For more than a century, industrial motors have remained largely unchanged in their core design, relying on radial flux technology to power everything from manufacturing lines to heavy-duty machinery. While this approach has been refined over time, the industry has faced a fundamental challenge: how to make motors more compact, efficient and adaptable - without sacrificing power. Cassiano Antunes Cezario, R&D Manager at WEG's Industrial Motor division introduces the W80 AXgen axial flux motor.

New from valve specialist GEMU is the 44A0 multi-functional valve actuation module, a future-proof solution for modern process automation. The automation module combines two functions in a single device: a combi switchbox and position control, for maximum versatility and efficient plant design.

The elastomer couplings from Jakob have been expanded by a new series. With the new EKM-VA, the tried-and-tested EKM type has a stainless steel version. One of the strengths of the material is its resistance to chemicals, such as those used for cleaning in the food industry.

Acorn Industrial Services is expanding its comprehensive linear motion product offer by adding Schaeffler INA to its fully stocked range.

RS has significantly expanded its product offering from Phoenix Contact. RS now supplies more than 45,000 products from the manufacturer of products, solutions and digitalisation expertise for electrification, networking and automation in all sectors of the economy and infrastructure.

Apex Dynamics has launched its expanded product range for high torque and rack and pinion applications. The latest MGO series from the global planetary gearbox specialist has been optimised for high axial and radial loads, making it ideally suited to robotics, heavy-duty automation and CNC machine tools.

Kollmorgen has enhanced its AKM and AKM2G servo motor families with a new high-resolution encoder option that provides absolute multi-turn feedback - at no additional cost compared to the existing absolute single-turn variant. The Kollmorgen SFD-M encoder option, available from INMOCO, achieves four times greater positioning accuracy than previous designs.

Now more than ever, downtime is costly. To combat this, igus developed i.Cee, a smart plastics system that turns passive components into intelligent assets.

Digitalisation opens up tremendous potentials for robotics and machine engineering in terms of productivity, efficiency, process reliability, maintenance, and availability. Nabtesco knows the requirements of industry and implements solutions from digital gears models to sensorised strain wave gears and hybridised cycloidal gears.

Beth Ragdale, software business manager at automation specialist Beckhoff UK, explains how software-defined motion systems can help manufacturers adapt to SKU demand, improving batch-level control.