Innovation

Innovation

Reduce costs with modularisation

In machine design, you face the daily challenge of minimising costs and speeding up processes. At the same time, you need to adapt quickly and flexibly to technological transformation and changing market conditions. This article shows you how, by using modular concepts in machine building, you can reduce costs in the long term in all phases of the machine life cycle. And we will provide you with practical tips on how to optimise the savings potential of modular systems for your automation solutions.

Innovation

Industrial transformation

The industrial transformation and Industry 4.0 have fundamentally changed the way companies produce. IoT, digitalisation and globalisation are having an impact on the industrial automation landscape and are shaking up the market. At the centre of this change are advanced machine concepts that enable more efficient, more flexible and more intelligent production. How can you design your machine concepts in industrial production to meet future requirements and remain competitive? We take a look at these topics in this blog post.

Innovation

Perfect combination of electrics and pneumatics

When designing machines, you face the daily challenge of having to minimise costs and speed up processes. At the same time, you need to adapt quickly and flexibly to technological transformations and changing market conditions. This article shows you how you can use modular concepts to sustainably reduce costs in all phases of the machine life cycle and how you can optimise the savings potential of modular systems for your automation solutions.

Innovation

Cost-efficient development of laboratory devices

Life sciences and biopharmaceutical companies that successfully maintained supply during the coronavirus crisis are now focusing on adapting their operations to the new normal and sustainably improving cost efficiency in laboratories. Manufacturers of laboratory devices must therefore also ask themselves how they can develop and produce new devices for laboratory automation in less time and with lower expenditure, yet that still offer their customers decisive advantages .

Innovation

Systematically save on compressed air costs

Nowadays, energy efficiency is a key issue for industrial companies worldwide. Rising energy costs and increasing environmental regulations are forcing companies to rethink and optimise their energy consumption. In this interview, Heiko Fleischhacker, Energy Efficiency Expert and Certified Auditor at Festo, explains the added value that companies can gain from a systematic compressed air energy efficiency audit. This is because the use of compressed air is often not considered, even though simple and sustainable energy savings can be achieved.

Innovation

Sustainable and energy-efficient production

High energy prices, increasing cost pressures and a growing awareness of climate protection all mean that energy efficiency is a critical topic for companies. Optimising energy consumption is particularly important in the manufacturing industry. Compressed air generation and usage are often overlooked. Measures such as eliminating leakage and optimising the pressure level reduce energy costs and increase the overall productivity (OEE) of the systems. Sven Lensdorf, Head of Sales Operations Services at Festo, explains how innovation and consultation reduce the CO₂ footprint for the environment.

Innovation

Successful planning of battery cell production

Battery cell production plays a decisive role in the development of modern energy storage solutions, especially for electric vehicles. Given the increasing demand for efficient and environmentally friendly batteries, this market offers enormous potential. In the following interview, Jochen Luik, Electronics Global Industry Segment Manager at Festo, provides insights into the most important aspects and challenges of battery cell production.

Innovation

Predictive maintenance: increasing OEE with AI

In times of increasing competition, cost pressures and a shortage of skilled labour, the highest possible overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is more important than ever in order to be successful on the market. Fortunately, there is a solution to increase effectiveness: predictive maintenance. Taking cylinders as an example, find out now how you can use predictive maintenance to increase key figures such as OEE, thus ensuring your long-term success.

Innovation

AI in industry: what you need to look out for

How do you think artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in industry? And what are the aspects that you think should be taken into account when implementing AI? In this article, we explain why it is worth using AI and what you need to look out for in the process; we will also provide you with real-life examples and a step-by-step guide. Find out whether you should develop an AI solution yourself or purchase one in our make or buy guide.

Innovation

Efficient maintenance management with a CMMS

A Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) can be critical for an efficient maintenance team in a production-oriented environment to ensure smooth operations and minimise downtime.

Innovation

Optimise maintenance: tips for maintenance staff

You face many challenges every day. You plan and carry out maintenance work. You also document it and fix errors. There are many different and demanding requirements. Frequent sticking points are, in particular, activities that are repeated over and over again, and how to make the best use of past problems. Every unnecessary action, every missed piece of information leads to downtime and production losses. These do not go down well with management. The good news is that this can be done better – with a digital maintenance manager.

Innovation

Superconductor technology for future laboratories

Automation and digitalisation, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and microfluidics as well as personalised medicine will shape the laboratory of the future. Innovative material technologies such as nanomaterials, smart materials and superconductors will play an equally important role. Superconductor technology enables non-contact movement and handling of objects and fluids. This makes it ideal for sterile and safe work in laboratories and biotechnology.

