of the Congress Center Düsseldorf South (CCD.Sud) in Düsseldorf, Germany.

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

OMAC standardizes machine states (sidebar)

Simulate machine states on your PC

February 28, 2002

Controls & Machine Components

OMAC standardizes machine states

The PackML “state model,” if widely adopted, promises to optimize line performance and reduce line integration costs through standardization.

February 28, 2002