2.2011
trends in automation
Soft Stop
46
What have you
got in the box,
Mr. Handel?
As a specialist exhibit constructor you
must always be prepared for anything.
In my blue tool box I not only keep my
tools but also all the small things that
can sometimes be very important.
Screws, brackets, adapters, connectors and a thousand
other things that I think I may need at some point. If at
a fair or an exhibition I am faced with an apparently
insoluble challenge, such as fixing a 100 kilo exhibit to
a plaster board wall, then I can normally find just the
part that I need in here.
Festo’s exhibit constructors are by nature curious,
playful and love to fiddle about with things. Every one of
our 17-strong team always looks forward to something
new, making the supposedly impossible possible.
As part of Festo’s exhibition department we are involved
in the planning and implementation of the exhibition
presentations and support our international companies.
There is always a great deal going on there and new
ideas must take shape. Depending on the project the
manufacture of an exhibit may take between one day
and a year.
In order to find good ideas for new exhibition displays
it is important to always be alert and observant. Then
tripping over your son’s wooden train set early in the
morning becomes the next dynamic display where an
electric tripod assembles a railway line.
Festo’s exhibits demonstrate a small part of a complex
process in detail, detail. Yet at the same time it is also
deliberately far removed from the actual machine process.
Because what we show are normally simple, easy-to-
understand connections that should make the viewer
curious. And so, for example, we represent the precision
of the electric slide EGSL by having it insert a USB stick
into a USB hub. These are products that everybody
knows from everyday life and that everybody knows
must fit precisely into each other.