Innovation

Spare parts, incident and maintenance management

Efficiency is the key to success in industrial maintenance. Machine standstills and downtimes are frustrating and costly. They also have a significant impact on the entire business. Just one hour of unplanned machine downtime at a manufacturing company can result in a loss of around EUR 220,000. In addition, costs are incurred when the fault needs to be investigated and identified.

Innovation

How to improve maintenance KPIs with CMMS

Maintenance KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) play an important role in evaluating the performance and efficiency of maintenance processes. A Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is a tool that offers ways of improving these KPIs and optimising maintenance performance. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of a CMMS in terms of improving maintenance KPIs (MTBF/MTTR/OEE) and explain how it can help you achieve your goals.

Innovation

Automated cell dispensing

Working with cell cultures is becoming increasingly important in the life science sector, whether for the development of drugs or for testing alternative forms of therapy. This also increases the demand for solutions to make handling cells and organoids more effective and efficient. Manual pipetting ties up scarce and expensive human resources. At the same time, capacity limits are quickly reached when sample quantities are large.

Innovation

Automated dispensing of a viscous hydrogel

In the Festo LifeTech Application Center we tested a setup for UPM Biomedicals for the automatic dispensing of their biocompatible nanocellulose hydrogel.

Innovation

Optimising liquid handling results

In dispensing or pipetting applications in laboratory automation, it is important to obtain reliable results, which are analysed by calculating the accuracy and precision. To achieve these results, several influencing factors have to be taken into account, from the measuring equipment to external and internal influences.

Innovation

5 benefits of pressure-controlled liquid handling

There are different systems available for liquid handling in laboratory automation. Festo favours pressure-controlled dosing systems for liquids because they offer a wide range of impressive benefits.

Innovation

Easy integration of piezo valves

Extremely energy-saving, silent and without any heat build-up – piezo technology offers many benefits for efficient and precise gas handling in medical technology and laboratory automation. The biggest difference between piezo valves and proportional solenoid valves is the energy consumption, which is up to 95% lower. Up to now, it has not been possible to simply replace proportional solenoid valves since piezo technology needs voltages of up to 310 V and thus specific electronics. Now, however, there are simple solutions for this, which we will be presenting in this article.

Innovation

Design for manufacturing lab-on-a-chip devices

Mobile in vitro diagnostics is a growing market. The demand for fast and reliable point-of-care tests is steadily increasing. With Festo as a partner, scientists, universities, start-ups, and even established manufacturers can reduce the time-to-market for their lab-on-a-chip systems and get started with mass production straight away. This is made possible through collaborative engineering and a modular system of ready-to-install, pretested subsystems.

Innovation

Saving lives with the right antibiotic

Until now, it used to take two to four days to find out which antibiotic in which dosage would work to combat a patient's infection. A new diagnostic platform finds the appropriate preparation within 24 hours. Included: dispense heads and gantries from Festo.

Innovation

Integrated solutions for liquid handling

One of the main topics in laboratory automation is handling extremely small quantities of liquid, from millilitres down to nanolitres. That is why Festo offers compact and perfectly integrated functional units. These standardised components enable system and equipment manufacturers to shorten their development times, and at the same time meet strict quality requirements reliably and efficiently. This makes Festo not just a valuable partner for customers in the healthcare sector, but also in other industry sectors where accurate liquid handling is required, for example in the production of food and cosmetics, in printing and cleaning, or for breeding and incubation processes.

Innovation

No longer afraid of the dentist

No one enjoys going to the dentist, young children even less so. To help future dentists and dental assistants deal with children during dental treatments, Japanese company tmsuk has developed a humanoid robot that realistically simulates the behaviour of young children during these treatments, including fidgeting, flinching or closing the mouth. The dummy's realistic movements are generated using proportional pressure regulators with piezo technology.

Innovation

On the hunt for high throughput diagnostics

Global diagnostics companies and laboratories are in a race against time to adapt testing capacity to current demand. Due to the global COVID 19 pandemic, the demand for testing far exceeds the available capacity.

Innovation

Ideal for developers: Liquid Handling Starter Kit

Pressure-controlled dispensing systems are used wherever precision, throughput and reliability are required. Festo offers developers in laboratory automation a starter kit for dispensing liquids that simplifies and speeds up the initial setup of a new dispensing application.

Innovation

Repetition accuracy in liquid handling

The need for an external air supply means that space is limited when installing liquid handling systems. Also, the multiple dosing of liquids places very high demands on repetition accuracy. Festo has found solutions to both challenges, which are described in more detail in this article.

Innovation

Accurate removal of prostate tissue

Medical robots are playing an increasingly important role in medical diagnostics. Semi-automated handling solutions enable precise sampling of suspicious areas in the prostate, delivering more accurate biopsy results and better detection of prostate cancer.

