In practice

Festo pneumatics expertise helps Cerulean

Soaring energy prices and the need to continuously drive down costs are key considerations for manufacturers. So, when packaging machinery specialist Cerulean decided to redesign its highly successful FPS-1 tube packer, high energy efficiency and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) became key design requirements.

In practice

Selecting the optimal linear motion technology

Linear motion on machines traditionally uses pneumatic or electric drives, but there are more options available today than designers may realise. Josh Roberts, Product Manager at Festo GB, explains how to make the best selection for your application.

In practice

Soft fruit quality control sped up

Karsten Europe handles the distribution of grapes from Africa and has recently started fully automatically checking the quality of imported grapes via an AI aided vision system from the company Gearbox. Besides advanced hardware and software, at the heart of this machine are electric drives from Festo's Simplified Motion Series, which are used to eject failed products in a controlled manner. Gearbox opted for the simple electric automation solution because it saved having compressed air as a secondary energy source, and because electric drives provided the repeatability they required.