Festo recently held a series of countrywide business breakfasts to introduce customers to the latest trends and solutions under the electric automation banner. Festo MD, Brett Wallace explained, “As markets are evolving and becoming more competitive, the company has structured itself into five key business units to ensure that customer challenges are met with the latest technology and service solutions.” Wallace continued, “These business units include Festo Didactic (the education unit), pneumatic factory automation, process automation, electric automation and customised solutions. Although each one is independent, they are also all interconnected to provide full spectrum solutions.”
In an interactive presentation to customers, industry segment manager for electric automation, Skye Prato, traced the development of electric automation. He started from mechanical synchronisation, through pneumatics and PLCs, to modern, advanced systems, highlighting the key differentiators today as being speed and flexibility.
“A single machine can now perform many different functions.” Highlighting the differences between pneumatics and electric automation, Prato explained, “The advantages of pneumatics include a relatively low investment, a simpler technology, greater safety, energy-free end-stop holding, a small footprint and direct linear movement. On the other hand, electric automation allows for easy mid-positioning, more precise overall positioning, synchronised movement, efficient conversion of electric to kinetic energy and constant speed. Determining which one is more energy-efficient will depend entirely on the application – each technology needs to be considered based on its own strengths.”
Festo offers a seamless, unique and modern product portfolio for both pneumatic and electric actuators. Complete and integrated solutions can be tied together, from the mechanical compon-ents, to motors, the controller or CNC, right up to the reporting level – all from a single source. These include complete multi-axis handling units and an extensive range of over 500 motors. Added into the mix are Festo’s vision systems, where cameras can be utilised to check the position and orientation of objects and send information to the handling system.
Another strength of Festo is its innovative software selection tool. The Handling Guide Online (HGO) is an intuitive engineering tool that makes it easy to design, configure and order the right handling system from scratch. Adding even further value is the company’s application centre in Johannesburg, which allows customers to test any potential electric drive application in a controlled environment to confirm details such as maximum speed, accuracy and cycle time.
All of Festo’s solutions are backed by comprehensive support and expertise, plus extensive training facilities to show customers exactly how to use new technologies.
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