Innovation

The road to Le Mans

When racing, drivers usually use their arms and legs constantly to operate the accelerator, gears, clutch and brakes. The newly developed pneumatic control system from Team BRIT and MME Motorsport means that all of the team’s racing drivers can now compete in races using the same car, regardless of their physical limitations. Spurred on by this innovation, the drivers have now set themselves an ambitious goal: the Le Mans endurance race.

Innovation

Faster development of sample handling systems

Festo USA has collaborated with PerkinElmer to develop a compact sample handling solution for a global leader in manufacturing medical devices. Thanks to the customer's involvement in the development process at an early stage, the subsystem is easy to integrate into the customer's platform – with standard components from Festo, a PerkinElmer® JANUS G3 workstation and a modified rotary gripper module. This approach resulted in minimal complexity with maximum productivity and process reliability.

Innovation

Mixing & dosing gases – 4 applications, 1 solution

The VEMD is a closed-loop, thermal mass flow controller that precisely supplies inert gases and oxygen at flow rates from 0 to 20 ln/min. Its piezo technology delivers an industry-leading dynamic response and energy efficiency, all at an excellent price/performance ratio. Since no pulse-width modulation signal is required to control the flow rates, the VEMD is quiet during operation. Thanks to its compact installation dimensions, low weight and low energy consumption, it is ideal for use in mobile devices, as the first application example shows.

Innovation

DNA extraction machine for plant breeding

Dutch company Synchron Lab Automation developed an automated DNA extraction system with very high throughput by working very closely together with Festo. As a result, customers in the seed industry can collect DNA from up to 40,000 samples per day.

Innovation

Opening and closing sample vials

The handling of sample vials – in particular opening and closing – is a special challenge in the field of laboratory automation. The goal is to unite high levels of process reliability with minimal complexity. You’ll find out here which factors are important for finding the right solution.

Innovation

Part 1: Precision and accuracy in liquid handling

A key process in laboratory automation is dispensing liquid aliquots, for example using automated liquid handlers. Evaluating the performance of liquid handling systems is important for laboratory technicians as well as for manufacturers of liquid handling technology. The benchmarks for evaluating dispensing performance are precision and accuracy.

Innovation

Part 2: Precision and accuracy in liquid handling

A key process in laboratory automation is the handling of liquids and samples. The objective performance evaluation and optimisation of automated liquid handling systems is extremely important for laboratory technicians as well as manufacturers of liquid handling technology.

Innovation

Solutions for laboratory automation

Small liquid droplets with volumes in the microlitre range are used in many applications today. Areas where these droplets can play a particularly important role include liquid handling in life sciences and pharmaceutical research, diagnostics and microfluidic applications. Two typical techniques for handling liquids are pipetting (a contact technique) and dispensing (a non-contact method).

Innovation

Contactless weighing

Ultra-clean and germ-free processes are becoming increasingly important for industrial production, particularly in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Surfaces in cleanrooms must be sealed, easy to clean well and to disinfect properly. A new concept using superconductor technology now enables contactless and precise weighing and measuring.

Innovation

The laboratory of the future – the SMART lab

As laboratory processes become more complex, automation solutions are essential to ensure the accuracy and consistency of processes and to improve efficiency.

Innovation

Valves with piezo technology

Certain ceramics have piezoelectric properties, which means that when these ceramics are mechanically deformed, voltage is created in the material. This effect also occurs in the opposite direction: applying voltage to these ceramics leads to their deformation.

Innovation

System solutions in laboratory automation

It is useful to distinguish between laboratory automation and laboratory robotics. While the former refers to software and hardware technologies and technical adaptations that control instruments without human intervention, the latter refers specifically to the physical handling of samples and their containers.

Innovation

Through the eyes of the future

You wear glasses so you can see better. You wear augmented-reality glasses so you can see more. These new spectacles enhance the surroundings with computer-aided information. Technologies with augmented reality (AR) make it possible to look at everyday situations as well as the working world of the future in a different way.

Innovation

Electronics to wear

So-called wearables are in high demand, whether for smart watches, fitness wristbands or data glasses. In the private sphere, these devices offer many ways of acquiring data. For example, distances covered, sleep patterns or body temperature can be checked. The technology also creates potential for use in companies, especially with regard to optimizing processes.

Innovation

Fascinating interaction

Whether at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida or in the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, visitors like to converse with the humanoid robot RoboThespian. It approaches them directly and does so with movements that look quite natural. All this is made possible by the latest technology from Festo, such as the fluidic muscle and piezo valves. The 1.75-metre-tall humanoid weighing 33 kilograms was developed by Engineered Arts Limited in the English town of Penryn in Cornwall.

Innovation

The keeper of time

Joachim Ullrich is President of the PTB – Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig, Germany’s national metrology institute. The clocks that tick here are among the most accurate in the world. In this interview, the physicist explains how they work, what this has to do with Coordinated Universal Time and why it’s a good idea to define a second to sixteen decimal places.