Industrial Factory Automation

Festo has launched an electrically operated pneumatic soft-start and exhaust valve that offers safer start-up and the quick, reliable venting of compressed-air supplies in the event of an emergency. The company claims that the MS6-SV provides machine builders with a compact, all-in-one solution for maximising the safety of automation systems. It is fully compliant with the EN ISO 13849-1 standard on machinery safety and is certified to categories 3 and 4. EN ISO 13849-1 will replace the existing EN 954-1 safety standard on 30 November 2009 and forms part of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, which will become mandatory at the end of 2009. The valve is intended to help designers and machine builders address some of the key issues in the directive, including meantime to (dangerous) failure, self diagnostics, common cause failure protection and external validation and certification. Festo's MS6-SV valve provides a three-/two-way function and features fast venting - it has an exhaust...

Festo has launched an intelligent multi-axis control module for electric drives. The CPX-CMXX module is a highly integrated unit designed for use with Festo's CPX series of multifunctional control terminals. It is suitable for parts handling and positioning applications such as pick and place, palletising, machine loading and unloading, inspection/measuring and labelling. The module can operate autonomously or in response to signals from a host controller - it features a built-in PLC-compatible interface. It can store and execute simple individual axis movements, and can coordinate the movement of two groups of axes, each containing up to four axes. There are 1,024 position sets available for each of the two groups of axes; these can either be linked and executed in sequence, or multiple sets can be executed in synch. The module communicates with the various drive modules via CANopen, using the standard fieldbus FHPP handling and positioning profile. All configuration, parameteris...