Festo showing ‘Progress in Motion’ at PPMA 2022

The Festo stand at PPMA 2022 will focus on key applications for the process and packaging sector. These include innovative process valve controls, servo-controlled flow wrapping and a new solution for controlling web tension with dancing rollers.

An OEM balancer is introduced to make it easy for designers to integrate all the counter-balance controls they need with their own mechanical structures. A boon for lifting heavy loads typically found at the beginning or end of production lines, for example sack or box lifting.

An action packed production line looks at an assembly task demonstrating connectivity and integration from the mechanics, sensors, actuators and controls linked to edge, or cloud monitoring for machine learning assisted predictive maintenance, energy reduction or quality monitoring.

Energy costs are a massive issue for all UK manufacturers. Festo has some great examples for monitoring and controlling compressed air usage to reduce energy consumption. Recent examples have shown air consumption can be reduced by over 40% using the VTEM motion terminal. Here the guess work and variability of applications can be eliminated and only the air required to make the cylinder movement within the given time and with the current load, is expended.

New products are white elephants if the workforce isn’t adequately prepared to embrace and maximise the technology. The new Festo LX online learning platform offers users access to a vast library of training resources. It is a powerful and yet extremely cost-effective subscription-based tool to provide the perfect hybrid blend of online and hands-on upskilling. Festo Didactic is actively engaged in helping customers take their employees through the journey of embracing Lean methodologies, streamlining and stabilising their processes before they uplift them to the next level of digitalisation technology.