The myth of the paperless society has long ago been debunked. It’s very possible that the use of paper, for many requirements, has actually increased over the last several years. With the acceleration in computer power, more reports, spitting out a variety of information, can be generated faster and in more detail. And now that almost every household has a personal computer with a desktop printer, the demand for printer and copier paper continues to grow. Typical machine designs for the making and wrapping of reams of paper previously included a lot of cams [...]

With more and more labor-intensive operations moving offshore, the ability to automate the manufacturing process is critical for keeping operating costs in check, allowing North American companies to remain competitive in worldwide markets. This has drastically escalated the importance and influence of the entire motion control industry. In that vein, a customer of ours was designing a transfer system to automatically feed castings into a machining center and needed a motion control solution. The basic system included a large rotary table and two opposing robots to load and unload the table. The need was [...]