Actom Signalling, a Southern African railway signal-equipment company, has found minimal wear in accelerated wear testing on Vesconite slides in its point machines. These machines control railway tracks and switch the tracks to which particular trains will be directed. Actom engineering projects and contracts development technician Wayne Meyer confirms the test results. Testing was executed […]
Applications
LINAK lifting column takes cobot palletizers to new heights
There’s an untapped automation potential for palletizing goods in production and other industries. Realizing this potential requires flexible, easy-to-use, and affordable cobot solutions that can adjust to different palletizing setups and generate rapid return on investment. To meet these demands, LINAK now offers the ELEVATE lifting column — a new product that extends the reach […]
Differentiating belt-drive types
Synchronous belt drives dominate motion control designs for positioning and other precision functions. Here we detail V belts and other belt types used in industrial, robotic, and consumer designs for both linear and rotary axes. Modern flat belts are either endless (welded or otherwise closed into a hoop by the manufacturer) or open. Common on […]
Update on today’s belt drives
Belt drives have continued to evolve with new applications. Industrial belt drives in motion designs consist of rubber, engineered plastic, metal, or (most common) multi-material belts that wrap around drive pulleys — grooved or otherwise profiled wheels mounted on a shaft — in turn driven by electric motors. Powered by various motor types, belt drives run […]
Linear and rotary motion components satisfy aerospace requirements
Linear guides, cam followers, and crossed-roller bearings can satisfy the demanding requirements for space-flight hardware. By IKO engineering staff | www.ikont.com As space activity shifts from governmental agencies to a growing industry driven by commercial entities and even startups, the types of spacecrafts and the missions they support are also expanding. This diversifying industry is […]
Choosing linear and angle encoders for semiconductor machinery
The manufacture and testing of semiconductors involves the competing requirements of nanometer positioning and high throughput. Here, the right encoder can help motion designs deliver on both counts. By HEIDENHAIN CORPORATION staff engineers Semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment can have the best motion-control bandwidth, artificial intelligence capabilities, and optics in the world, but none of […]
How to calculate duty cycle and what it means for machine life
Determining the life of a linear system that uses balls or rollers is relatively straightforward, thanks to the L10 bearing life equation, which gives life in meters of travel (for linear bearings) or revolutions (for screws). And for plain bearings and lead screws, manufacturers typically use the bearing’s PV value and operating conditions to provide an […]
Linear bearing basics: Surface roughness, texture, and finish
One of the factors to consider when selecting shafts for linear bearings is surface roughness, which describes the microscopic asperities, or peaks, and valleys present on a material’s surface. But surface roughness is an important specification for all types of linear guides and screws — whether plain or recirculating, round shaft or profiled rail, ball […]
Screw handedness: When do you need a left-handed screw?
Just like people, ball and lead screws can be either right-handed or left-handed. But in screw terminology, handedness indicates the direction in which the nut moves relative to the direction of the screw’s rotation. By far the most common version is the right-handed screw, in which the nut moves toward you when the screw is […]
What is torque ripple and how does it affect linear motion applications?
Motors produce torque and rotation through the interaction of magnetic fields in the rotor and the stator. In an ideal motor — with mechanical components that are perfectly machined and assembled and electrical fields that build and decay instantaneously — torque output would be perfectly smooth, with no variations. But in the real world, there […]
